Monash University Quality Assurance reviews
Monash has announced the outcome of Quality Assurance (QA) reviews of casual academic minimum engagement periods and sessional repeat lectures and tutorials.
All affected current and former staff will be contacted in March 2025 with details of their remediation payments.
Key information and Questions and Answers are below.
About the reviews
The University’s ongoing QA reviews were designed to improve integrity, simplify and improve systems and processes that underpin payments to staff, and to assess compliance risks around payments to staff, with a focus on reviewing areas where there were known issues within the industry. So far, we have analysed over 3.4 million time entries as part of this work.
The University engaged an external quality assurance partner and legal advisor. These external partners have provided additional expertise and guidance and verified the integrity and appropriateness of the reviews and the accuracy and reliability of our findings.
The QA reviews have regrettably identified that some casual academic staff (sessional and casual academic research assistants) have been paid incorrectly, either in relation to minimum engagement periods which were introduced in February 2020 or because they were paid in some instances at the “repeat” rate for a lecture or tutorial when they should have been paid at the higher “original” rate.
Our response
Our approach to quality assurance has enabled the University to identify these issues and fix them. We will also provide remediation payments to affected staff plus interest and superannuation.
Our Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Sharon Pickering has also directed the urgent procurement and implementation of an improved and consolidated scheduling, time and attendance system to ensure we can manage the complexities of our Industrial Agreements and related legislation, and provide our staff and regulatory bodies of the assurance they deserve in this important area.
We have now finalised our remediation reviews for casual academic staff and communicated with all current and former staff in March 2025.
Impacted staff will be paid a remediation payment plus interest and superannuation in March 2025.
Sessional staff minimum engagement periods
System solution to be implemented 25 January 2025
Remediation to impacted staff members to occur in March 2025
- Commencing 25 January 2025, the University will implement a system solution that involves adopting an approach that is more favourable than the Enterprise Agreement obligation and will automatically ensure that sessional staff are paid for a minimum of two hours for each activity (inclusive of associated working time as per the sessional activity types and payment guide which Monash current staff can access), even if there are multiple or consecutive activities. If a sessional staff member is required to deliver a scheduled teaching activity (either onsite or offsite) or an unscheduled activity (onsite only) and is paid for less than 2 hours in respect of that activity, the system will automatically adjust their payment to meet or exceed the minimum requirement. This means that sessional staff automatically receive payment for at least two hours for each activity where the minimum engagement period is applicable.
- For sessional staff, it is important to note that the two-hour minimum engagement period does not apply to unscheduled activities (such as self-directed marking) where attendance at a specific University location isn’t required.
- New activity types will be introduced in Employee Self Service (ESS) to enable sessional staff to indicate where the unscheduled work was required to be completed (eg. either onsite or offsite). Further information will be communicated to sessional staff and supervisors in January 2025. No other changes to current timesheet practices will be required.
- A mandatory online training module will be introduced for all academic staff supervisors. This will ensure supervisors understand the minimum engagement requirements.
Casual academic research assistant minimum engagement periods
System solution to be implemented 25 January 2025
Remediation to impacted staff members to occur in March 2025
- Commencing 25 January 2025, the University will implement a system solution to ensure that casual academic research assistants are paid for a minimum of two hours per engagement. If a casual academic research assistant works less than this minimum, the system will automatically adjust their payment to meet or exceed the two-hour requirement. This applies regardless of the work location and means that research assistants will automatically receive payment for the minimum engagement period. The payroll system will evaluate engagement periods based on consecutive work time, where breaks longer than one hour will trigger a new engagement period.
- Casual academic research assistants will not be required to make any changes to their current timesheet practices.
- A mandatory online training module will be introduced for all research assistant supervisors. This will ensure supervisors understand the minimum engagement requirements.
Sessional staff tutorials/lectures paid at repeat rates
System solution complete
Remediation to impacted staff members to occur in March 2025
Instances were identified where staff had been paid at the repeat rate for the delivery of a tutorial or lecture without an original tutorial or lecture occurring within the preceding seven days. This issue was addressed with the University’s introduction of the Streamlined Timesheets initiative in November 2022 (after which the issue could no longer arise).
