Compliance Isn’t Optional But Complexity Is Stopping Small Businesses From Fixing It
Most small business owners are not intentionally trying to underpay their staff. In almost every conversation I have with Australian employers, the same theme emerges. They feel overwhelmed, not careless. Compliance today is harder than it has ever been. Awards keep changing. STP rules are becoming more detailed. Leave, penalty rates and classifications all carry a level of complexity that simply didn’t exist a decade ago.
This “complexity paralysis” explains why so many businesses get stuck. They fear that changing anything in payroll or HR will only make things worse. So they keep the existing process even if they know it isn’t perfect.
But regulators are making it clear that doing nothing is no longer an option.
The Scale of the Problem
Underpayments are widespread across Australia and rarely the result of deliberate misconduct. The Fair Work Ombudsman recovered hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid wages last financial year, contributing to more than $2 billion in recovered backpay over the past five years. Thousands of small and medium businesses were part of that total.
Small businesses sit at the centre of this issue because they make up 97 percent of all Australian businesses and employ more than five million people. Many operate in industries covered by complex awards like hospitality, retail, healthcare, construction, logistics and agriculture. These are the same industries that appear frequently in Fair Work investigations.
From January 2025, intentional underpayment is also a criminal offence. The consequences are no longer just financial. They are personal, reputational and operational.
Where the Complexity Comes From
The challenge isn’t a lack of care. It is the structure of Australia’s industrial relations system.
There are more than 120 modern awards, each with specific rules around classifications, breaks, penalties, overtime, allowances and leave. The National Employment Standards then sit on top. Enterprise agreements can sit on top of that again. Awards are varied frequently which means something correct in 2022 may be wrong today.
Add STP Phase 2 to the mix. Employers now need accurate employment basis codes, cessation information, income types and year to date reporting. The ATO has flagged recurring mistakes like incorrect pay codes, missing termination reasons and broken YTD figures. Any of these can trigger reviews.
For a small business with one person responsible for rostering, timesheets, payroll and HR, it is a lot to carry.
How Complexity Shows Up Day to Day
In practice, non-compliance rarely comes from a single big error. It is the accumulation of small ones.
Many small businesses run their roster in one place, timesheets in another, payroll in a third and super manually. Each handover creates a new opportunity for mistakes. A missed rate change. A “best guess” at an allowance. A casual loading applied incorrectly. A new hire coded under the wrong classification because it was “close enough”.
Some of the biggest errors I’ve seen were invisible for years. A business might be running the wrong Sunday penalty or misclassifying junior staff. Because the process “still works”, no one realises the numbers have drifted.
Even banks have fallen victim, with Westpac receiving a $50 million dollar fine for non-compliance.
There’s also the psychological element. Owners worry that if they switch systems or clean up classifications they will uncover a major issue. That fear keeps them locked into old processes.
Why Doing Nothing Has Become the Risky Option
It feels safer to avoid change, but the risk has flipped.
Regulators are recovering more money each year and targeting industries where small errors become systemic. Employees are more aware of their entitlements and more willing to question discrepancies. Digital reporting now exposes patterns that used to hide inside spreadsheets.
In this environment, the cost of doing nothing is often higher than the cost of addressing the issue.
Breaking Complexity Paralysis
Leaders can simplify compliance without trying to learn every award rule. The key is reducing cognitive load and eliminating the points where human error creeps in.
1. Map your obligations and risks
List which awards apply. Identify the classifications used. Pay specific attention to overtime, penalty rates and allowances. These are the areas most frequently flagged in Fair Work investigations.
2. Standardise and remove unnecessary complexity
Legacy arrangements from years ago often cause more problems than they solve. Simplifying pay codes, cleaning up classifications and consolidating allowances creates consistency and reduces decision fatigue for managers.
3. Reduce manual entry
very time a number is re-typed the risk of error increases. Consolidating rostering, attendance and payroll into one workflow removes most of that risk.
4. Make compliance cultural instead of reactive
Regular mini-reviews, simple checklists and manager training go a long way. When staff understand the basics of awards and STP, fewer problems make it to payroll.
“This is where tools built for Australian awards come in. Platforms like ClockOn reduce re-entry by letting hours flow from roster to timesheet to payroll automatically, giving managers less to remember and fewer points to get wrong.”
Looking Ahead
Workplace laws are not going to become simpler. If anything, they will grow more detailed. Small businesses cannot rely on good intention alone. They need processes that absorb complexity for them, because compliance has become too big for any single person to hold in their head.
The businesses that will avoid the next wave of underpayment headlines are not the ones trying to memorise every rule. They are the ones building systems that make the right thing the easy thing.
