Outcomes of ongoing Quality Assurance reviews
Monash University has today announced the preliminary results of ongoing Quality Assurance (QA) reviews into casual academic staff payments, and a set of measures to ensure identified issues are addressed. These reviews will be finalised in 2025.
Monash University is firmly committed to paying staff correctly in line with our enterprise agreement and relevant legislation, and enhancing the underlying systems and processes to support this. The University is also working to make things simpler for staff when it comes to pay.
Following a voluntary tutorial review in 2020 and remediation payments and improvements made to the University’s systems as a result, Monash announced in 2022 that the University would continue with ongoing quality assurance to proactively identify any issues, including hiring more staff to do so.
About the reviews
The University’s QA reviews were designed to assess compliance risks related to payments, including for casual academic staff, with a focus on areas where there were known issues within the industry. So far more than 3.4 million timesheets have been analysed as part of this review and 3.6 per cent of these reviewed timesheets were identified as requiring remediation.
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 review and the accuracy and reliability of outputs.
The QA reviews have shown that our systems require further refinement to respond to the complexities of the relevant industrial instruments that regulate how we pay our staff, and also that further education for casual staff and supervisors and compliance controls were required. Some casual academic staff have been paid incorrectly, either in relation to the minimum engagement period they were entitled to be paid for (this entitlement was introduced in February 2020), or because they were paid in some instances at a “repeat” rate for a lecture or tutorial when they should have been paid at the higher ‘original’ rate.
While the review is ongoing, the University expects the amount of underpayment to be approximately $7.6 million by the end of 2024, with the average amount of identified underpayments per casual academic staff member to be $760 over an almost five year period.
Acting Vice-Chancellor and President and Provost and Senior Vice-President Professor Susan Elliott AM said Monash University was committed to doing better.
“These incorrect payments were unintentional and are deeply regrettable. As a University we apologise to all staff, past and present, who have been affected,” Professor Elliott said.
“We are finalising this review work in early 2025 and will be communicating in March 2025 with all current and former staff who have been identified as being underpaid. Impacted staff will receive a remediation payment plus interest and superannuation in March 2025. We are also making further changes to ensure the identified issues do not occur in the future.
“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.”
As part of its examination of industry issues and in conjunction with its implementation of the 2024 Enterprise Agreement the University will continue to proactively review and enhance system and process controls across multiple areas. Reviews will continue in 2025 in relation to casual professional breaks, overtime and shift payments. The University will update staff and all relevant stakeholders as these reviews progress. The University will also further strengthen education and training.
You can find out more about the issues identified by the QA reviews, our solutions and remediation payments here.