This article provides some context for the Australian Awards, and the Loaded concepts you'll use to simplify how to apply the relevant award(s) in your business. To learn how to set up a specific Australian Award, or what a specific Australian Award includes, please refer to the Pay Adjustment Packages section of our Support centre.

The Australian Awards are the legal framework setting out minimum pay rates and employment conditions for staff in various industries. The Awards aim to ensure businesses create a fair working environment for their employees. There is an Australian Award for each industry, or certain types of businesses within an industry.

Each Australian Award is a separate legal document with the specific pay rates and working conditions that apply to that industry. For the hospitality industry, the awards focus on levels of roles within the industry, day and time worked, overtime hours, breaks and applying different pay rates when staff members work in specific circumstances.

Several awards cover the broad scope of the hospitality industry, but we have found most of the Loaded community is either covered by the Restaurant Industry Award or the Hospitality (General) Industry Award.

The Restaurant Industry Award covers employers in the restaurant industry including:

The Hospitality (General) Industry Award covers employers in the hospitality industry. These are primarily businesses that provide accommodation, such as hotels, but also includes:

Other awards that come under the hospitality industry umbrella are the Registered and Licensed Clubs Award and Fast Food Industry Award. Please get in touch with us if the Award that applies to your business isn't currently available in Loaded.

We understand that as a hospitality business, you want to provide an incredible experience for your customers and look after your team, but you probably don't have a lot (or any!) spare time to sit down and figure out what pay rates and conditions apply to each staff member in your business. This is where Loaded comes in. We've taken this complex legal framework, simplified it, and designed a tool that is specific to the hospitality industry. Using Australian Awards in Loaded will:

An Award is represented in Loaded as a "Pay Adjustment Package". By enabling a Pay Adjustment Package in Loaded for your business, the pay adjustments that the Award specifies will be applied to your staff members. Each Pay Adjustment Package has a set of Rules (see below).

Learn how to set up Pay Adjustment Packages in Loaded.

A "Rule" in Loaded represents an Award condition that sets how much an employee should be paid in certain circumstances. This might be based on the number of hours worked, the day of the week of their shift, or the type of role they are in. Rules belong to a Pay Adjustment Package.

As an example, this is what the Restaurant Industry Award Pay Adjustment Package and the Rules it contains look like in Loaded:
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We know that each Award has a lengthy list of clauses and conditions, so it can be difficult to know which ones apply to your business and when. Loaded takes the conditions that most commonly apply to the hospitality industry and turns them into a simple set of Rules which automate pay adjustments to a staff member's hourly rate based on their shifts worked.

Click here learn how to edit or customise pay adjustments.

Pay Classifications set a base hourly pay rate for staff members, based on their level of competency for the role they're working in. This base hourly pay rate automatically applies to all hours worked in this role.

One Pay Classification is assigned to each role an employee works in.

For example, you might have an employee who has worked for several years in front of the house, and they've recently started working in the kitchen too. The Pay Classifications for this employee might look like:
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Each Pay Classification has a set of Variations that vary the staff member's hourly base rate. In the Australian Awards context, these Variations are based on the staff member's age because the awards specify different pay rates for staff members younger than 20 years old.

If you have your staff members' birth dates in Loaded, the Variations will be automatically applied*.

For example, below is the list of the Variations in the Restaurant Industry Award Level 1 Pay Classification. The Effective rate shows what the staff member's hourly rate will be after the variation is applied:
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The Australian Awards set out specific pay adjustments that apply when a staff member works on a public holiday. These pay adjustments are the same across all Awards that apply to the hospitality industry, so in Loaded you'll find Public Holidays Pay Adjustment Packages that you can enable for your business.

There is a Pay Adjustment Package for Australian national public holidays, and a separate Pay Adjustment Package for each state's public holidays. When you enable one of these Pay Adjustment packages, Loaded will automate pay adjustments for full-time and part-time staff who work on a public holiday.

Here is a snapshot of what the Australian National Public Holidays Pay Adjustment Package looks like:

Note that you will need to use your payroll system for leave accrual and any other pay adjustments related to public holidays, for example staff members who do not work on a public holiday, but that day is a normal day of work for them.

Loaded is designed to be used as a business tool to help you manage your hospitality business. We do not guarantee that by using Loaded you will be compliant with legislative requirements, including labour laws, wage requirements, and other regulatory obligations. We recommend that you seek professional advice for any concerns around legislative compliance.

The information provided in this article was accurate and up-to-date at the time of writing, but for the most recent changes and updates, please check the relevant piece(s) of legislation.