Structure of a Wage Agreement

Availability

You can restrict a wage agreement to regions. For example, if your agreement applies to Australia, you can set the agreement to apply only in the states of Queensland and New South Wales (NSW).

Revisions

Revisions pertain to the various versions of the agreement that are active on different durations. Revisions help determine which rules and rates will be used for calculating costs on a specified duration. Only one revision of an agreement is active on any given date.

When applying changes to your wage agreement, you should create new revisions instead of directly changing the rates on the agreement. This way, you can track and report changes you made across different revisions.

When creating a revision, note that each one must have a start date. All previous revisions must include an end date, while the current revision does not. Revisions must not overlap. No gaps should also exist between revisions.

For more information, see Creating a Revision.

Conditions and Rules

A condition is a component consisting of one or more rules, which define when wage costs are applied. Conditions are used when creating rates for classifications, allowances, and penalties.

A condition will apply when at least one rule matches the shift. You can set the order of the conditions to allow WFM to check for conditions dependent on previous conditions before applying payment rates.

Conditions can be shared across different classifications within the same wage agreement

You can create and update conditions and rules according to your needs.

For more information, see Managing Conditions and Rules.

Classifications

Classifications contain the levels and pay rates in a wage agreement.

You assign conditions to each classification to establish when a different rate will apply. Each classification is assigned a level.

Classifications may be limited to locations, jobs, employment statuses, or their combinations.

For example, you may choose to create classifications according to different age ranges. You must provide the conditions that apply to each age range classified. For each condition, you would need to provide the applicable rates.

Following is an example of an hourly rates table for a classification named Level 1, which follows the six default conditions.

You can update the rates of classifications by creating a new revision of the agreement. For instance, if you need to increase the base rate of a specific classification at the end of a financial year, you can create a new revision of the agreement and provide the percentage increase for that classification.

For more information, see Creating a Classification.

Allowances

Allowances are fixed amounts that are applied to a shift that meets a specified condition. When creating an allowance, you must define the condition where it will apply, the amount to be awarded, and the eligible employment statuses.

You may also specify the jobs of employees who are awarded the allowance. When jobs are linked to an allowance, only the shifts with one of the jobs will be eligible to receive the payment. If you provide an allowance for all employees or shifts, such as a uniform or laundry allowance, you do not need to specify the jobs.

For example, you can create a condition that triggers when an employee’s work hours exceed 0, which covers employees who worked their shift. When setting up your allowance, you can select that condition then set the laundry allowance amount to fixed rate per shift, day or week.

For more information, see Setting up an Allowance.

Penalties

Penalties are fixed amounts that increase the rates applied to the parts of a shift that meet the penalty conditions. For example, a penalty rate that increases rates to $1.22 per hour for all hours after 6 pm results in an employee’s rate increasing by that amount for the part of her shift that went after 6 pm.

For more information, see Setting up a Penalty.

Minimum Hours

Minimum hours establish the required minimum number of hours that an employee should be assigned during their shift. You can set up different minimum hours for different types of employment statuses.

When an employee is assigned a shift that is shorter than the configured minimum hours, WFM will top up or add the missing hours to their shift payment.

For more information, see Setting up Minimum Hours.