There's less than a month to go before Santa arrives and the Boxing Day Sales follow, and this is a time when retailers flex-up by employing casual labour, increasing the hours of their current part-time contingent or politely asking that their full-timers work "reasonable" additional hours.
With this comes the minefield of the General Retail Industry Award and the potential for "inadvertent" award breaches.
A few tips to get you through the season, and make sure you are award compliant:
- Where you are paying above award rates, check that your contracts of employment (or enterprise agreements) provide for an annualised rate which offsets penalties and allowances under the award;
- Check that you have consulted with your employees about any changes to their regular rosters or hours of work (particularly where you are rostering part-timers to work more hours);
- Check that you are applying the correct junior rates (these changed from July 2014);
- Consider using Individual Flexibility Agreements.
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