Retail Award Pay Rates – 1 July 2023

** If you need the 1 July 2023 Retail Award pay rates click here. **

The Fair Work Commission announced their decision on pay rates for the upcoming 2023-2024 financial year. On 2 June 2023, Fair Work confirmed an increase to the National Minimum Wage (NMW) and the minimum pay rates as they apply to all awards. The increase applies to the General Retail Industry Award from the first full pay period beginning on or after 1 July 2023.

I employ staff under the General Retail Industry Award in 2023. How do these changes impact me?

Well it’s important that all businesses who employ staff under a Modern Award be across the changes. The penalties for underpayment are significant, not to mention the reputational damage that comes from having your company brand associated with an underpayment scandal.

Employers need to closely monitor pay rate changes because they are changing at least once a year. This year from 1 July, Retail Award staff received a minimum 5.75% increase.

Ahead of pay rate changes, employers should review their wage arrangements and implement the necessary wage and superannuation increases.
Part of this process involves communicating wage rate increases to staff in writing before they take effect.

Where can I access the updated pay rates?

Click here to request a copy of the updated General Retail Industry Award Pay Rates. We’ll send them straight to your inbox in PDF format.

How does Fairtime help my business manage payroll compliance for Retail Award staff?

There’s plenty of ways Fairtime can help you.

Our cloud-based timesheet application converts a timesheet into a payslip with one click. Fairtime’s unique ‘pay rate engine’ provides automated Award interpretation. When your staff submit a timesheet, our system reads the hours and tells you what the staff should be paid in keeping with the 2023 Retail Award pay rates.

Clients who use Fairtime software need not worry about pay rate changes because we take care of everything. We’ll save you time and effort each pay run manually checking pay rates to produce a payslip.

In addition to our timesheet app, we also provide a full suite of compliance reporting to help your business demonstrate compliance with Modern Awards.

We already have staff filling out timesheets. What’s the difference?

Whilst the time and attendance tools in your typical payroll software are easy to use, they leave the calculation of pay rates up to each employer and do not provide accurate information on how to correctly classify staff according to the Retail Award in 2023.

Consider this situation. You use Xero to pay staff – BUT you have to do this manually. First, you must download a copy of the most up to date pay rates after doing some online searches.

Next up, you will have to go into that payroll app or spreadsheet and create pay categories for each pay rate (this can take multiple hours depending on the number of pay rates and number of staff at the company).

Finally, once an employee submits a timesheet, your or your staff will have to cross reference worked hours with a pay rate and assign the correct pay rate to those worked hours. And this exact process needs to be carried out for every staff member, for every timesheet they submit each and every pay run. How exhausting?!!

Even once you have prepared the manual payslip – you are still at risk of underpayment. Most awards contain at least SIX allowances that can apply to your staff at any time on a varying basis. Failing to account for allowances even when pay rates are correct can still lead to underpayment.