This help guide will explain how to configure Higher Duties for both individuals and teams within your Managed Award in Tanda.
What Will This Article Cover?
What are Higher Duties?
Tanda Modern Award Templates can facilitate payments for higher duties. Higher duties are paid when an employee performs the duties of a classification higher than their ordinary classification.
Fair Work Australia provides the following definition of higher duties:
An employee might do the work of a higher-level employee while that employee is on leave. This is also known as working at ‘higher duties’.
If an employee is temporarily performing higher duties, they may be:
performing tasks they wouldn’t normally perform
taking on extra responsibility.
When this happens, the employee may be entitled to a higher award pay rate for the time they work at the higher level.
Under some awards, an employee has to work at the higher classification for a minimum period before being entitled to payment at the higher pay rate.
For example, junior employees under the Hospitality, Restaurant or Registered Clubs Awards must be paid at adult rates when performing liquor service duties.
How to Configure Higher Duties in Tanda [Individuals]
This section discusses configuring higher duties for individuals in Tanda. The following section provides information on configuring higher duties for entire teams.
To configure Higher Duties on a Tanda Modern Award Template, navigate to Time & Attendance > Compliance > Award Template. Then, click Manage next to the applicable Template:
Then, navigate to Higher Duties and click Edit:
To start, click the blue + Add Higher Duties Jump button:
This will then allow you to select a 'From Level' and a 'To Level' for each higher duties jump (e.g. From Level 1, To Level 2). A “jump” refers to a change from one level of the Award to another. For example:
Each additional jump will automatically create Award Rules that calculate the difference between the respective levels. You should add a jump for each possible combination of levels in your business. Once you have configured each required jump, click Save.
Please note: If using Tanda Payroll, tick the "Apply higher duties via base hourly rates rather than multipliers" option.
How to Configure Higher Duties for Teams
To configure Higher Duties for entire teams in Tanda, navigate to the Higher Duties section of your Award, as described above.
Please note that this functionality is only available for Tanda Payroll customers (or those who use a payroll system that can accept more than one base rate per employee per pay cycle).
Next, click + Add Higher Duties Jump. Follow the same process outlined above and select the 'From Level and 'To Level'. Then, select the team to which this jump will apply from the 'Team Names' dropdown menu and click save.
Please note that team names will only be applied if the base hourly rates checkbox ('Apply higher duties via base hourly rates rather than multipliers') is enabled.
This functionality is especially useful in further automating junior-to-adult jumps when serving alcohol for Hospitality templates such as HIGA and RIA. See the final section of this guide for more details.
IMPORTANT: You should not configure one Team Name against multiple level jumps. For example, the team name 'Floor' should not be configured against both a Level 1 to Level 2 jump and a Level 1 to Level 3 jump. 'Floor' can only be used to jump up to one specific level.
Employee Profile Set Up for Higher Duties
Tanda will automatically add a tag to each employee's profile that matches the higher duties jumps you have created. You can check this by navigating to Workforce > Staff > click on an employee's profile > Pay Conditions.
In the below example, you can see that the Level 2 Higher Duties allowance has auto-populated on the profile of an employee generally classified as Level 1 after the corresponding higher duties jump was configured:
Applying Higher Duties on Timesheets
First, navigate to Settings > All Settings > Timesheets > View all timesheet settings > Show Advanced Settings and tick Show an extra dropdown to adjust shift cost (Award tag). Click Update Settings to confirm your changes.
This will allow you to add higher duties tags to an applicable employee's Timesheet.
When approving timesheets, tag the applicable higher-duty shift with the appropriate level tag when the employee has worked higher duties. To do this, click Select Tag in the timesheet:
From the drop-down menu, select the applicable higher duties shift tag (remembering that these tags must first apply on the staff member's profile via Pay Conditions to appear here):
Once the tag has been applied, you will see that the higher rate now applies for the hours worked in the team with the higher duties shift tag:
Paying Juniors at Adult Rates
Certain Modern Awards require junior employees to be paid at adult rates when they perform duties serving liquor.
These modern awards are the Hospitality Industry (General) Award 2020, the Restaurant Industry Award 2020 and the Registered and Licensed Clubs Award 2020.
In Tanda, these three modern awards are managed as Award Templates. These three Award Templates contain functionality to facilitate the jump from junior rates to the equivalent adult rates.
For information on how to utilise this functionality, please see our award-specific help guides:
Important Information for Exporting Higher Duties Rates
If you use a Payroll system that doesn't have a Live integration with Tanda, such as MYOB Desktop, you will need to create new Payroll Categories for the Higher Duties you have created in Tanda.
You can do this in the same way you originally created new Payroll Categories in MYOB to match Tanda, by going to Payroll > Payroll Manager > Manage Award and clicking on Configuration Report.
In this report, you will find the new higher duties Payroll Categories, which you can copy and paste as new ones in MYOB.
If you use MYOB Live or Xero, Tanda will automatically create new Pay Items for these jumps.