The multi-hire employee management feature allows organizations to efficiently manage employees who are engaged in multiple roles, each governed by a separate award or labor agreement. The feature groups hours worked under each agreement, processes them independently according to the relevant rules, and consolidates the data into a single wages output for payroll purposes. For instance, an employee might work as a part-time administrative assistant under one award agreement and as a casual swim instructor under another. To address this complexity, a robust multi-hire employee management feature has been developed to streamline payroll processing for employees hired under distinct award or labor agreements. By enabling a single employee profile, grouping hours by award, processing them in isolation, and producing a consolidated wages output, the feature ensures compliance, efficiency, and transparency. This solution is ideal for industries with flexible employment arrangements, empowering organizations to manage complex payroll scenarios with ease while providing employees with clear, accurate remuneration.
The following multi-hire use cases are currently supported: -
- An employee hired to work under multiple award agreements
- An employee hired to work more than one role (job) under separate award agreements (example: Part time and Casual)
- An employee hired to work on a role for more than one location or department under separate award agreements.
Key Benefits
• Compliance and Accuracy: By processing hours under each award agreement in isolation, the feature ensures adherence to labor laws and award-specific conditions, reducing the risk of non-compliance penalties.
• Efficiency: A single employee profile eliminates duplicate data entry and reduces administrative errors, saving time for HR and payroll teams.
• Transparency: Employees receive a single payslip that details earnings and entitlements for each role, improving trust and clarity.
• Flexibility: The system supports diverse employment arrangements, accommodating the growing trend of multi-role employees in various industries like education, hospitality, and community services.
• Scalability: The feature is designed to handle varying numbers of roles and agreements, making it suitable for organizations of all sizes.
Feature Highlights
Single Employee Profile:
Despite being hired under multiple contracts (e.g., part-time administrative assistant and casual swim instructor), the employee is set up under a single employee profile in the system. This eliminates the need for duplicate profiles, reducing administrative overhead and ensuring data consistency. The employee profile links the various roles, locations and departments along with their respective award agreements to a unique employee identifier, simplifying record-keeping and reporting. All hours worked, regardless of the role or award, are processed under a single pay company, ensuring streamlined payroll administration. The system aligns all hours to a single pay frequency (e.g., weekly, biweekly, or monthly), simplifying payment schedules and ensuring timely disbursements.
Isolated Processing:
Hours worked by the employee are tracked and categorized based on the specific award profile or labor agreement associated with each role. Hours worked under each award agreement is processed in isolation to comply with its specific rules, such as:
• Base pay rates, overtime, penalty rates, or loadings (e.g., casual loading for swim instructors).
• For instance, the administrative assistant role might accrue annual leave at a standard rate, while the casual swim instructor role includes a 25% casual loading but no leave entitlements.
• The system applies the correct calculations for the hours worked under each role based on the award’s conditions, ensuring compliance with labor standards.
• Entitlements like superannuation, leave accruals, or other benefits can then be processed in the payroll system based on the pay codes generated to the specific award agreement.
Consolidated Wages Output:
After processing hours under each award agreement, the system combines the results into a single payrun dataset for exporting into third party payroll systems. This ensures the employee receives one payslip that reflects all earnings, deductions, and entitlements across their roles.
For example, an employee working 20 hours as an administrative assistant and 10 hours as a swim instructor would have their wages calculated separately for each role, then aggregated into a single payment with a clear breakdown of the pay codes in their payslip.
Note: The system also supports setting up duplicate employee profiles for the same employee hired under multiple award agreements for separate business entities. Although such an approach enables separation of time worked for pay processing and payslip generation, it introduces complexity and ambiguity for employee management, rostering and time tracking.
Use Case Example
Consider an employee, Jane Doe, who works at a community centre. She is employed as:
• A part-time administrative assistant (20 hours/week) under an award that provides a base hourly rate of $30, with entitlements like annual leave and superannuation at 11%.
• A casual swim instructor (10 hours/week) under a different award with a base rate of $35 plus a 25% casual loading, no leave entitlements, and superannuation at 11%.
Using the Multi-Award Employee Management feature, Jane’s hours are processed separately - 20 hours under the administrative assistant award and 10 hours under the swim instructor award.
The system calculates:
• Administrative assistant: 20 hours paid as Ordinary/base hours at $30 plus any loadings and allowances entitled under the part time award. • Swim instructor: 10 hours paid as Casual Ordinary at $35 plus the 25% loading and any other allowances entitled under the casual agreement.
The system consolidates these into a single payment data for gross wages and to export into payroll system. Once the payroll is finalised in the payroll system, Jane receives one payslip reflecting the payment for both roles.
Enabling the feature
Enable the “Multi Hire Costing” setting in the employee profile to facilitate the identification of employees eligible for multi-hire pay processing. This setting enables the payrun to categorize the shifts worked under each award profile and process the award interpretation (labour rules application) for the shifts accordingly. Hours worked for each group of shifts are then processed independently, ensuring that all applicable conditions such as shift-based conditions, daily and period conditions are accurately applied according to the specific award profile. Please note this is an add-on feature and requires configuration of award to ensure employees are paid accurately.
Configuration Requirements
- Employees who fall under this requirement should be set up with a single employee profile in Humanforce.
- Employees should be assigned to the contracted roles with each role set up to use the award profile based on the award agreements.
- Duplication of role is required where an employee is contracted to the same role under two different award agreements.
- Duplication of role is required where an employee is contracted to the same role in another location under the same award agreement but be paid a different pay rate.
Out of Scope
- This feature is not supported in Humanforce BackOffice.
- A role allocated to an employee can have only one effective award profile associated with it. This feature does not support cases where an employee is contracted to the same role under multiple award agreements. A duplicate role is required to handle this case.
- A role allocated to an employee can have only one effective payrate associated with it. This feature does not support the case where an employee is contracted to another location for the same role but paid at different rates.
- Contracted hours - roster minimum and roster maximum hours can only be managed at the employee level and not at the role level. This feature currently does not support handling varied contracted hours under separate award agreements. This is part of the roadmap for development.