Hospitality Industry General Award Update - November 2021

This article is for the users who use the Hospitality Industry General Award and require an update from 1 November 2021.

Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 (HIGA) - 1 November 2021

Please Note

Please read all the information below prior to commencing the update process. If you apply our update, any customisations to award settings in the Restaurant Industry Award will be overwritten. E.g. Leave Loading in Salary awards, Normal Time, Payrate decimal places, Period Over Time start dates, etc. We recommend your payroll team completes a thorough review of the Award as part of your first pay run to ensure your employees are paid correctly.

Please download the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020_2021-11_UPDATE.pdl file and save it to the desktop. 

HIGA Junior Pay Rates

There is a separate updated PDL file for the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 Juniors available. This update contains many rates, 70 in total. If you only pay one or two junior rates you may find it easier to manually add or update these rates yourself.

Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 Junior_2021-11_UPDATE.pdl

Details Of Changes

The full award can be read from the Fair Work website.

In June 2021, the FairWork Commission announced a 2.50% increase to the minimum wage. For the Hospitality Industry General Award, this increase comes into effect from 1 November 2021. In accordance with s.286(5) of the Fair Work Act 2009, this determination does not take effect in relation to a particular employee until the start of the employee’s first full pay period that starts on or after 1 November 2021.

This means you should not update until you are ready to process the first full pay period in November 2021. If you chose to update prior to finalising a pay which spans October and November, any updated pay rates, allowances and award changes will be applied to all dates within this pay period (e.g. Weekly pay period ending 3/11/2021 runs from Thursday 28th October to Wednesday 3 November 2021 and update applied before processing of this pay, the changes will apply to all dates in this pay cycle – whereas you are only obligated to apply the changes as of the next pay cycle, i.e. PPE 10/11/2021).

For more information on the annual wage review, click here. 

For more information on pay guides, click here. 

As part of the Annual Wage Review 2020-21, Wagemaster has updated all relevant areas of the Registered & Licensed Clubs Award 2020 PDL file for use in Wagemaster for the 2021-22 financial year. This update service contains 3 separate items (Allowances, Awards and Pay Rates) which can be updated separately or at the same time.

Summary

Allowances

• Airport Catering Travel Allowance – Unit Based
• Airport Supervisor 11 To 20 Allowance
• Airport Supervisor 6 To 10 Employees
• Airport Supervisor More Than 20 Employees
• Airport Supervisor Up 5 Employees
• First Aid - Casual & Part-Time
• First Aid - Full Time
• Fork Lift - Casual & Part-Time
• Fork Lift Driver - Full Time
• Overnight Stay Allowance
• Clothing, Equipment & Tools – Cooks
• Meal Allowance – Untaxed
• Overtime Meal Allowance (Taxed)
• Overtime Meal Allowance (Untaxed)
• Vehicle Allowance 0.85 (Taxed)
• Vehicle Allowance 0.85 (Untaxed)
• New Schedule K – Penalty Rates Additional
• New Shift Loading Mon-Fri 7 pm - Midnight
• New Shift Loading Mon-Fri Midnight - 7 am
• New HIGA Split Shift Difference (Schedule K)
• HIGA Broken Work Day 3+ Hours
• HIGA Broken Work Day Up To 3 Hours

Awards

• New Schedule K Awards – Full Time – Loaded Rate Arrangements 40hrs and Full Time – Loaded Rate Arrangements 45hrs
• New General > Decimal rounding is now set by default to 2 decimal places
• Loadings > Shift Mon - Thurs (rate increase)
• Loadings > Shift Fri (rate increase)
• Loadings > Shift Sunday (rate increase)
• Payments > Superannuation (contribution increase to 10%, Quarterly Cap $58920)

Pay Rates

• National Minimum Wage Order increases to each applicable pay classification

For more informaiton on national minimum wage conditions, click here. 

The updates are detailed below and shown with screenshots should you decide to manually update rather than apply our update.

Important

When completing the update (see screenshot below), you can choose any or all of the following 3 items – Allowances, Awards and Base Pay Rates. By selecting any of these options, or all three options, you will be loading that part of the Modern Award in full. If you have made any manual amendments to the standard award configurations as supplied in Wagemaster, you should be aware the updates will overwrite the customisations you have made to the related configurations in your Wagemaster company file/s. These customisations include award provisions such as ordinary hours and penalty rates, state long service leave accrual rates or leave loading (particularly in salary awards), manual changes to descriptions, amounts and conditions that you have made will be overwritten and replaced with Wagemaster’s standard Modern Award setup as per our interpretation of the award obtained from Fair Work Australia.

Alternatively, you can keep your customised award configurations and update only the pay rates and allowances by ticking to update Pay Rates and Allowances only. Do not tick Awards when following the update instructions.

It is imperative for this update to take effect in November 2021, you close and reopen Wagemaster after loading the update file and that after reopening, ensure the PPE date is at a date in November 2021 before checking the changes.

The effective date has been changed to 01/11/2021.

To assist you in determining which items you need to download (if any) the following information is provided (including screenshots) to clearly identify what changes are associated with each option.

Allowances

The following screenshots highlight the changes made to all relevant allowances within the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 PDL file.

Airport Catering Travel Allowance

Airport Supervisor Allowances

 

First Aid Allowances

Forklift Allowances

Clothing, Equipment & Tools - Cooks

Meal Allowance - Untaxed

Overtime Meal Allowance (Taxed)

Overtime Meal Allowance (Untaxed)

Overnight Stay Allowance

Vehicle Allowance 0.85 (Taxed)

Vehicle Allowance 0.85 (Untaxed)

Schedule K Allowances

Schedule K - Penalty Rates Additional

HIGA Split Shift Difference (Schedule K)

Shift Loading Mon-Fri 7 pm-midnight

Shift Loading Mon-Fri Midnight-7am

For more information on Schedule K - Loaded Rate Arrangements for HIGA, click here. 

For more information on loaded rates added to Hospitality Award, click here. 

Broken Work Allowances

The HIGA Broken Work Day Up to 3 Hours and HIGA Broken Work Day 3+ Hours allowances work in conjunction with a script loaded into each relevant award. If paying these allowances, ensure script configuration is completed as below in each Full and Part-Time Award and showing as Enabled (green light).

HIGA Broken Work Day Up to 3 Hours Allowance

Ensure entry of Allowance No: HIGASPREAD2. This field needs to be entered manually if in use and the allowance will also need to be activated in the relevant employee files.

HIGA Broken Work Day 3+ Hours Allowance

Ensure entry of Allowance No: HIGASPREAD3.  This field needs to be entered manually if in use and the allowance will also need to be activated in the relevant employee files.

Notes On Allowances

For STP reporting, allowances that need to be reported as Allowances (and separated from Gross) need to be ticked to Report in STP and the ATO Typeset.  This has been done for several allowances, but these settings must be checked by you.

More information on Allowances, Taxation and Super can be found on the ATO website.

Awards Update

The following screenshots highlight the changes made to all Casual, Part-Time and Full-Time Awards within the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 PDL file.

If you are paying employees under any State transitional arrangements, or if you have made manual changes to the awards, you should not download the awards, but make manual changes where applicable. The below award configurations include transitional reductions to Sunday Loadings and Public Holiday Loadings in applicable award configurations.

Casual, Full Time and Part Time Awards

Loadings > Shift (Mon-Thur)

Loadings > Shift (Friday)

Loadings > Shift (Sun)

Additional Items To Check

Payments > Superannuation (All Awards) > Super has increased to 10% and the Quarterly cap increased to $58,920 - effective 01/07/2021.

Please refer to the ATO website for details on ordinary time earnings (OTE) applicable to superannuation contributions.

General > General > Pay Rate Decimal Places

By default, Pay Rate Decimal Places are set to 2.

See FairWork Act 2009 with regards to rounding to 2 decimal places. All FairWork base pay rates are set to 2 decimal places in Wagemaster however where this setting is higher than 2, loadings will pay to the set number of decimal places. To meet with FairWork requirements, consider changing this to 2 decimal places.

Normal > Normal Times > Public Holiday > Minimum Hours

By default, there are no minimum hours set for public holidays in the award configuration provided. Please set this per clauses 32.2 (a):

FT\PT = 4 hours, Casual = 2 hours

Please Note

Consider the impact to your Period Overtime settings if calculating over multiple pay periods. The date entered for Period Start will be removed with the upgrade.

Loadings > Day > Public Holiday > Hours 1 and Loading 1 > Balance
(No value is set for Hours 1 and Loading 1, the Balance is set as per MA00009)

Please Note

Casual Award is 150%, Full Time and Part Time Awards are 125%

Please Note

Leave > Long Service – State\Award\Agreement Based Accrual Rate and Conditions

Wagemaster Awards are provided with long service leave accrual rates based on 13 weeks over 15 years.

Please check State\Employer Association\EBA-ECA\FairWork legislation and amend accordingly if your employees are entitled to accrue long service leave at a rate other than 13 weeks over 15 years.

The table below from the Parliament of Australia website sets out the long service leave entitlements for each state and territory.

More information on the Parliament of Australia website for Long Service Leave portability. 

Base Pay Rates Update

All Hospitality Industry General Award pay rates have been updated in full to match the full Modern Award. If you are paying transitional rates or rates other than the award pay rates, you should not download these rates. You will need to update these rates manually.

Hospitality Industry General Award Base Pay Rates

 

HIGA Junior Pay rates

There is a separate updated PDL file for the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 Juniors available. This update contains many rates, 70 in total. If you only pay one or two junior rates you may find it easier to manually add or update these rates yourself.

Hospitality Industry General Award 2020 Junior_2021-11_UPDATE.pdl

Pre-Update

1. Backup your Wagemaster Company Files to File Manager - We recommend you take a backup of your Wagemaster company files prior to making any changes to your Wagemaster company files.
2. Updating HIGA PDL prior to processing first full pay to be processed in September 2021 Wagemaster Reference: Setup > Associations.
3. Save the Hospitality Industry General Award 2020_2021-11_UPDATE.pdl to your desktop or another nominated folder path.

Update Instructions 

1. From Wagemaster, navigate to Setup > Associations.

2. Select General Retail Industry Award association icon > Edit and then click on the Internet tab.

3. Within the Internet tab, tick the items that you want to update i.e. Allowances, Awards, and Base Pay Rates. Do not tick Tax Tables & Rebates.

4. Click Update Now. 
   

5. You are now ready to update the selected components for any General Retail Industry Award associated items in your company file.
6. After clicking Update Now > Next and then Load from Disk File, click on the 3 dots (ellipsis) to navigate to the location (i.e. Desktop >Hospitality Industry General Award 2020_2021-11_UPDATE.pdl file) that you saved.
7. Once you have located the file, select Open > Next > Finish. You should see folders moving across the screen with familiar names of awards in your association.
   

8. You should then close using the close door icon (not the red cross) and select Close in the Edit Association Details box.

9. Repeat this process for each company file.

10.  You are now ready to pay your employees.

11. If you do not have any manual items to transition within your awards then you have completed this task. If you elected to untick Awards during the update process, please ensure the Superannuation Guarantee Quarterly Cap Amount has been changed to $58,920.00 and the contribution % to 10%.

Please Note

Wagemaster and Agrimaster cannot provide advice relating to the interpretation of these awards.

Wagemaster and Agrimaster cannot provide clients with business or industrial relations advice.

The HIGA Award has two special overtime related conditions.

1. Broken Periods Of Work (HIGA Clause 21.3(a). Employees other than casuals who have a broken workday must receive an additional allowance as follows:
   • Where the time between periods of work is two hours and up to three hours an allowance per day equal to 0.33 per cent of the standard weekly rate; or
   • Where the time between periods of work is more than three hours an allowance per day equal 0.5 per cent of the standard weekly rate.
2. Rostering (HIGA Clause 30.1).
   • The roster for full-time and part-time employees must be prepared by the employer and must be posted in a conspicuous place accessible to the employees concerned indicating:
     1. The name of each employee concerned and their starting and finishing times.
     2. A minimum 10-hour break between the finish of ordinary hours on one day and the commencement of ordinary hours on the following day. In the case of a changeover of rosters, eight hours will be substituted for 10 hours.

The above conditions are contained in the HIGA.Overtime.WithHoursSpread.NoShiftBreak script, which is in the Scripts section of each HIGA award (except Casual Award).