HR, safety and compliance for the manufacturing industry

The Manufacturing Award contains more than a dozen individual allowances, and several consistently generate underpayment exposure.

Tool allowances are trade specific. Applying a single generic rate across all trades is one of the most common triggers for Fair Work Ombudsman scrutiny. Leading hand allowances are triggered by the number of workers someone actually supervises, not their job title. Meal allowances apply when an employee is required to work overtime without a meal being provided.

Allowances paid ‘for all purposes’ under the Award must be included in the ordinary hourly rate when calculating penalty rates and leave loading. Treating these as add-ons rather than base components of the ordinary rate systematically understates every penalty rate calculation for affected employees.

Our HR advisors review your pay arrangements against the Award, identify the exposure and help you fix it before it becomes a Fair Work matter. The Advice Line is available 24/7 with no call limits.

From 1 January 2025, intentional underpayment of wages, allowances, superannuation and leave entitlements is a federal criminal offence under section 327A of the Fair Work Act 2009. Honest mistakes don’t attract criminal liability, but awareness without remediation does.

An employer who becomes aware of a payroll error and continues paying at the same incorrect rate can be found to have intentionally underpaid from the point they became aware. The criminal penalties are significant: for corporate employers, the greater of three times the underpayment amount or the relevant penalty unit amount. Individual officers and directors found knowingly involved face up to 10 years’ imprisonment.

The safest position is a proactive one. Review your Award interpretation, run a payroll audit and fix any underpayments before they surface in an investigation. A Citation Group HR Compliance Audit is the fastest way to understand what you’re carrying.

Under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, manufacturing employers carry a primary duty of care to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health and safety of everyone in your workplace.

For manufacturers, this includes maintaining plant and equipment in safe operating condition; providing safe systems of work; ensuring the safe use, handling and storage of hazardous chemicals; managing manual tasks, noise, working at heights and confined spaces; providing appropriate training and supervision; and consulting with workers on WHS matters.

High-risk work, such as forklift operation, crane operation and pressure equipment operation, requires licenced operators. As an officer of the business, your due diligence obligation is personal and can’t be passed to a safety officer. Industrial manslaughter provisions now apply across all Australian states and territories.

Manufacturing payroll requires more than processing hours. It needs to apply shift penalties, overtime cascading, allowances and loadings accurately across multiple shift types, different classification levels and potentially multiple enterprise agreements.

foundU handles exactly that. The platform automates Manufacturing Award interpretation, including the interaction between day type, shift type and hours worked. Payroll processes directly from approved digital timesheets, removing the manual handoff where errors typically accumulate. Multi-site configuration supports central or site-level pay rules, and STP2 reporting is built in.

Yes, and for many sectors, it’s no longer a differentiator. It’s a condition of entry.

ISO 9001 manufacturing certification shows procurement teams that your quality management system is structured, documented and independently verified. In automotive, defence, aerospace, food and pharmaceutical supply chains, it’s routinely required for supplier qualification. Without it, you don’t get to bid.

ISO 45001 carries real weight in tenders where WHS performance is scored, which is increasingly common in manufacturing contracts. It also gives you a recognised framework for hazard identification and risk management that aligns with your WHS Act obligations.

First-time certification typically takes three to six months, so if there’s a tender on the horizon, the time to start is now.