When the Federal Government’s much vaunted WorkChoices legislation arrived business both cheered and groaned. While it strengthened the individual contract regime with its Australian Workplace Agreements it also brought a range of onerous requirements and penalties if they were not followed.

Those laws have since been relaxed but one human resources specialist believes there is still the possibility for confusion.

However, the information required to be recorded can also provide employers with potentially productivity enhancing intelligence.

While the new rules would not be such an issue for major miners such as BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto – which have human resources departments and systems capable of adapting to them – it is a concern for the smaller miners, contractors and small businesses that supply services to the industry.

When they were first introduced the new WorkChoices rules required businesses to keep records of start, finish and total hours worked by employees.

Combined Small Business Associations CEO Oliver Moon said the recording requirements of the WorkChoices laws had been a concern for small business because of their complexity.

Those laws have now been relaxed. Instead of monitoring the hours of all staff earning less than $55,000 a year, employers are required to track only overtime hours and all hours worked by casuals or part-time staff whose hours vary.

Moon said the changes had so far seemed to solve some of the problems.

However, Drake International executive general manager Dominic Toledo said despite the amendments the laws were still confusing.

To make matters worse there are penalties for employers who get it wrong. An Office of Workplace Services inspector can demand to audit the pay records of any business at any time, either as a spot check or due to a complaint being investigated. Failure to keep time-keeping records can cost employers up to $A2750 imposed by a court.

Toledo said employers of workers who worked under AWAs or a federal or state award would be affected regardless of what their employees’ private contracts might stipulate.

“Employers are advised to know the type of employment agreement their employees work under and if it includes an overtime entitlement where the employer is required to pay penalty rates or loadings in order to assess which employees can and can’t claim overtime,” he said.

“The WorkChoices time-keeping requirement is designed to ensure employees receive their correct wages and conditions. On the surface the recording of overtime isn’t a particularly far-reaching obligation.

“For employees who have a specific overtime entitlement in their contract, as well as casual and part-time workers, this doesn’t represent a significant change as employers of these types of workers are already required to produce evidence of all the hours worked on their payslips.

“However, the time-keeping obligations may present some challenges from an enforcement and HR perspective.”

Toledo explained some of the difficulties this could pose.

For example, to be able to accurately calculate hours worked over 38 hours a week an employer needs to know an employee has actually completed their 38 hours. This means having to record the start and finish of their “ordinary” hours to determine what actually constitutes overtime.

Another problem is that employees may have negative feelings about record keeping such as clock watching and workplace surveillance.

Toledo said recent Drake research showed 57.5% of employers believed the record-keeping requirements would have a negative impact on their business. He said the majority of employers are worried about the effect on staff morale, company culture and workplace productivity.

For employees who often work in excess of 50 hours a week, workplace time-keeping may be perceived as something of an affront.

Toledo said employers should not be surprised to hear: “I always do my work properly and sometimes it means I do it from 7am to 7pm. So what if I work 50 hours a week? I perform well in my role so why do you require me to clock in and clock out?”

Staff concerns aside, there are some potential benefits to a business to be able to gain this sort of information – and some potential pitfalls.

Consider Toledo’s questions:

• How much does the organisation know about an employee’s workload?
• Is the business understaffed?
• Are staff regularly working excessive hours to get the job done?
• Could the company benefit from using this information to improve its productivity?