Reducing reliance on casuals with Tanda
When we speak to our customers at Tanda, one of the biggest issues we find they have is high labour costs. In Australia, labour is traditionally one of the biggest cost bases for businesses.
When we dig deeper into these issues, we often find that businesses are employing large numbers of casual workers, to maximise their roster flexibility. Many businesses believe that switching staff from casual to part-time would lose that flexibility to change employee hours.
While there are some restrictions that do apply, Tanda’s part-time shift variation feature allows you to comply with the law and lower your costs, by lowering the percentage of casual workers you have.
Casuals versus Part-Time Staff
The biggest difference between casuals and part-time staff is that casuals aren’t guaranteed set hours each week, whereas part-time staff are. As you’ll probably know, the trade-off for the flexibility is that casuals get paid a 25% loading.
This means that businesses that can switch staff to part-time, while still designing the roster they need, can save a large amount of money on labour.
As a rough example, if a Fast Food franchise that had 80% of its employees as casual reduced that number to 20%, it would result in a major cost saving. 60% of employees would no longer earn the extra 25% casual loading labour costs by 15%.
Once you offset for new entitlements like annual leave, and depending on how much personal leave your staff take, we regularly find customers save between 6-12% on their overall labour bill.
So, how can you reduce the percentage of casuals you have, keep a roster that delivers quality service, and stay compliant? There are several factors you need to consider.
Regular hours of work
The biggest obstacle to shifting casuals to part-time employees is the right to a regular pattern of work. However, this pattern can be changed by agreement between the employer and the employee. Tanda’s shift acceptance feature allows employees to accept these variations.
So, you can use Tanda to change a part-time employee’s hours up to suit the roster. They can accept these changes digitally, or when they clock into work.
When an employee is rostered for a shift that is different to their regular hours of work in Tanda, they will be asked on their own app to accept or decline the temporary variation to their regular pattern of work. This gives you the additional flexibility you need to use part-time workers.
Minimum weekly shift hours
Most Awards have a guaranteed minimum number of shift hours. Some Awards specify this number – for example, the Hospitality Award specifies that employees will receive a minimum of 8 hours a week. Other Awards specify that the minimum should be struck by mutual agreement between the employer and employee.
When designing your roster, you can’t give employees less than this minimum number if they’re part-time.
Harry Spicer
Harry joined Tanda as Head of Content after a career as a senior journalist with radio stations 2GB, 3AW and 4BC. He has a strong interest in workplace and industrial relations issues.
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