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.
Official Fair Work rates. This award’s minimum pay rates are synced directly from the Fair Work Commission’s Modern Awards Pay Database and updated automatically when the Commission changes them - including the annual wage review - so payroll always uses the current legal minimums without a manual update.
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