Let’s be honest - Fair Work isn’t the sexiest topic around. But if you’re employing people under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award, this one’s for you. I’m breaking down five things every allied health practice owner needs to know to stay compliant, sleep better at night, and build more trust with their teams. No jargon, no judgment - just some straight-talking support to help you get across the stuff that matters.

In this episode, I cover:

• Why the Fair Work Information Statement is essential—and easy to forget
• What the new “right to disconnect” means for small businesses from August
• Allowances you might be missing (hello, laundry and on-call time!)
• How to get pay levels and pay points right—and why “years of service” isn’t the measure
• The truth about professional development allowances (hint: not actually required!)

Takeaways and reflections:

Compliance can feel heavy, but not knowing this stuff can lead to bigger headaches down the track. The award isn’t just about pay - it’s about transparency, trust, and getting clear on your responsibilities as an employer. Whether you’ve missed a few steps or are just starting out, this is your nudge to revisit the basics and build solid foundations for your team.

You’ve got this - and you don’t have to do it alone.

If you’d love some extra support, inside The Connection membership we’ve got templates, policies, mentoring, and a community of practice owners figuring it out together. You’re always welcome to join us: https://theconnectionco.com.au

And if now’s not the time? That’s okay too. Keep tuning in—I’ll keep sharing what helps.

Foreign.

Welcome to my Good Allied Health Practice, the podcast for allied health business owners who are looking to bring smart and heart together on their journey.

On the podcast, I'll cover things about being vulnerable and brave, pivoting failures, good wins, things that work, things that don't work.

And I'll talk with other practice owners who are doing good in their journeys.

I'm Amy Geach, practice owner and mum.

And I'm here because I believe in you.

So let's go forward on this journey together.

Hello there, I'm Amy Geech and today I. I am digging into a topic that sounds a little dry, I get it.

But I promise you listen in because this has got some teeth.

This is for anybody who is employing staff members under the Fair Work Award and in particular the Health Professionals and Support Services Award.

That is what we are talking about today.

That clunky document that maybe you downloaded once skimmed through.

I've done it before with the best intentions and then it gets forgotten.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Or you think you'll come back and deal with it later.

But sometimes that moment doesn't come.

And I really want you, if you are an employer, to be doing the right things.

I don't want anything to come back and bite you later.

And like, I get it.

The Fair Work stuff can be really heavy and wordy and to be honest, I find some of it a little gray.

There are ideas that we should be doing these particular things, but it's not really specifically set out about how to make sure that that happens.

So I get it.

It can be gray, it can be wordy, it can be heavy to go through.

But what I want you to know is not being up to date with what is in the award for us, but also in Fair Work, it's not going to protect you.

It is absolutely not going to protect you.

And so I want to try and break down some of the key things that some, some people might not know about Fair Work and about our award.

But they're things that I think you really should know if you are employing people.

So if you are thinking of putting on somebody new for the first time, this is really relevant for you.

But if you are reviewing your employees processes and procedures and structure and all of that and you currently have existing staff members, this is also for you.

But right, I want this episode to give you a few things to check in on.

So let's go and get started.

The very first one is knowing that you must provide the Fair Work Information statement.

What does this mean?

Right, this is an easy one.

It's easy to do, but it's also easy to forget.

I see lots of people forget this or they don't even know they were meant to do it in the first place because sometimes the information about this is a little bit tricky to find.

Let me break it down for you.

When you hire somebody, whether they are full time, whether they are part time, whether they are casual, you are legally required to give them the Fair Work Information statement.

Now, this statement is a document.

It's a PDF document.

You can download it from the Fair Work website and if you just Google Fair Work Information Statement, it will come up for you.

Okay?

So make sure you get the correct year because it gets updated from year to year.

And in this document it outlines for our employees their basic rights at work and the minimum entitlements that apply to them, workplace protections that they have, and what they can do to get help if they think that there is an issue.

It also breaks down really clearly the difference between full time, part time and casual workers and what they are entitled to, particularly around leave accruals.

So I find it a really helpful document to give to my staff anyway because it gets them up on the lingo that I'm going to be using around my employment contracts and my flexibility agreements.

But also you're being really transparent with your new employees when they start with you.

And if you can set that really nice foundation that you're really showing, this stuff is important and you're going to follow it really well and make sure that they are paid fairly and they are treated fairly within your workplace.

I think that build some really great trust there when people are coming on board to work with you.

So when do you send it out?

In my clinics, we send it out with the contract and I think this is the best time to send it out.

So if I'm offering somebody a position, I will have conversations with them either over the phone or Zoom or email and we'll come to an arrangement about this is the offer.

And then once both parties are kind of happy with that offer, then, then I go to the contract and I prepare the contract for them and I email that out to them.

And that is where I also attach this Fair Work Information statement.

Because I want them to have that information when they are also reviewing the contract for me and it just forms part of their onboarding bundle, then it doesn't get missed.

I always know that that gets attached onto that particular email and I've got a template ready to go for that.

So.

So as I said earlier, you can grab the latest version from the Fair Work website and it does get updated each year, I've noticed, and it's getting a little bit longer each year as well.

But it's laid out really nicely, it's very easy to read and it's very user friendly.

So get on and grab a copy, have a read of it yourself if you haven't come across it before, if you do know about it, but perhaps you forgot to give it to a recent employee that started, then go back and represent that to them.

So that is the first thing that I feel some people can miss quite easily.

Don't stress if you have, just make it part of your onboarding going forward.

Okay.

Number two, the second thing is the right to disconnect.

This is an important change that is coming.

It is coming to small business in August.

So at the time of recording this, we are in July, at the end of July.

And this right to disconnect is coming up for small businesses in August, late August.

So you need to have a plan in place and it does affect us in the allied health industry.

So the right to disconnect information is being introduced as part of new Fair Work legislation.

And what it actually means is employees will have the legal right to reasonably refuse contact from you outside of their work hours.

So they won't need to be monitoring their emails or checking their text messages or logging in to do something outside of their work hours.

And they will have the right to refuse to do that.

Now, don't panic.

This doesn't mean your whole team will start ghosting you at, you know, one minute past 5:00pm when they knock off work.

But what it does mean is you need to talk to your team members about what is reasonable and then set some expectations around it together as a team.

So in my practices, I have started this conversation already.

I did this a couple of months ago with my team and we talked about what type of messages are truly urgent that they would want to know about and need to know about outside their work hours.

And so we came up with things like if another staff member is unwell, the rest of the team would like to know that so they're prepared for when they come into work.

So that's the type of thing that I'm okay with reaching out to them in the morning before their work hours even begin to let them know of that particular update.

And there are a couple of other things that came up for the team as well.

So it's good to have that conversation with your team and questions that I would hash out in the team together would be what kinds of messages are truly urgent, what might be okay to reply the next day and what's the tone and volume of after hours contact?

Like how much and how will that kind of be presented and how will you reach out?

Will it be on people's mobile devices or on email?

If I need to reach out to somebody after hours in my team, I tend to go with their mobile phone because they might not be on email.

And if I'm expecting them to check their email in case I send a message out to them, I don't want to set up this pattern where they might check their email to see if there's anything from me and then kind of get sucked into checking other emails while they are there.

So that's why I tend to just go with, with a short text message because it's just a one off thing and it's not drawing them in to go and look at other things after hours.

So once you've had this conversation with your team around, what is reasonable contact after hours, then you can write up a simple policy and if you are struggling with that, then reach out and let us.

If you are in my membership, then you will have our ready to go template that you can adapt to your practice and that will help you roll that out smoothly.

Okay?

The third thing to know about with Fair Work and our award in particular is that the Health Professionals and Support Services award includes allowances, not just pay rates.

And sometimes I have come across allied health practice owners who have missed this bit of information.

So in our award it doesn't just tell you the base hourly rates for your employees, but it includes allowances which are little add ons that apply depending on what your team are required to do or use.

So let's take uniforms as an example.

If you provide a uniform to your team members, then you need to pay them a laundry allowance under our award and this is to cover the cost of them washing the uniform that you have provided for them.

Now this is the situation in my practice we have a uniform shirt and because I am paying for that uniform and providing that uniform, then I need to make sure that I am paying all of my staff who have a uniform the laundry allowance.

Okay?

Now if on the other hand you have a uniform but your team are required to buy their own uniform from to where at work, you're not providing that complimentary to them, then you need to pay them the uniform allowance and that is a different allowance within the, within the award.

So depending on what might be happening in your practice and how you have things set up.

You need to make sure that you are looking at the allowances.

And there are also allowances for things like traveling and using their own car specifically, or being on call.

So, for example, if one of my staff members takes the mobile phone home over our Christmas break, in case any of the clients need to get in contact with us, maybe they might only answer it once or twice, but they are on call technically, in case it does ring and they need to get back to somebody.

So there's allowances to think about in those kind of situations now it's really easy to forget a lot of these.

Maybe you might set people up on their payroll initially, and then maybe a year or two later you've changed something in your practice and change the way that you're doing things.

And maybe you haven't gone back to check whether there's an allowance that applies to that.

So now is a really, really good time to have a look at the allowances.

They have just also been updated.

So if you've been on top of the allowances, I would encourage you to just go and double check the prices since the update in July.

But if you haven't been up to date with the allowances or you're not sure if you're covering all of them, now is a really good time to go back and check those and just make sure.

Okay.

The fourth thing that I really want you to know about with our award is that there are different pay levels and pay points, and they actually really matter how you select the right one for your employee.

And I really don't want you to just wing it or do what you think other people are doing in their practice.

Right.

This, and I see this happen all the time, people assign staff to pay levels based on how long they might have been with the practice, rather than the skills and responsibilities and tasks that they are being required to undertake now.

So here is how it works.

Under our award, each employee must be classified at a level, and that level must match the work they are actually doing.

And I have fallen prey to this before where, you know, you want to be a nice boss and you want to make sure you're giving people the recognition.

And I have had people come into my practice as employees and to try and negotiate with them a nice competitive wage so they feel like they're getting remunerated nicely.

I have gone across to the award, this was years ago, don't do it anymore.

But.

But gone across to the award and gone, oh, well, that kind of matches with that level, so they would come in as a level three.

That is the complete wrong way to do it.

Okay, please don't do that.

You need to go to the award and you need to read the different levels and make sure you put your team member on the right level for the responsibilities they will have.

So that might be things like are they mentoring or supervising other staff members and also some of the tasks that they will be doing and the way that they might work.

So, for example, if you have a multidisciplinary team, and maybe you've got predominantly OTs, but you might have one physiotherapist in your team because they're the only physiotherapist in that team, then they might be eligible to be paid at a higher level than if you were to have two or three physiotherapists in your practice.

So that is something to be mindful of as well when you're thinking about the levels.

So you've really got to read it and match where you find appropriate.

I will say here that some of the wording is gray and you're going to have to just make some decisions based on what you think is right.

Let me give you an example.

When a new grad comes in and they're working under supervision, or they might have some regular supervision in the diary and you're kind of keeping a check on them, that falls under level one, Right.

A new graduate comes in at level one.

If the same person then starts perhaps helping supervise others or doing some extra projects in your team, or they're working more autonomously, they're not.

They might have regular supervision in the diary, but they're not needing to be supervised anymore, or they're starting to make some more complex decisions, then you might decide that they meet the criteria for level two, or even sometimes, as they've been in your practice for a little while, moving up to level three.

So new grads starting at level one, and then as people stay with you and their work role changes and their responsibilities change and their ability to do their work independently changes, that's when you start to move them up a level.

So bumping someone up a level, you don't just do that because they've been with you for two years.

That is absolutely not required.

You would keep someone at a level until you feel like there is a change in those responsibilities or tasks or the way they are doing their work.

The other thing I wanted to mention here about the levels is different levels can also have what they call A pay point attached to it.

So, for example, level three has five pay points, level four has four pay points.

Each level has a different amount of pay points.

And what this means is if you employ somebody, they're going to be perhaps a leader in, in your team.

They're going to come in, they're going to lead people in the team, they're going to.

They're maybe a really experienced senior therapist with lots of amazing clinical skills.

They're going to work really independently, they're going to help roll out some projects in your team.

They're really sitting at that high level.

You might decide to put them at level three right now.

You might decide when they first start with you, they are level three pay point one.

Okay?

The next year you need to review and put them up to level three pay point two.

And then the following year pay point three and up you go until you get to pay point five.

And then someone can sit then at level three, pay point five for many years without needing to change their situation with the pay levels and pay points.

So the pay points are something that you need to review annually and acknowledge annually.

Now keep in mind, if somebody is working part time, then it will depend on how many hours they are working as to whether they go up in that yearly pay point progression.

Okay, if it's all sounding a bit confusing, don't stress, let me know because I'm happy to help people out with this.

We have mentoring packages where I can talk you through and guide you through it.

And for those of you in my membership, as you know, there is an amazing document that I put together which is how to choose the right level for your employees.

And it talks through exactly how to match people with the wording in the award and it talks about how to progress people up the page points as well.

So I hope that is making sense.

And if you're not sure, grab a cup of tea, sit down with the award and just have a read through it and start to look at what the award says compared to what your team is currently on and just see whether you have got it matched well at the moment.

Okay, my last tip for you around things to do with fair work.

And the award is number five, which is you are not required under the award to provide any PD allowance.

And this one gets a few surprised looks.

Under the health professionals Award, there is no requirement for you as a business owner to offer your staff a professional development allowance.

No requirement, no set amount of money that you need to pay, no set number of days that you need to pay Absolutely nothing is in there Now.

Do lots of people offer this?

Absolutely.

So this is a business decision that you can definitely make.

I.

Whether it's in the award or not doesn't actually matter here for you because it's not in the award.

You can make your own business decision around this.

So if you are offering, let's say, $1,000 for professional development and maybe two days of paid professional development leave, that is absolutely your choice and it's a generous one and it's wonderful.

But don't feel like you have to match what other clinics are doing and there is nothing in the award to say that you even have to offer anything at.

So you might have your own policy in your practice and I would absolutely recommend that saying how people can take your professional development leave or allowances if you provide it to them and you might have things in there that say it can start once they've passed their probation period or it doesn't accumulate every year and it.

And it resets itself every year.

Or the paid days of leave have to be for courses or workshops that that fall on their actual work days.

There's lots of different things that you can put into your PD policy and you can really tailor your PD support to your clinic's financial position, tie it to your team's growth goals, but also your own values as a leader and how you want to run your practice.

Whatever you choose here in this situation, write it down and give everyone really clear expectations.

So there you go.

Five things you might not have known about the Health Professionals Award.

Let's recap.

Number one, you must provide the Fair Work Information statement to new employees when they come on board.

Number two, the right to disconnect is coming in August.

Start the chat now with your team.

Number three is allowances matter, so don't miss the fine print of those in the award.

Number four is the pay levels in the award are about tasks and responsibilities and expenses.

Experience, not time served in your business since people have started with you.

And number five is that PD allowances aren't required, but you might choose to put them in anyway.

So if you're feeling a little sweaty after hearing all of that, do not stress.

Awareness is power and you don't have to do it alone.

Inside the Connection membership, we've got templates and tools and a beautiful community of practice owners who figure all this stuff out together with the help of myself.

So if you want to feel confident and compliant and a little less alone in this type of thing, you're always very welcome there and if it's not the right time for you right now for the membership, I absolutely understand that as well.

And we are here for you whenever you need.

I will keep sharing lots of wonderful tips here in the podcast.

So thank you for being here with me today.

Much love and I will talk to you soon.

Thank you for being here.

I am incredibly grateful.

If you have a friend that would find this helpful, please go ahead and share it with them too.

You can learn more about me and how to be part of my Allied Health Connection community over@theconnectionco.com.