The SCHADS Award
As a Hireup Support Worker, you are covered by the Social Community, Home Care and Disability Services (SCHADS) industry award, which is a legal document that outlines the minimum pay rates and conditions of employment.
Wage Increases
Each year in July, we update your wages and client pricing. For the 2024/2025 financial year, your pay rates increase took effect on Monday 8 July 2024.
There are three key driving factors when it comes to designing and reviewing our pricing:
- The Fair Work Commission annual wage review
- The NDIA annual pricing review
- Building a sustainable, long term service for our community
Our standard hourly rate for clients is $66.46 and you receive $45.86 per hour (inclusive of superannuation) inclusive of 25% casual loading.
The rest of our pricing covers:
- Payroll taxes
- Payroll and invoicing
- Comprehensive insurance cover for every shift booked on Hireup
- Hireup’s online platform and Community Support team
Hours of work
We have a safety-first approach and we ask that all work performed is in line with safe working practices. You can choose to work the number of hours that suit you and your lifestyle. It is really important to make sure that you are taking the right breaks during and between shifts.
We regularly review excessive hours or overtime hours on the platform to assess suitability, safety and any risk to our community. Where we have identified any actual and potential health and safety risks, we will work with you to manage your hours to a more sustainable level. We will also support our clients to grow their team to ensure that support and care can be provided on a safe, consistent and ongoing basis.
Penalty Rates and Loadings
You are entitled to additional shift allowances when you work in the evening and at night, on weekdays Monday to Friday. When you provide support on a weekend or public holidays you will also be paid additional shift allowances.
You can find more information on these rates on our website.
Minimum Shift Engagement
You are entitled to a minimum payment for working a shift that is shorter than two hours. When this happens, you will notice a difference in your payslips. The total amount paid to you will have 2 components:
- One component being the standard Hireup pay rate for the actual time worked;
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The other component is the Fair Work top-up to bring your pay to the 2-hour minimum payment per the SCHADS award.
Broken Shifts
In accordance with the SCHADS Award, you are also entitled to allowances for working multiple separate shifts per day.
- Two broken shifts per day, you receive an allowance of $20.12;
- Three broken shifts per day, you receive an allowance of $26.63; or
- if you work outside a span of 12 hours (from the start of your first shift), you will be entitled to a double time pay for the hours that you worked outside of that 12 hour span.
- For example, you provide support to clients from 8am to 10am, 2pm to 5pm, and 7pm to 9pm on one day. You’ll be entitled to $26.63 broken shift allowance, then double time for the one hour from 8pm-9pm (as this is one hour outside the 12 hour span).
You can book multiple shifts on our platform and our system will automatically calculate and pay the allowances along with your fortnightly wages.
Remote Work
At times you may need to conduct work outside of a shift. This may be on a case by case basis and would need to be individually assessed. This may occur when we direct you to do Hireup related training, or when providing remote support. Examples of remote shifts, such as working over the phone or online may occur when:
- You or the client are tested positive for Covid-19
- You or the client have not met the minimum vaccination requirements
- You and the client are geographically dispersed.
You are encouraged to complete all necessary work including administrative work during a shift. If your client needs you to do additional tasks beyond the booked hours, they will need to extend the booking to cover those additional tasks.
Meet and Greets are generally not considered as time worked, unless you and your client have agreed to a paid arrangement"
Sleepovers
Sometimes our clients may need sleepover support. You can read more about sleepover entitlements in this article.
24-hour Shifts
In a 24 hour shift, you are booked for every hour and you are required to be present for the entire shift. In this instance, a sleepover should be booked for the period where you get to sleep. You are expected to be present to provide support when needed but you are not expected to work excessive hours. This is important to ensure that you deliver safe and quality support.
Excursions
If you agree to supervise clients in excursion activities involving overnight stays from home, the following provisions will apply:
- The sleepover allowance is also payable for overnight sleepover support.
- Where you are involved in an overnight excursion and activities fall on the weekend, the days worked in the two week cycle, including that weekend, should not exceed 10 days.
Working safely and taking breaks
Working safely is essential to encourage safe, ongoing and consistent support. It is important to discuss and agree upon the time to take breaks during shifts with your client or account manager.
From time to time we monitor the hours worked to ensure that you are not working shift patterns which could give rise to risks to the health and safety of our community. We will contact you if we identify any work, health or safety risk.
Taking meal breaks/lunch breaks
An unpaid meal break of 30 - 60 minutes (no less) should be allowed when working in excess of five hours.
Taking rest breaks/tea breaks
A paid 10 minute tea break should be allowed for every four hours worked.
Having meals
When you have a meal with a client as part of the shift, you are paid for the duration of the meal at an ordinary pay rate.
Working safe hours
We recommend that you work no more than 10 hours a day (not including sleepovers) and no more than 10 shifts in a fortnight.
In some instances where we believe that there is a risk to health and safety we may direct you to work less hours.
Working overtime and breaks
You should organise your shifts in order to have a break of at least 10 hours after working overtime and not accept shifts until such time as that break is taken.
Rest breaks between rostered work
We encourage you to take regular breaks including between the end of a shift and the start of a new one whether that is during the course of one day or over a fortnight. It’s also recommended that if you work lots of hours, take at least 2 consecutive days off each fortnight.
Broken shifts and breaks
You should have a break of at least 10 hours after working multiple shifts over a 12 hour period or an active overnight shift to ensure that you receive sufficient rest to continue working in a healthy and safe manner.
If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact our Community Support Team for assistance.