Record-Keeping Crunch Time
Record-Keeping Crunch Time
March 29, 2007: With the end of a significant memorandum period for employers, new record-keeping requirements for businesses have this week come into operation under the WorkChoices legislation.
From this week and 12 months after WorkChoices Legislation was introduced, employers are now required to keep individual records on employees. It’s the firming up of laws introduced last year that called for a ‘memorandum period’ given the confusion they originally sparked amongst Australian employers.
The record-keeping component of WorkChoices requires individual employee records to be maintained by employers, records that must be ‘legible’ and readily available for access by a workplace inspector. Information such as employee names, employment status, date of employment commenced and superannuation details need to be kept.
It was the requirements for tracking all hours worked by employees that originally caused confusion when the laws were first introduced. The rules were later relaxed to include those worked by casuals and irregular part-time employees. But recording ‘overtime’ hours worked by employees earning less then $55,000 is still required.
Leah Bombardiere, senior workplace policy adviser at ABL State Chamber says the changes aren’t all that severe and are designed to protect employees. “Their broader value is that such records provide a means to ascertain whether employees are receiving their correct entitlements,” she says.
But according to the NSW Industrial Relations Minister, John Dela Bosca, record-keeping requirements will cost employers by requirement them to deal with additional bureaucratic requirements. “It means more red tape for employers and lower wages and conditions for NSW families,” he says.
As for the readiness of Australian businesses to accept the new record-keeping requirements, Bombardiere says Australian business have now had over a year to prepare. “We believe businesses should be fairly well placed,” she says.