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Preparing your business for the National Day of Mourning public holiday

2 min read ·  

As announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Australia will observe a National Day of Mourning for Queen Elizabeth II, on Thursday the 22nd of September. This public holiday will be observed by businesses nationwide, and require a change to rostering and pay arrangements.

Typically, public holidays are known about well in advance – indeed, it has been a long time since a public holiday was announced at such short notice. This sudden change means businesses need to move quickly to ensure their arrangements are compliant and that employees are paid properly.

Staying Compliant

How you stay compliant will depend on your existing Workforce Management arrangements. If you’re using Tanda, a simple refresh of your roster will show the cost of the new public holiday arrangements. If you’re on another software provider, or running your roster through pen and paper, you will need to manually update your pay rates for the Holiday.

Importantly, public holidays change standard pay rates, overtime rates, penalty rates and a host of other conditions workers face. It’s important that you update each and every one of these rates to pay people correctly, and can prove that the correct pay rate was used. 

Adjusting your Roster

If you already have a roster the public holiday, we are recommending that you review your arrangement to ensure it’s as cost-effective as it can be. Recalculating labour costs will enable you to work out if your roster needs to be changed to match costs with demand.

Some businesses will find that the additional labour costs don’t justify sales on a public holiday, and move to reduce the staff they have rostered or close altogether. Ultimately, the way in which each business responds is a matter of their own discretion.

If you’re using Tanda, open your roster, click on your Roster Stats, and select the Refresh arrows next to any of the stats listed. You’ll then be able to adjust accordingly.

Victorian Long Weekend

The date of the long weekend coincides with a separate public holiday for the AFL Grand Final in Melbourne on Friday the 23rd of September. Businesses in Victoria should be aware of how this could impact trade, and adjust their supply and rostering schedules accordingly.

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