UNiiVERSE

For A Business

They Arrive With The Paperwork Already Done.

The reason short-notice hiring is painful is not the law. It is chasing a stranger at nine at night for a tax file number, a super fund and a bank account, and hoping it turns up before the shift does. That part is finished before you meet them.

What You Get When You Book Somebody

One page, handed over by them, ready to go straight into your payroll: their legal name, date of birth, address, tax file number, super fund, bank details, an emergency contact, and their right to work in Australia already checked against Home Affairs.

Alongside it, the shift as you wrote it — what they are doing, what to wear, which door, who to ask for. So they arrive knowing, and nobody rings you at half three.

What Is Still Yours To Do, Said Plainly

  • Put them on payroll and pay them. If you already have one employee you already have everything this needs — payroll, a clearing house, and WorkCover. Adding a casual is a few fields, not a project.
  • Pay their super with their wage. Since July it goes at the same time as the pay rather than quarterly, and it has to reach their account within seven business days.
  • Pay at least the award. A casual is owed twenty-five per cent on top of the ordinary rate, over a floor of $26.44 an hour, and most awards set more than the floor.
  • Give them the first ten minutes. Where the fire door is, what not to touch, who to ask. A first shift is the riskiest one anybody works and your duty of care starts at the door.

Two Truths Worth Knowing Before You Post

An ABN does not make somebody a contractor
If you roster them, tell them what to wear, when to turn up and who to report to, they are an employee — whatever paperwork sits underneath. Asking for an ABN to change that is sham contracting, and the penalty runs to $495,000 a contravention. It also strips their workers compensation, which is the part that matters at four in the afternoon when somebody has cut their hand. Fair Work on sham contracting
Three hours is usually the shortest shift there is
Most awards set a minimum engagement and it is commonly three hours, so somebody called in for one is generally paid for three. A few awards allow ninety minutes. Worth knowing while you are writing the shift rather than after it is worked. Fair Work on casuals
Forty-eight hours a fortnight, while term is on
A student visa allows forty-eight hours every two weeks during teaching, and as many as they like over the breaks. It counts across every job at once, so your shift sits alongside whatever else they do. Their check tells you which they are on. Home Affairs on student visas

These are the rules as they stand rather than advice, and an award for your industry very often asks for more. It is the award that decides.

What It Costs

Twenty-nine dollars a month lists your shifts to everybody near you — as many as you like, for as long as you like. Shortlisting, messaging and calling somebody back next week are all inside it.

So is the afternoon somebody rings in sick: a shift marked as unable to wait goes to the front the moment you put it up, at nothing on top.

UNiiVERSE never holds your money and takes no cut of anybody’s pay. You pay the person you hired, directly, the way you pay everybody else.