Marketing ER Strategies 
ER Strategies has recently launched its new referral program, designed to benefit many of our awesome clients who have been spreading the word about our services for many years. If you refer someone who signs up for one of our WorkShield packages or otherwise spends a minimum of $2,500, you will receive a $150 voucher as a reward.
As part of the 4 yearly review of modern awards, the Fair Work Commission (FWC) has made a decision concerning the annualised salary arrangements contained in the Restaurant Industry Award 2020 and the Hospitability Industry (General) Award 2020.
ER Strategies has operated since 1999 and in that time, we have had clients approach us with many different situations. These situations have led us to develop a number of strategies through understanding what works and what doesn’t. One such strategy that we have used over and over again is the ‘Champion Method’. Designed by ER Strategies’ Director, the strategy increases the employee’s input in a redundancy process to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome between the employee and employer.
Despite consistent warnings in the form of very public underpayment scandals, large businesses are still being found to be underpaying their employees in a variety of ways.
On 8 August 2022, the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) has announced that a record $532 million in unpaid wages and entitlements was recovered for more than 384,000 workers in 2021-22. The recovered amount is more than three times more than the record 2020-21 amount of $148 million and has benefited five times more workers within Australia.
In our recent article, we explained how the coverage under the Miscellaneous Award has been expanded by the Fair Work Commission (FWC). This has meant that ER Strategies is fielding a lot of questions from clients about this change and how award coverage works.
As part of the finalisation of the very long-running Fair Work Commission 4 Yearly Review of Modern Awards, some additional drafting changes to the Fast Food Industry Award have now been finalised.
The act of whistleblowing involves identifying and calling out misconduct and harm to consumers and the public. Whistleblowers are mainly covered by the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) (Corporations Act) which provides them legal rights and protections, although other legislation can also protect them.
A payroll audit is a review of what employees were paid and the overall compliance throughout the payroll audit process. Under our audit service, an independent calculation is performed of what employees should have been paid and this is then compared to what they were actually paid to identify any under-, or over-payments. Payroll processes, including the record keeping processes, are also checked, ensuring that the whole system is reviewed for any non-compliance.
So-called “Wage Theft”, and wage underpayments in general, have emerged as an issue in Australia over the last 6 years or so. Put simply, Wage Theft is when an employer underpays an employee either intentionally, or with high levels of negligence or recklessness towards their payroll compliance obligations. The level of ‘intent’ is where Wage Theft differs from underpayments in general. 2019 analysis from PwC estimated that underpayments to employees could be as high as $1.35 billion per year. Whilst only an estimate and not focusing on Wage Theft specifically, it can be assumed that despite only emerging as an issue relatively recently, Wage Theft has been occurring long before underpayments were discovered and publicised.
