Australia Update: Upcoming changes to the Professional Employees Award 2020 regarding overtime

Modern Awards are statutory instruments which, in addition to legislation, govern the minimum conditions and rates of pay enjoyed by Australian workers in certain types of employment. There are over 100 occupation or industry-focused modern awards currently in place. The Professional Employees Award 2020 (Award) applies to employees who work in information technology, medical research, quality auditing, engineering and telecommunications industry roles. 

The current Award provisions regarding overtime

It is not unusual for employees in the professional services sector to be required, from time to time, to perform work outside of their ordinary working hours. This is particularly common in roles that involve customer support at various times of day.

The Award, as it currently stands, does not prescribe fixed penalty rates for work performed regularly in excess of ordinary hours, including ‘on-call’ work or work performed on afternoon, night or weekend shifts.

Instead, the Award (whilst still requiring an employer to ‘compensate’ an employee for this work) leaves it to the employer’s discretion to determine how this work will be compensated, be it with special additional leave or remuneration, the granting of special allowances of loadings, or merely by taking these hours of work into account in fixing an employee’s annual rate of remuneration. 

This will soon change.