Recently I found myself throwing darts for the first time in a while. Surprisingly on target, as it turns out. But, it got me thinking about a frustration I hear from Boards, Business Owners and Managers constantly: why is it so hard to hit the bullseye when it comes to classifying roles under Modern Awards?
The target exists. The rulebook exists. And yet businesses across Australia, from small operators to some of our largest employers, consistently miss the mark. Not because they’re not trying, but because the system makes it genuinely difficult.
The Square Peg Problem
Modern Awards were largely written and/or substantially updated, some time ago. The roles they describe don’t always map neatly onto the way work actually looks today.
Scheduling Coordinator. Team Experience Lead. Production Captain. None of these titles appear in any Award. So businesses do what makes sense: they find the closest fit, make a judgement call and cross their fingers and toes.
The problem is that two businesses making the same call in good faith can land in very different places. And both can be wrong. That’s not a character flaw. It’s a design flaw in a system that hasn’t kept pace with the way work has evolved and doesn’t have good resources to support businesses to get it right.
Our friends at Worksauce are trying to solve the Square Peg Problem and have released the ‘Award Finder’. You can try it out here.
Language Doesn’t Help
Classification definitions are full of terms like “general supervision,” “complex tasks” and “exercise discretion.” These sound precise but they’re not.
What one Manager considers complex work, another considers entry-level. What one business calls limited direction, another would describe as close supervision. The result is that two people doing identical jobs, in different businesses, can end up on different pay rates, with both Employers genuinely believing they’ve got it right and probably able to justify their position.
Subjectivity is baked into the system. Which means consistency has to come from the business, not the Award itself.
Overlapping Awards Make It Worse
For some roles, more than one award could plausibly apply. Hospitality, Fast Food and Retail overlap in some contexts. Manufacturing and Logistics can too. Choosing the wrong award entirely is a different problem to misclassifying within the right one, but the exposure is the same and just as bad.
So Where Is The Bullseye?
Here’s the thing most businesses miss. Award classification is not about job titles. It’s not about what the role has always been paid, or what the person earned somewhere else (market relativity).
It’s about the actual nature of the work: autonomy, responsibility, complexity and the level of supervision required.
If you’re looking at an Award (once you’re sure of the Coverage) and trying to work out where a role sits, start with the Classification Definitions schedule. It’s usually at the back of the document, Schedule A or AA and it is the actual rulebook. Not the job title. Not the pay rate you’ve always used. The definitions that are listed.
That’s where the dart should land. Everything else is aim.
Why This Matters More Than Ever
Getting classification wrong has always been a risk. Since 1 January 2025, it’s a much more serious one. Intentional underpayment (often referred to as wage theft) is now a criminal offence in Australia, with penalties of up to $8.25 million for companies and up to 10 years imprisonment for an individual. And as the FWO v Woolworths and Coles case showed, even businesses with sophisticated payroll teams and significant compliance infrastructure can get this wrong at scale.
The uncomfortable truth is that most businesses don’t know with certainty whether their classifications are right. They know what they’ve always paid. That’s not the same thing and it’s never too late or a bad idea to do a review.
The Solution: Role & Rate Table
This is where we come in. One of the core services we provide at Zest and a lot of our recent work effort is building role and rate tables with businesses: a clear, structured document that maps every role in the business against the correct award, the correct classification level and the correct minimum pay rate - either annualised salary or hourly rate.
It sounds straightforward but in practice it requires someone to read the award carefully, understand the classification definitions, assess the real nature of each role and make a defensible decision about where it sits. That’s the work we do.
Done well, a role and rate table gives you confidence you are meeting your legal obligations. It creates consistency across the business so that similar roles are treated the same way. It makes rem reviews easier because you have a clear, documented baseline to work from. And it gives you something to point to if a classification decision is ever questioned by an Employee, a Union or a Regulator.
For businesses that have grown quickly, taken on new sites or functions, or simply never formally audited their classifications, this exercise almost always surfaces something worth fixing. The Woolworths case confirmed that even the most large or sophisticated businesses can have something to find.
Better to find it yourself, with someone who knows where to look.
Stop Guessing. Start Planning.
If you’re not certain your roles are classified correctly, that uncertainty is worth resolving now. The system is hard. The consequences of getting it wrong are serious. And the businesses that get ahead of it are the ones that won’t be reading about themselves as a headline later.
At Zest People Solutions, building role and rate tables is one of the practical, hands-on services we provide to businesses navigating award compliance. Get in touch with the team to find out what that looks like for your business.