Introduction
This guide provides an overview of how the Humanforce Suite assists in meeting the requirements of the Nurses Award [MA000034]. It covers the main award clauses and their application within the Humanforce system. The purpose of this guide is to serve as a comprehensive reference for employers with employees covered by the Nurses Modern Award.
Use of this Library Award does not replace your obligations to ensure you are compliant with the Award in a way applicable to you and your scenario. All advice sought throughout the building of this award was general in nature and there is no guarantee it aligns with your specific circumstances.
Using this Guide
The guide demonstrates how Humanforce assists in meeting the requirements of the Nurses Award. While this guide details the most common sections of the Award, it is not an exhaustive resource. To view the full sections of the Award, please refer to the Nurses Award on the Fair Work Ombudsman website.
This guide was last reviewed on April 11, 2024.
What Type of Employee/Employer is this Award For?
This award is intended for employers with employees covered and supported by the Nurses Modern Award [MA000034].
Configuration Notes:
- This Library Award covers the follow Award profiles
- Nurses – FT
- Nurses – PT
- Nurses – CAS
- Nurses – FT Shiftwork
- Nurses – PT Shiftwork
- Nurses – CAS Shiftwork
- Nurses – FT 4/5
- Nurses – PT 4/5
- Nurses – CAS 4/5
- Nurses – FT Shiftwork 4/5
- Nurses – PT Shiftwork 4/5
- Nurses – CAS Shiftwork 4/5
Configuring the Award
Enabling the Award
A member of the Humanforce team will be required to enable this award and any appropriate award profiles within your Humanforce system.
Setting Correct Base Pay Rates
Humanforce does not currently support award-appropriate base rates as part of our library awards. However, base rates appropriate to your organisation can be loaded within your system. For more information on setting base rates, please refer to this help article.
Enabling/Adjusting Allowances
This library award has a set of allowances which can be enabled for any given employee by assigning them a qualification from within Workforce Management. Assigning a qualification will activate the associated allowance for all shifts.
If an allowance is subject to a limit, such as a laundry or uniform allowance as an example, this has been built into the system to prevent exceeding the payment cap.
If the allowances on this library award do not align to how you pay your Nursing workforce, your workforce management consultant can work with you to find an alternative best solution appropriate to your organisation's needs. For example, it may be appropriate to relocate an allowance from a qualification to a role or set of roles, and only when those roles are worked does the allowance occur.
The following allowances may be considered for such changes:
- Clothing and equipment
- Uniform Allowance
- Laundry Allowance
Award Summary Table
This table is a summary of the Library award elements and which components can be edited and managed by a Humanforce Consultant, or yourselves directly.
*1 - Humanforce will prompt the breaks are required to be assigned
*2 - But the overtime payment result from the break not being taken is not supported. This is because of the provision for an employee to forfeit a meal break and therefore not have appropriate overtime paid when it is not taken.
Hours of Work
Ordinary Hours
Automated
The following rules are automated within Humanforce:
- Span of Hours - day worker (13.1 a) - Ordinary hours of work for a day worker are worked between 6.00 am and 6.00 pm, Monday to Friday.
-
Ordinary hours and roster cycles 13.1 c -
The ordinary hours of work for a full-time employee will be:
(i) 38 hours per week; or
(ii) 76 hours per fortnight; or
(iii) 152 hours over 28 days.
- Ordinary hours and roster cycles 13.1 d - The shift length or ordinary hours of work per day will be a maximum of 10 hours exclusive of meal breaks.
- Rest breaks between rostered work (13.4 a) - An employee will be allowed a rest break of 10 hours between the completion of one ordinary work period or shift and the commencement of another work period or shift.
- Rest period after overtime (19.4 a) - When overtime work is necessary, it will, wherever reasonably practicable, be so arranged that employees have at least 10 consecutive hours off duty between the work of successive days or shifts, including overtime.
- Recall to work (19.6 and 19.7) - Requiring the correct use a Shift types, the payments are automated as a result.
-
On-Call Allowance (17.2 a i and ii) - This is automated through use of a shift type, including ii) where the majority time is appropriate for determining the correct allowance rate to pay if it could vary.
Manual in Humanforce
The following requirement is not currently automated and must be handled manually in Humanforce:
- Recall to work when not on call (19.7 c, d, e ,f) - These clauses pertain to how you need to roster different in a recall scenario when the employee was not on call to begin with. You must manually consider these and alter the shift record on the roster in Humanforce with these in mind.
Reconfigurable
The following requirements can be reconfigured within scope:
- Rest breaks between rostered work (13.4 b) - By mutual agreement between the employer and employee, the 10 hour rest break may be reduced to 8 hours.
- Alternate Part day Public Holidays - The Library award comes pre-set with standard QLD/SA/NT Part day Public holiday setups, if you need any variant regional show days, these can be configured by your Humanforce Consultant.
Unsupported
The following requirements are currently not supported within Humanforce:
-
Full Days off (13.1 f) - Each employee must be free from duty for not less than:
(i) 2 full days in each week; or
(ii) 4 full days in each fortnight; or
(iii) 8 full days in each 28-day cycle. - On-Call Allowance (17.2 a i and ii) - On Call on a non-rostered day is not available by default within this award library award. This will come with a future enhancement.
Breaks
Automated
The following break rules are automated within Humanforce:
- Unpaid Meal breaks (14.1 a) - As per the above, this is notified but appropriate payments are not provided for due to the break being something that can be opted out of and the overtime only being appropriate if it was opted for and not taken.
Reconfigurable
The following requirements can be reconfigured within scope:
- Unpaid Meal breaks (14.1 b) - where you wish to make the assumption within (a) that the break is always appropriate, this can be automated by a Humanforce Consultant for you.
Wages and Allowances
Allowances
Automated
The following allowance is automated within Humanforce:
Manual in Humanforce
The following allowances require the relevant qualification be enabled on entitled employees profiles:
- Clothing and equipment (17.3 a i) - Employees required by the employer to wear uniforms will be supplied with an adequate number of uniforms appropriate to the occupation free of cost. Uniforms are to remain the property of the employer and be laundered and maintained by the employer free of cost to the employee.
-
Uniform Allowance (17.3 a ii) -
Instead of the provision of such uniforms, the employer may pay an employee a uniform allowance of:
· $1.23 per shift or part thereof on duty; or
· $6.24 per week,
whichever is the lesser amount.
-
Laundry Allowance (17.3 a ii) -
Where an employee’s uniforms are not laundered by or at the expense of the employer, the employee will be paid a laundry allowance of:
· $0.32 per shift or part thereof on duty; or
· $1.49 per week,
whichever is the lesser amount.
- Uniform on paid leave (17.3 a iv) - The uniform allowance, but not the laundry allowance, will be paid during all absences on paid leave, except absences on long service leave and absence on personal/carer’s leave beyond 21 days. In the case of 21 days+ Personal/Carer's Leave, this will still output and it will be up to you to remove this.
- Meal allowances (17.3 b) - with exception of (iii and iv) where considerations need to be manual and case by case, this is automated in the instance of one hour or four hours of overtime at the appropriate rates.
Unsupported
The following requirements are currently not supported within Humanforce:
- Travelling, transport and fares (17.3 c i) - These provisions are not built into the Library award but may be built by a Humanforce Consultant as an Ad-hoc allowance by exception as required.
- Travelling, transport and fares (17.3 c ii and iii) - As these pertain to direct expense reimbursements, it is recommended this is handled by other business processes for tracking and reporting as well as then handled directly/manually in payroll as a result.
Overtime
Automated
The following rules are automated within Humanforce:
- Overtime Rates (19.1 and 19.2) - All rates found therein are automated
Unsupported
The following rules are not supported within Humanforce:
- Time off instead of payment for overtime (19.3) - Pertaining to all subclauses within, this can be configured in by exception by a Humanforce consultant
Penalty Rates
Automated
The following rules are automated within Humanforce:
- Shiftwork (20) - All clauses within this are automated, including Afternoon shift, Night shift, all shiftwork loadings, Saturday work and Sunday work.
-
Public Holidays (28.2 a i and ii) - All work done by an employee during their ordinary shifts on a public holiday, including a substituted day, will be paid at:
(i) For a full-time and part-time employee, 200% of the minimum hourly rate applicable to their classification and pay point.
(ii) For a casual employee, 200% of the casual hourly rate.
Manual in Humanforce
The following requirement is not currently automated and must be handled manually in Humanforce:
-
Public holiday substitution (28.3) -
(a) An employer and employee may agree to substitute another day for a day that would otherwise be a public holiday under the NES.
(b) An employer and employee may agree to substitute another part-day for a part-day that would otherwise be a part-day public holiday under the NES.
Leave Entitlements
Automated
All leave types aligned with the National Employment Standards are made available under the library award in Humanforce. As per best practice, leave accrual for each pay cycle should be handled by payroll, and appropriate leave balances should be synchronised back into Humanforce as part of payroll finalisation.
The following leave types are available:
- Annual Leave
- Sick Leave
- Bereavement Leave
- Carer's Leave
- Compassionate Leave
- Jury Duty
- Unpaid Leave
- Long Service Leave
- Paid Special Leave (intended for Paid Family and Domestic Violence Leave, renaming to suit your business is recommended)
Limitations of this Humanforce Library Award
In addition to the above list of anything that may be unsupported because it is not possible:
General Applications of Overtime
- There are some known limitations in cases of either pay cycles starting mid week, or cases of Public holidays, where a shift crosses midnight AND that shift also includes overtime. These cases will require manual review. In this instance, crossing into a Public Holiday with overtime should output as expected, starting within a public holiday, crossing midnight out of it and having overtime will not.
Using this Humanforce Library Award
The below outlines any key pieces you'll need to be aware of when using this award with respect to how they align with the modern award, such as particular shift types a roster manager may need to utilise and their applications.
- On Call is used as a Shift type in this circumstance however to generate the correct payments, it is required to also mark the shift as a Non-Attended Shift.
- Recall to Work as a Shift type is used to handle both Recall to work when on call (19.6) and Recall to work when not on call (19.7) as these are functionally identical from an automation perspective. The differences are listed above for the considerations and alternations that need to be made manually.
Future Plans and Award Roadmap
The following planned development or known future changes may require updates to this award configuration:
Higher Duties
Currently, the award is configured for a single employment level scenario where employees receive a code like “ORD” (Ordinary pay rate code), and the payroll system determines the appropriate pay rate based on the employee's level. Future enhancements may include support for higher duties assignments and pay rates.
Changelog
Date | Event |
29/07/24 |
Added Support for Part Day Public Holidays Adjusted award design method to allow for a better interpretation (no output changes) |
28/06/2024 |
Updated Rates applicable to unit based Allowances
|
21/06/2024 | Award Republished |
Library Award Test Documentation
You will find the test cases for this library award's current version available as an attachment to this document. For any enhancements to this library award, these tests will be re-run and updated as part of the enhancement process.
This testing is a result of running all of the available award profiles through an exhaustive series of test cases to validate the award output for anything from simple workweeks to the most complex of cases, and everything in between.
An instructional guide to assist in helping you better understand how these tests are run and how you can interpret the files available here will be made available and linked here soon!