This video explains the essential rostering rules and higher duty requirements under the SCHADS Award. It covers how to schedule staff rosters, manage days off, ensure sufficient hours between shifts, and handle roster changes, including client cancellations. The video also explains how higher duties affect pay rates when employees perform tasks above their classification level. By following these guidelines, employers can make sure their rostering practices are compliant with the SCHADS Award and understand the obligations for paying staff correctly when higher duties are required. This is relevant for both Home Care and other SCHADS-covered workplaces.
When clients cancel, how to do rosters, days off, and how many hours between shifts you need to consider when rostering, and how higher duty should be managed—these are all things that we see most commonly at Pay Cat when working with clients in the SCHADS industry. As part eight of our SCHADS online course, we'll go through that in plenty of detail so that you can make sure you take that into consideration with your business.
Also, make sure you check out our playlist containing the rest of the course. I've left a link in the description box below. If you work in a business under the SCHADS Award and you need to include this as part of your CPD or need a certificate, we have a paid version of the course that will also issue you a certificate when you complete the course. It also includes bonus tools like SCHADS compliance checklists to help you with processing payroll, and we keep the course 100% updated as changes come through with the SCHADS Award. Links to access it are also below.
Let's dive in. So, what do you need to know when it comes to rosters? Well, you need to put the staff rosters in a place that full-time and part-time employees can access easily, and they have to be given to them at least 14 days in advance. The SCHADS Award allows you to give your staff their rosters in several different ways, such as over the phone, in person, by email, mail, fax, or by any other electronic communication, such as a text message. So there really is no excuse for not giving your employees their rosters.
Now, what happens if you need to change the roster? You guessed it—there are a set of rules for this too. An employee's roster can only be changed if you give the employee seven days’ notice, if someone is sick, or finds themselves in an emergency, or if a change of the roster is needed to allow the organization to continue its business. If a client cancels or changes Home Care Services, notice must be given to the employee by 5:00 p.m. the day before; otherwise, if no payment is made and no notice is given, the employee will be entitled to receiving payment for the hours rostered on that day.
The other alternative is that the employer can direct the employee to make up the canceled time in the next fortnight. In other business areas, when it comes to rostered days off, all employees except casuals must have at least two full days off per week, or four full days off each fortnight, or eight full days in each four-week cycle. These need to be consecutive days off where it's possible. Your staff are also entitled to at least 10 consecutive hours between shifts. If it's a sleepover shift, then that staff member must have at least eight consecutive hours from when the night shift ends and the new shift starts. For example, if Melanie worked a night shift and only finished working at 5:00 a.m., then she can't be required to be back at work before 1:00 p.m. that same day.
Now that we've covered rosters, I want to touch on higher duties briefly. Sometimes circumstances may require you to have one staff member complete the tasks of a higher classified staff member. If that is the case, you have to know that higher duties require higher pay rates. The SCHADS Award only refers to how pay rates work when Home Care staff perform higher duties. For Home Care employees carrying out work with higher wage rates, they must be paid more. If they worked two hours or less, they need to be paid at a higher rate for the time worked. But if they worked for more than two hours, they must be paid at the higher rate for a full day or shift. If the employee has performed higher duty work for five consecutive days or more, they must be paid at the minimum rate based on the classification that they work.
For example, if Jason is a Level Five Social and Community Services employee and gets paid at Pay Point 3, he earns a minimum weekly wage of $1,957.46. But if he had to perform Peter's duties, who is a Level Eight Social and Community Services employee, for six days, then he must get paid according to Peter's wage. So, for six days, Jason is paid at Pay Point 3 as a Level Eight Social and Community Services employee, which means he'll earn $2,495.31.
So there you have it—all the roster rules and higher duty regulations so that you can make sure you're compliant under the SCHADS Award.