By Neena Bhandari
Even after being simplified, modern awards continue to be a complex burden for many organisations.
Australia’s awards system can be something of a dangerous labyrinth. You can be unaware for years that your organisation has embedded an error – a misinterpretation of an award – into your payroll management system. When it’s finally uncovered, it can take a long time and a lot of money to correct your missteps.
This happens even to larger companies. In July 2018 cosmetics giant Lush committed to giving $2 million to current and former Australian workers after it found it had underpaid 5000 of them over an eight-year period. To accomplish this, it promised to upgrade its payroll system (for an estimated $1.5 million) and re-enter approximately 200,000 handwritten paper timesheets.