Making a roster compliant.
Are your built-in leave rosters compliant, or would a full or partial BIL arrangements be suitable for your workforce?
Is your BIL roster compliant? (Hint: It would pay to check)
Some organisations using built-in annual leave rosters may in fact be in breach of ss55 and ss88 of the Fair Work Act. Even if the company and the employees are all in agreement with the leave arrangements and have been happily working them for years.
Many BIL rosters are designed around even time arrangements where employees work half the year (e.g. 2 weeks on site and then 2 weeks off), with annual leave built-in to their rostered days off. You can read more about built-in leave arrangements here.
Orkest Consulting recently assisted a client who had worked this type of arrangement in place for years, and the majority of their workers were happy with it.
However, the union argued that the arrangement and the associated employee agreement conditions deprived the employees the right to choose the timing and duration of their annual leave. The FWC set the matter for conciliation and during this process it was noted that:
- There could not be an agreement to take annual leave “in perpetuity” in accordance with the roster cycle as this is not permitted by the NES, which states that paid annual leave may be taken for a period agreed between an employer and employee (section 88(1), FW Act).
- There should be a mechanism available for the employee to choose whether to have their annual leave accrue, or remain built-in as per the current roster. And employees should be able to switch between the two during the course of their employment
- The NES entitlement to annual leave is for days that are otherwise required to be worked, not on rostered days off.
- Therefore, the roster must be able to clearly show the shifts that are allocated to annual leave for the built-in arrangement, and those employees that choose to accrue their annual leave would be required to work these shifts. This can provide a challenge in maintaining suitable staffing levels against workplace demand.
- The company needs to keep clear records showing the annual leave balances and/or payments for these shifts
The issues described above can be mitigated through optimised roster design and staffing/skills allocation across the crews.
Designing compliant BIL rosters
Organisations that wish to include BIL arrangements need to develop roster patterns that allow for:
- Accrued and built-in leave arrangements to be jointly worked by the employees on each crew, and that the annual hours worked and leave utilised is equitable between each group
- Clear designation of the shifts allocated to the built-in leave each roster cycle
- Reduced impact of staff in each crew being unbalanced due to their preferences for leave usage
- Easy tracking of hours worked and annual leave balances
- A variation that provides the built-in leave employees with a flexible component of annual leave days that could be used outside of the allocated leave component for special events such as weddings, birthdays and other family obligations
