Setting delayed meal break rules, and fallback break start times to your award
Maintaining compliance with laws and regulations is essential for any business. foundU provides an automated pay rules feature that simplifies the process.
In this article, we will discuss how to set up a fallback break setting. This will enable a start time to be applied in payroll when shifts are approved without a specified break start time.
Furthermore, we will explain how to apply delayed meal break rules to positions in your Award. These rules apply when employees work for more than a specified number of hours during a shift without an approved break.
This ensures that your employees are fairly compensated and that you comply with all relevant laws and regulations.
In this article, we will cover:
- Considerations before you start
- Fallback break settings in your Award
- How to apply a rule for a delayed meal break position
If you're looking to automatically apply breaks when rostering, check out our article on Roster default break rules.
Before you begin setting up break rules in your platform, it is crucial to carefully review Fair Work for your specific Award's rulings relating to breaks.
This step is important as these break rulings may not be specific to your Award, and it is essential to have a clear understanding of the applicable rules and regulations before implementing any changes to your platform.
Other features to assist with managing breaks
In the upcoming sections, we will explain how to add break settings to your Awards. The rules will apply mainly to employees who do not have an approved break within the set time.
However, foundU provides additional features which can help to manage break times and durations when rostering and approving shifts. Utilising these features may impact if/when break pay rules will trigger.
Additional features include:
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Break rules (Work defaults)
- Is a rostering tool that allows the automatic creation of breaks on rostered shifts. These rules will automatically add break start times and durations to shifts.
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Clock Settings
- "Ignore clocked break duration in favour of the original rostered break duration" setting.
- When enabled, this setting uses the rostered break start time and duration as the default approved break time and duration for approved shifts.
- When this setting is not enabled, the shift's clocked time and duration will be used as the default approved break time and duration for approved shifts.
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Editing Approve Shifts
- Managers can make changes to break times and durations by editing in Approve shifts.
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Break rules (Work defaults)
Please note: The following sections will explain how break settings are applied when the above-mentioned features are not taken into account.
When creating or reviewing an Award on your platform, it is important to carefully review the settings of each Award to ensure they are applied according to your interpretation of the Award.
When it comes to breaks, the setting we are discussing determines a fallback start time for a break. The fallback time is used specifically for when a shift is approved for a break but no start time is specified; the fallback time is then applied to payroll.
The options for this setting are to apply the break:
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- At the start of the shift
- Four hours after the start of the shift
- At the end of the shift
To learn about the other important Award Settings, please refer to our article for more information.
SCENARIO
We will use this example to demonstrate how the Award setting determines when to apply a break to a shift.
Ila is an employee of Caffeine Express:
- She has a shift from 12 pm - 8 pm and did not clock in for her break.
- Her shift was approved with a break of 30 minutes. However, a break start time was not specified.
In the relevant Award, the fallback break start time is set to be four hours after the start of the shift.
For Ila, this means her break start time will be applied at 4 pm, as this is four hours after the start of her shift.
Hot tip: The Award test feature can be used to confirm when a break has been applied to a shift in payroll, as shown below for Ila's example.
To edit the fallback break setting in an Award:
- Navigate to the main menu > Awards & Agreements and select the relevant Award to open the dropdown menu.
- Select Settings.
- In the Award Settings page, scroll down to the setting 'At what point in the shift should an unpaid break be applied?' and select the appropriate option:
- 4 hours after start time
- Shift Start
- Shift End
- From the floating menu, select Save.
Once saved, you may want to reprocess any relevant draft payslips to ensure the updates pull through.
When setting up positions in an Award, one of the important automations for breaks is to apply rulings for delayed meal breaks.
This setting pays employees a different rate when they have not taken a break within a specific threshold. The increased rate will apply until the employee has a break or finishes their shift.
SCENARIO
We will use the following example to demonstrate how delayed meal break settings can trigger.
IIla is an employee of Caffeine Express:
- She has a shift from 12 pm - 8 pm.
- Her manager approved her break which started at 6:30 pm.
In the relevant Award, the delayed meal break is triggered after 5 hours without a break. Once triggered, employees receive a higher Delayed Meal Break rate.
Ila will receive the higher Delayed Meal Break rate from 5 pm until 6:30 pm. This is because her shift started five hours prior to 5 pm, and her break was approved from 6:30 pm.
Hot tip: The Award test feature can be used to confirm when a break has been applied to a shift in payroll, as shown below for Ila's example.
Please note: During delayed meal breaks, the employee's regular rate is replaced with a higher rate for that period. Using Ila's example, her Ordinary Rate was replaced with a Delayed Meal Break rate.
To set a delayed meal break to a position:
Hot tip: Before applying a delayed meal break to a position, please make sure to add the appropriate rate to your Award's Rate Labels, as they may differ from your existing rates.
- Navigate to the main menu > Awards & Agreements and select the relevant Award to open the dropdown menu.
- Select Positions and Pay Rules.
- Select Edit on the relevant position.
- On the left-hand side navigate to the Unpaid breaks section and apply the following:
- Occurs within - This sets the maximum hours before the delayed break will trigger.
- Otherwise pay - Sets the pay rate for the delayed break.
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Pay label (optional) - Applies a custom label to payslips for delayed meal break hours. Can be useful when the same rate is used for multiple award rules.
- Repeat for Saturday, Sunday, and Public Holidays (if applicable).
- Select Save.
- Select Apply to apply for all relevant positions.