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"Industry Experts" estimate the savings between three and five per cent of your annual payroll. So, if you employee 100 staff at $800 per week that means you have an annual payroll $4.16 Million per year. A three percent saving ( the lower end of the scale) should produce a $125,000 annual saving. A very capable attendance system for one hundred employees including two or three time clocks, full award interpretation and export to payroll can cost as little as $15,000, so that is looking like an excellent return on investment.

Actatek has been at the forefront of biometric time clocks and access control for many years. They were the first company to introduce stand-alone time clocks running on a Linux platform. These time clocks have an inbuilt web server so all attendance and access records can be accessed using a web browser on any device. Their latest release has some interesting features designed to assist companies in dealing with the challenges of monitoring employees in this new era of increased focus on employee health and social distancing.

Ever since Software as A Service (SAAS) products became available, there has been an ongoing debate regarding the cost-effectiveness when compared to in-house server or workstation-based products. Of course, vendors promoting SAAS products quote savings in the upfront capital required, infrastructure maintenance and the off-balance sheet advantages for those companies who are measured by their return on investment. SAAS products are also, by their very nature, an excellent method of delivering a product given that an internet browser is all that is required to access the software.

With the advent of the coronavirus pandemic, many companies have quickly adopted the practice of employees working from home and employees will no doubt work out how to do this effectively over time but what you, as an employer may not realise is the extent of responsibility you still have for your remote worker.

As a business owner, it is my responsibility to anticipate threats to my business and manage those risks. Still, I must admit to being caught a little short when it came to the impact of the Coronavirus.

In a recent article, I commented on the potential administrative nightmare caused by complying with the new Annualised Salary Provisions. The provisions require that accurate records of hours worked are used to make comparisons against those hours of work specified within the agreed Annualised Salary Arrangement (ASA). The ASA has two main elements which trigger a required additional payment to employees. The Triggers The first is when an employees hours exceeds the "Outer Limits" of ordinary and overtime within a pay period. These additional hours must be paid within the relevant pay period for hours worked.

Many companies are aware ( although many are not) that changes to the Annualised Salary provisions in many awards take effect 1st March 2020. These changes are to protect employees from underpayment, and they include measures to both improve the transparency of the Annualised Salary Agreement and, more significantly for employers, a requirement to measure actual hours worked. Here are the changes which most affect employers. These changes may vary between awards to some degree.

It may come as a surprise to many that one of the most common methods of calculating employee attendance hours may be a breach of the Fair Work Act. I am referring to the common practice of rounding employee start times forward and docking their time accordingly if they are late. In practical terms, it goes like this...