Home » Review your awards, policies and workplace structure

Review your awards, policies and workplace structure

We will check that your people are correctly covered, classified and engaged, and fix the framework where they are not.

Ask most business owners which award covers their staff and the answer is a pause. That is not carelessness. Award coverage turns on what the business does and what each person actually does in it. Both drift over years without anyone re-examining the question. Everything else is built on that answer: rates, overtime, allowances, classifications, and who can be engaged how. We review the framework rather than the paperwork.

Speak to a lawyer What is included

Coverage you can state with confidence

You know which award applies to each group and why, rather than assuming.

Exposure as a number

Any shortfall is quantified across the cohort and the period, so the decision is commercial.

A framework that survives diligence

The employment position is in a form a buyer's advisers can accept without a price adjustment.

What is an employment framework review?

It is an examination of how your workforce is engaged, rather than of the documents you issue. It asks which modern award or enterprise agreement covers each group, and what classification each person sits at. It also asks whether they are correctly engaged: employee or contractor, casual or permanent, full time or part time.

Those answers set everything downstream. Rates, loadings, overtime, allowances, leave accruals and superannuation all follow from coverage and classification. A review usually also looks at whether the practice matches the paperwork, because the two drift. Where a business is being sold or has made an acquisition, the same exercise becomes due diligence. Inherited employment liabilities are one of the things a buyer prices.

Speak to a lawyer

How do I know which award covers my employees?

Coverage depends on the industry the business operates in and on the work each employee actually performs. Some awards are industry-based and some are occupation-based, and a business can have several applying to different groups. It is a legal question, not an administrative one, and getting it wrong affects every entitlement below it.

What is the risk with contractors?

If the relationship is really employment, the label on the invoice does not help. The consequences are leave entitlements, superannuation, payroll tax and potential penalties, usually for the whole period. Recent changes have also shifted how the question is assessed, so arrangements that were defensible a few years ago may not be now.

We are buying a business. What should the employment diligence cover?

Award coverage and classifications, any underpayment exposure, the status of casuals and contractors, accrued entitlements and how they transfer, enterprise agreements, and any live claims. Employment liabilities usually come across with the people, so they belong in the price or in the warranties.

What if the review finds a problem?

Then you have found it in the cheapest possible circumstances. Exposure identified voluntarily can be corrected forward and rectified backward on your own terms. The same exposure found by the Ombudsman, or by a buyer’s advisers mid-transaction, is negotiated on somebody else’s.

Find out where the framework does not hold before somebody else does

Tell us what your business does and how your people are engaged. We will tell you where the coverage and classifications are likely to be wrong.

An error in the framework is never one person's problem

You do not know with confidence which award covers your people, or what classification they should sit at. Nor whether the contractors you use would be treated as employees. Nobody has ever asked, and the business has grown into a shape nobody designed.

The problem is not that any single answer is wrong. It is that a wrong answer applies to everyone in the group, for as long as it has been wrong.

We will determine which awards or agreements cover each group of your people.
We will test classification levels against the work actually performed.
We will assess casual, fixed-term and contractor arrangements for risk.
We will quantify any exposure so you can decide what to do about it.
We will advise on correcting the framework and rectifying historical liability.

The business has grown and nobody re-examined the basics

You have more people than you used to, doing a wider range of work than the business did when the arrangements were set. Some are permanent, some are casual, and a few invoice you. Roles have changed shape without the paperwork changing. Something has prompted the question now: an acquisition, a claim, an enquiry, or a new hire asking something the existing contracts cannot answer.

What's included in your employment framework review

Speak to a lawyer

Award and enterprise agreement coverage assessment.
Classification review against actual duties.
Casual, fixed-term and contractor engagement review.
Exposure quantification across the affected cohort.
Correction plan and rectification advice.
Employment due diligence for a sale or acquisition.

What a framework error looks like when it surfaces

These errors surface at the worst times, because that is when somebody finally looks. A misclassification found during a sale becomes a warranty problem, a price adjustment or a retention. It is discovered by the buyer’s advisers rather than by you. An Ombudsman enquiry about one employee becomes an audit of the cohort.

What makes it expensive is the multiplication. A classification one level too low is a small weekly amount, times every person in the role, times six years, plus superannuation on the shortfall. Contractors found to be employees bring leave entitlements, superannuation and payroll tax that were never accrued. None of it was deliberate, and none of that matters to the calculation.

How we get the framework onto solid ground

We start with what the business actually does and what each group of people actually does within it. That is what determines coverage, and it is the step most often skipped. Then we work through classifications level by level. We test the engagement arrangements too: who is genuinely casual, whether any fixed terms exceed what is permitted, and whether the contractors would survive scrutiny.

Where we find exposure we quantify it, so you can decide what to do with a number rather than a worry. Then we help you correct it forward, and where the exposure is historical we advise on rectification and on what to disclose. Where the review is part of a transaction, we produce it in a form the other side’s advisers can work with. That usually shortens the negotiation considerably.

How the review runs

Coverage confirmed, classifications tested, and the exposure quantified.

Map the workforce

We work out what the business does and what each group does in it, which is what award coverage turns on.

Test the classifications

We check classification levels and engagement types, including casuals, fixed terms and contractors.

Quantify and correct

We put a number on any exposure and advise on correcting it forward and rectifying the past.

A review of how you engage people, not the paperwork about it

Almost nobody commissions this work because they want to. It is prompted by an event, and by then part of the answer is already fixed. We are not going to pretend that reviewing award coverage is interesting. It is just considerably less expensive than the alternative, and the businesses that do it are the ones that sell cleanly.

We have 2 Accredited Specialists in Business Law, and we do this work alongside the corporate side of transactions rather than separately from it. That matters when the review is for a sale or an acquisition. The buyer’s advisers treat employment liabilities as a commercial item, and the answer needs to be presented that way.

Our great lawyer guarantee

Six principles we hold to, whatever you bring us and however long it takes.

Take the time

We listen carefully to understand what you want to achieve, then step you through the advice and the documents.

Share our knowledge

We pass on as much as we can, so you can make your own informed decisions.

Stick to our knitting

We only do what we are good at, so you never pay for our learning.

Work as one team

Someone is always available to answer your question or point you the right way.

Fair pricing

A fixed or capped quote for advice and documents, so you do not carry the price risk.

It is your show

We are in it for a front row seat to witness your success, not for our egos.

Find the exposure while it is still small

Tell us what the business does and how your people are engaged. We will tell you where the coverage and classifications are likely to be wrong, what it is worth, and how to correct it.

Speak to a lawyer 1300 654 590