Stay Ahead of Workplace Law Changes in 2024: Tips & Resources for Business Owners and HR Teams

Welcome back to another exciting year in payroll and workforce management.  We trust your holiday season went smoothly, and if not, that’s something you can add to your considerations for planning for this year. 

Continuing from 2023, the big theme for this year is legislation (hope we didn’t scare you!), and that will be our focus here.  If you’re using foundU, don’t worry, after we run through the big list of changes to workplace law, we’ll offer some tips and resources to help make any changes to your platform and stay compliant! 

Public Holidays Act 2023 

The Public Holidays Act 2023 came into effect on January 1, 2024. Under this act, when Christmas Day falls on a Saturday, both Saturday and the subsequent Monday will be designated as Public Holidays. Easter Sunday has now been officially declared as a Public Holiday, aligning South Australia with all states and territories. 

Superannuation as National Employment Standard (NES) 

Effective 1 January 2024, the National Employment Standards (NES) includes a right to superannuation contributions. 

Employee Authorised Deductions 

Effective 30 December 2023 employees can now authorise employers to make deductions from their pay that may vary from time to time. Previously, any time the amount of a deduction changed, the employee had to provide the employer with a new written authority to deduct. 

New Discrimination Protections 

Effective 15 December 2023, are stronger protections against discrimination for employees experiencing family and domestic violence. 

Update on New Rules for Fixed Term Contracts 

The new rules for fixed contracts became effective on 6 December 2023. The government issued regulations that will delay the start of the new rules until 1 July 2024 for some employees. 

Closing Loopholes Bill

Criminalising Wage Theft 

The wage theft legislation criminalises intentional wage theft and non-payment of superannuation. This change will commence after 1 January 2025. 

Same Job, Same Pay for Labour Hire  

The Fair Work Commission now has the ability to make an order that employees under a labour hire arrangement are paid no less than employees employed directly by the host company.  This change commenced on 15 December 2023. 

Changes to Redundancy Exemption for Small Business 

Effective 15 December 2023, the amendment prohibits larger businesses from claiming the small business redundancy exemption if they are under a winding up order or downsizing due to the Bankruptcy Act. 

From the above you can see that there’s quite a range of areas you’ll need to look at it in your business processes and payroll software.  After assessing your policies and processes for any gaps or deficiencies, you’ll want to see how the areas in the list below are handled in your payroll / workforce management software. 

For you lucky foundU users, this is the fun part, if not, you can play along:

• Configuring public holidays in foundU is easy.  National and state public holiday rules and rates are built into the Awards & Agreements component, so all you’ll need to do is set up and update any regional and additional public holidays.  Piece of cake! 

Superannuation 

• With the option of using our Beam integration or sending a super stream file to your clearing house of choice, setting up and paying Super is simple. Employee Superannuation details can be updated anytime by an admin user or by the employee themselves using the Employee App. 

Deductions 

• Set up, edit, apply and report on deductions with ease. You can create your own deduction types and apply them to employee profiles or directly to payslips. You can also report on processed and unprocessed deductions. 

Leave 

• In terms of personnel administration, leave is a behemoth, a sometimes frightening but necessary beast.   Lucky for you foundU has tamed it. Our leave workflow leaves nothing to chance, and the new leave management settings allow you to automate leave management and calculations even further. 

Contracts and documents 

• foundU's onboarding system is the gateway to smarter, streamlined personnel and records management. Using the Document builder and library lets you set up personalised documents for employees to sign and manage. 

Awards & pay rates  

• You can learn from our customers the difference our powerful Award Engine makes to everything from setting up employee positions, to scheduling, to efficient, accurate payroll. With the ability to calculate and test awards and agreements against real positions and scenarios, staying compliant is a given. 

We’re excited for 2024.  Sure, there are a lot of changes in the Legislative and HR landscape to get on top of. However, armed with the knowledge and resources above, you can go forth and take the year on with confidence and clarity. 

Want to know more about foundU? Book a Demo.