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Workplace relations professionals

Do you work in a role where you advise on workplace relations matters?

We have information and resources that can help you support and educate those you advise.

How we can help

We (the Fair Work Ombudsman) are the national workplace relations regulator.

We help employers, employees and workplace relations professionals understand and apply workplace laws by providing free information, education and advice on pay rates and workplace rights and obligations. We also enforce compliance with the Fair Work Act, awards and enterprise agreements.

Learn more at Our role and purpose.

Workplace laws

We provide up-to-date and timely information about changes to workplace laws as they happen. This includes updates about:

legislation changes, such as the recent Closing Loopholes changes
the Annual Wage Review
award changes.

The best way to stay up to date with workplace law changes is to subscribe to our email updates. We’ll send you email alerts when changes occur in your industry and when we update our information and resources.

Tools and resources

We offer a variety of online tools and resources designed to support workplace relations and learning.

On this page, we have information and examples about how to use some of our resources, including our:

Library
Calculators
Templates
Find my award tool.

We also have tools and resources on other pages, including:

Best practice guides - guidance on dealing with a range of workplace issues
Online learning centre - free courses covering skills and strategies to help you and your clients at work
Fact sheets – summaries of minimum rights, responsibilities and entitlements.

Library

Our Library has an extensive collection of articles that provide advice on common and specific issues.

Use the Library’s search function or browse the lists of new and popular articles to find the information you need.

Explore our Library.

Example: Finding a Library article

Liz is a bookkeeper for small retail businesses. One of her clients runs a boutique toy store and wants to hire a casual employee to help on weekends.

Liz knows her client is covered by the Retail Award and that weekend penalty rates can sometimes be complicated to understand and apply.

Liz searches our Library and finds the Casual penalty rates in the Retail Award article. She uses this article to prepare her advice for her client.

Calculators

We have a selection of online calculators to help with pay and conditions:

Pay Calculator – provides base pay rates, allowances and penalty rates, including overtime. This is the tool used by our Infoline advisers when you call us
Shift Calculator – explains total shift payments based on specific employee rates of pay
Leave Calculator – helps with finding annual leave and sick/carer’s leave balances and annual leave loading payments
Notice and Redundancy Calculator – explains entitlements to be paid when ending employment.

Example: Finding pay rates

Jack runs payroll for a café. He needs to find the total staff cost for a public holiday.

Jack uses our Pay Calculator to check the employees’ base pay rates and penalty rates under the Restaurant Award.

Jack then uses the Shift Calculator to confirm the total shift payments.

Templates

We have interactive and downloadable templates to help you manage a wide range of workplace obligations. These include:

Access these resources and more on our Templates page.

Example: Using templates

Nikita has a client who wants to manage their employee’s performance.

Nikita provides advice about how to manage performance appropriately. She includes some of our templates, including a checklist of steps and a performance improvement plan.

Find my award

Finding the correct award is often the first step when considering pay and conditions for employees.

If you don’t know which award applies, use our Find my award tool.

You can also browse our List of awards.

Example: Finding awards

Rose is a bookkeeper. She has engaged an electrician as a client, who has just employed an apprentice for the first time.

Rose isn’t familiar with the pay and conditions in the electrical industry. She starts by using our Find my award tool. She finds the Electrical Award and reads the award to confirm it applies.

Rose is now able to correctly calculate the pay and conditions for the apprentice.

Contacting us

If you have a workplace question, consider if it can be answered by information on our website, including from the Tools and resources outlined on this page.

If you still need help, you can contact us.

Your small business clients can also consider contacting the Employer Advisory Service.

Employer Advisory Service

Our Employer Advisory Service (EAS) gives small business employers (14 or fewer employees) free and tailored written advice to help make sure they’re meeting their obligations under the Fair Work Act. The EAS can help with questions about:

pay and conditions under awards and enterprise agreements
hiring employees
leave arrangements, meal breaks, allowances or other entitlements.

Learn more on our Employer Advisory Service page.

Tip: Workplace professionals contacting us

Our Advisers often speak to workplace professionals calling about a variety of topics. To help with your enquiry, it’s important to know that:

we need specific details, rather than general or hypothetical information, to provide correct and tailored advice
most enquiries need to be handled over the phone
our My account service is best suited for confirming general information, as well as for sending you links to tools and resources
we can’t provide advice on topics outside of our scope of advice. Read more about What we can’t help with.

Compliance and enforcement

We’re responsible for promoting compliance with Australian workplace laws. We also help resolve workplace issues.

If we decide that a request for assistance involves very serious issues or is in the public interest, we may choose to investigate.

If we find that a workplace law has been broken, we may take further action.

Learn more about what we do to help with workplace issues at Compliance and enforcement.

Legal and other help

We can assist with workplace issues about pay and conditions under the Fair Work Act.

For other topics, there are organisations and government agencies that can help you, including:

Legal help – if you need legal advice
Other government sites – for help with tax, security of payment and workplace health and safety
Health and wellbeing support options – for when you need support to look after your mental health and wellbeing.

For more information, visit our Other workplace relations help page.