The Children’s Services Award (MA000120) covers employers in the working in the children services and early childhood education industry and their employees who fit within the award’s classifications.
Examples of businesses covered by the Children’s Services Award include:
- nurseries;
- daycare facilities;
- vacation centres; or
- long daycare.
But did you know that it does not cover employers in the General Educational Services (Schools) Industry, the Higher Education Industry, the Local Government Industry and the SCHADS Industry?
While you can review the Children’s Services Award on the Fair Work website, the document is often filled with complicated legal jargon, making it challenging to understand whether or not your children’s services business is meeting all the compliance requirements.
With a recent focus on payroll compliance from Fair Work Commission Australia and media coverage of businesses guilty of wage theft, it’s more important now than ever that companies understand what’s expected of their obligations when it comes to being compliant with pay rates and employment conditions.
Just in the last 18 months, there were payroll compliance breaches with Joys Child Care and Catalyst Child and Family Services who were found to have failed to pay a range of minimum entitlements under the Children’s Services Award.
To help guide you in the right direction, we’ve created an easy-to-understand eBook that summarises all the essentials in the Children’s Services Award. Our eBook also includes a payroll processing checklist for your children’s services business so that you can ensure you cover all your bases and remain compliant in terms of the Children’s Services Award.
We’ve also put together this article to cover some of the conditions you may not have known existed in the Children’s Services Award that you should know to ensure you fully understand how to be 100% compliant.
Casual Employees Have the Right to Request Employment Conversion
As the employer, you are allowed to accept, in writing, or refuse the request. However, it’s up to your employees if they want to make a request, and you cannot require your casual employee to make a request.
If you choose to deny the request, the Children’s Services Award requires the denial to be on reasonable grounds, such as:
- to fulfil the requirements of the new employment type, there is a significant change to the number of work hours;
- the casual position may not exist in the next 12 months;
- the casual position may have reduced working hours within the next 12 months; or
- there is likely to be significant changes in the casual employee’s workdays and times within the next 12 months that doesn’t suit the employee’s availability.
You’ll Have To Pay Staff an Additional Allowance for Broken Shifts
The allowance is 1.91% of the standard rate per day for each day on which a broken shift is worked.
Holding a Graduate Certificate in Childcare Management Pays More
This means that you’ll be required to pay your qualified employee an allowance 5% of the weekly rate for an Assistant Director.
Paid Rostered Time Off for Full-Time Employees
Under the Children’s Services Award, full-time employees can take:
- 1 paid rostered day off during a roster period; or
- accumulate a maximum of 5 rostered days off.
When rostered time off is paid, it’s usually because an employee has worked extra hours that add up over a set period of time.
Example:
Noah is a full-time employee at a local pre-school. His typical working hours 38 hours a week, so on average he should be working 7.6 hours per day.
However, more often than not, Noah lands up waiting for a parent who is running a bit late to pick up their child.
So, he actually works around 8 hours per day. So, he accumulates an additional 0.4 hours (or 24 minutes) for each day.
Over a standard month, by working 19 days with an extra 24 minutes, Noah has accumulated 7.6 hours.
As per his agreement with his employer, Noah can take one rostered day off per month. If Noah’s employer didn’t pay him for this rostered day off, they would be in contravening his right to rostered time off.
Accumulated rostered days off have to be taken consecutively when it suits the employer and the employee.
Rostered time off is only available if the ordinary working hours are arranged at the children’s services workplace to allow for it.
Your Staff Can Step Away From the Teaching Floor To Plan
According to the Children’s Services Award, during the non-contact time, the employee won’t have to supervise children or perform other duties as directed by the employer.
Example:
At a local early childhood centre, the teaching team takes 2-hours off the teaching floor to discuss, reflect, test out ideas and plan for the following week.
They do this to ensure that they provide the children in their care with the best possible learning outcomes.
This particular early childhood centre has a team of support teachers who cover the classrooms when a teacher has their non-contact time.
Time Off Instead of Payment For Overtime
Employees are entitled to take time off based on what their overtime payment would have been.
Example:
Leila, a full-time employee at a daycare facility, worked 1 hour overtime.
She had agreed with his employer to receive time off as opposed to getting paid for her overtime hours.
According to the overtime rates, Leila is entitled to receive 150% of her ordinary hourly rate. So, her time off calculation will be as follows:
1-hour x 150% overtime rate = 1.5 hours time off
However, this time off needs to be taken within six months of the worked overtime and at a time that is agreed on by both the employer and employee.
Shiftworkers Can Be Employed Under the Children’s Services Award
Shiftworkers are employees who work on either of the 7 days and are regularly rostered to work on Sundays and public holidays.
Shiftworkers have to be paid a penalty rate or their shiftwork:
Shift |
% of minimum hourly rate |
Monday to Friday |
110% |
Monday to Friday |
115% |
Monday to Friday night shift, rotating with day or afternoon |
117.5% |
Monday to Friday night shift, non-rotating |
130% |
Saturday |
150% |
Saturday |
200% |
Public Holidays |
250% |
Shiftworkers who work overtime on the weekend or a public holiday have to be given at least 4 hours of work. If they don't work these hours, they still have to be paid a minimum of 4 hours at overtime rates.
Staff Must Be Paid During Vacation Period Closures
And, during the Christmas vacation only, an employee may be directed to take annual leave. If the employee doesn’t have enough leave to maintain their ordinary pay rate during the vacation period, they may be required to take unpaid leave.
Key Takeaways
Beyond reading the Children’s Services Award eBook and this article, given the complexity of the award,we have found that adopting KeyPay's cloud payroll software to automate your compliance and help with labour cost control is a handy tool.
If you’re still feeling unsure about your compliance with the Children’s Services Award, feel free to get in touch with us at Pay Cat to learn more about adopting KeyPay cloud payroll software for the Children’s Services Award (MA000120) or any other modern award.