Higher Education Industry-General Staff-Award
Covers general (non-academic) staff at universities and tertiary providers — PACCT, building services, catering and retail, security, children's services, storage, building and maintenance, and trades. Two sectors with the same annual salary but different ordinary-hours weeks: PACCT at 36.75h/wk, all other categories at 38h/wk — so the hourly rate differs by category. Standard rate is HEW 3.1.
Fully built. Rates, allowances, penalties and any required apprentice / junior rates are all wired to the rate resolver and have been verified against the consolidated award text and the latest pay guide.
What's built
- All 34 HEW classifications (HEW 1.1 through HEW 10.1) at the July 2025 annual figures, with two AwardClassificationRate rows per classification (PACCT vs non-PACCT divisor).
- Junior rates for HEW 1-3 — six age bands from under-16 (36.8%) through 20-year-old (97.7%), anchored to HEW 1.1.
- Post-2014 apprentice grids — building 4-year and 3-year, plus electrotechnology 4-stage — with year-12 splits and adult cohorts.
- Span-of-hours per staff category (cl. 15.1) — PACCT Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, building services Mon-Fri 6am-6pm, catering and retail Mon-Sun 6am-7.30pm, security Mon-Sun 6am-6pm, etc.
- Roster-change short-notice 150% penalty when notice is under 72 hours (cl. 15.2(b)(iii)).
Known limitations
- Schema enum has 5 junior bands but the award has 6 (under-16 and at-16 split). At-16 rate (47.30%) is captured in award configuration rather than as a separate AwardRate row.
- Pre-2014 apprentice regimes and the metal-engineering, plumbing and hospitality trade-group apprentice grids are deferred — schema lacks the trade-group dimension. Contact support if you have an in-flight apprentice on those variants.
Setup & special instructions
- Each employee must be assigned a sector — PACCT or one of the non-PACCT categories — to drive the right hourly-rate divisor (36.75 vs 38) and the correct span of ordinary hours.
- Annual salaries are identical across sectors; only the hourly rate and the overtime threshold differ. Don't try to convert one sector's hourly to the other — start from the annual.
- • Higher education
- • Universities
- • PACCT
- • Building services
- • Trades
The consolidated award text is the authoritative source. Always confirm specific obligations against the award itself — Mployr's implementation status reflects what we've seeded; it does not replace legal advice.
Want to see this award running on your data?
We can demo a pay run on the higher ed general award using sample employees in a sandbox tenant — including any of the special-instruction steps above so you can see exactly what your team's day-to-day looks like.
Book a demo