A COVID-19 Update for Australian Customers
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Partnering with Humanforce will empower you to react quickly to changing government advice and promptly respond to the changing market conditions.
Below are the updates across aged care, construction and retail industries. We have included solutions that can help your business stay on top of the changes and provide the support your employees require.
Aged Care
From the 17th of September, residential aged care workers in Australia are required to have at minimum, their first COVID-19 vaccination dose.
Residential aged care workers are eligible for Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations made available at:
- Mass vaccination clinics
- Roving in-reach clinics
- Dedicated hubs
- Primary care clinics
- On-site providers
- GP clinics
Through Commonwealth government funding, residential aged care workers will receive payment from their employers to support them through the vaccination process.
A fee of $80 will be provided:
- Per staff member
- Per dose
- For receiving vaccinations off-site
In the instance a staff member is feeling unwell after the vaccination, they are entitled to paid leave. For all details use click here.
Construction, Trades and Retail
Under the latest COVID-19 lockdown restrictions, all construction at commercial sites and residential premises are to pause across Greater Sydney including the Central Coast, Blue Mountains, Wollongong and Shellharbour. Only works that are urgently required are permitted. Works involving cleaning, maintenance, alterations, additions, and other trades are also paused.
Unless providing essential products and services, most retail stores are currently closed to the public. Businesses providing home delivery or “click and collect” services can remain open.
NSW LGA Restrictions
NSW residents of the Fairfield, Liverpool and Canterbury-Bankstown LGA’s are not able to leave the local government area that they live in to go to work, unless they are an authorised worker.
Canterbury-Bankstown aged care and health worker COVID-19 testing
From the beginning of 23 July, if you live in or are staying in the Canterbury-Bankstown local government area but you work outside this area, you must have a COVID-19 test once every 72 hours (3 days) in order to be allowed to go to work as an aged care or health worker.
Employees Working from Home
Employees may attend their workplace if the business is allowed to be open and the employee cannot reasonably work from home.
However, if your employees reside in the above mentioned LGA areas and are unable to attend work premises or work from home, consider allowing them access accrued paid leave such as annual or long service leave.
Alternatively, apply your normal leave without pay policy as these employees may be entitled to Government Support.
Partnering with Humanforce
With all the sudden changes across Australia, Humanforce can help you provide your employees with the support they need.
Workforce Analytics
The detailed reporting functionality in Workforce Analytics will provide deep and powerful insights into your business in changing times.
- Cost Management to improve planning and reduce costs
- Inbuilt reporting to quickly assess workforce management insights
- Custom dashboard to focus specific work trends and identify issues faster
Data drives knowledge. Workforce Analytics gives you easy access to information to make the right decisions quickly.
Vaccine & LGA Management
Employee immunisations can all be managed easily through Humanforce. The simple steps include:
- Create a Qualification titled “Immunisation Status Verified”
- Upload a copy of proof of documents to staff member’s profiles
- Make “Immunisation” a mandatory qualification for all relevant locations, departments and roles
The Qualification functionality helps you:
- Quickly identify staff who have yet to be vaccinated or have not supplied documentation.
- Avoid rostering staff who have not yet been vaccinated.
- Allow reception staff to view status of individual staff members but restrict access to stored confidential data, especially in the case of an exemption.
- Gather and retain vaccination and location information during the onboarding process
- Scale up your workforce when your business returns to normal operations
LGA residential information can be similarly managed through qualifications.
For any help around qualifications please click here.
Communication
Business leaders not only need to understand the ongoing changes, but to connect and engage with their teams. It’s important to analyse the impact, act accordingly while effectively communicating with staff members throughout the process.
To ensure your employees are following the policies and processes, Humanforce can help improve communication channels where you can:
- Configure kiosk screensavers
- Send custom messages (localisation) and reminders as well as checking in on well being
- Use noticeboard functionality, reminding staff of proper practice.
Managing Pandemic Leave
On the 29th of July, 2020, the Fair Work Commission announced the requirement to provide Paid Pandemic Leave for Aged Care Award, Nurses Award, and Health Professionals Award.
Employees who take paid pandemic leave need to have already been tested for COVID-19 or agree to be tested as soon as possible for every occasion of leave. Otherwise they are not entitled to take leave.
The leave entitlement is based on the following:
- Immediately available in full to full-time, part
- time, and (regular and systematic) employees.
- It does not accrue - Every time meeting criteria, employee can take up to 2 weeks’ paid pandemic leave
- Fulltime employees taking pandemic leave must be paid base pay rate for ordinary hours of work, as per normal sick leave
- Part-time employees who take paid pandemic leave are paid the higher of either:
- their agreed ordinary hours of work
- an average of their weekly ordinary hours of work for the previous 6 weeks.
Casual employees who take paid pandemic leave are paid an amount based on an average of their weekly pay over the previous 6 weeks.
For employees working for less than 6 weeks, pay is based on an average of weekly pay of duration of employment.
When assessing Paid Pandemic Leave for your workforce, it is important to consult legal services to understand your specific situation.
Special Allowances for COVID-19 Vaccine Payments
Adhoc allowances are extra payments that can be added to an employee's timesheet on a case-by-case basis. This functionality can be used to:
- Manage off-site vaccination payments.
- Approve any vaccine related leave.
- Avoid errors or mistakes with vaccination payments or vaccine related leave.
Contract Trace Reporting
Humanforce’s Contact Trace Report allows you to view the specified period of time an employee has worked, helping to track potential contact of COVID-19 cases.
If an employee has had a positive diagnosis, you need to know who else they may have come into contact with and quickly. Humanforce customers can immediately go to Humanforce Help for the step-by-step guide for accessing the Humanforce Contact Trace Report
Transform to cloud
Humanforce has more advanced tools and better functionality to hyper-advance your workforce management. Because it’s cloud based, it means that your staff can:
- Access the application from home or on any worksite
- Connect and communicate from their mobile phone or tablet at any time through the Humanforce mobile app.
- Engage with team members and managers through their preferred channel of communication
- Ensure your teams are using the best WFM practices in your industry
Humanforce customers have access to all the latest functionality and tools, allowing them to rapidly transform their workforce management on an ongoing basis.