From a push to increase minimum annual leave to calls for shorter standard hours and tighter rostering rules, unions are using the NES inquiry to re‑set the baseline for working time and flexibility
Australia’s National Employment Standards (NES) are undergoing their first dedicated review since they commenced 16 years ago, with various groups and individuals using the inquiry to push for substantial changes to working time, leave and redundancy settings.
The review has already been flagged to practitioners as one of the headline regulatory developments HR will need to track in 2026.
The public inquiry, underway today (1 May), is having the voices of unions, industry bodies, experts, legal practitioners and more to determine whether the NES are operating as intended and whether they remain adequate in light of contemporary work patterns, including unpaid overtime, seven‑day trading, complex shift systems and the growth of AI‑driven rostering.
According to committee chair, Dr Carina Garland MP, said the hearing would grant the Committee an insight into the perspectives of various employee groups and advocates: "The Committee wants to find out how the National Employment Standards (NES) are operating on the ground every day for all kinds of Australian workers. In particular, it aims to understand whether the system is accessible, achieving its policy objectives, and keeping up with the realities of the evolving modern workplace 16 years after its introduction."
Speaking to HRD, she said the committee is using these hearings to assess whether the National Employment Standards (NES) remain “adequate” as the core framework for Australians’ workplace rights.
By “meeting employers and workers where they are at” and hearing directly about their experiences, the committee wants to understand how the NES operates in practice and whether it still functions as a “universal safety net” in a labour market that has changed substantially since its introduction in 2009.
Because “the nature of work – and the challenges facing both employees and employers – has evolved significantly” over the past 16 years, said Garland, the committee believes the NES must “keep pace with the evolving nature of work” and reflect the realities of the modern Australian workplace. Employers and HR teams are key to this process: their evidence will help determine whether the standards remain “clear, accessible, and fit for purpose,” and will highlight “practical challenges, areas of ambiguity, and opportunities to improve the framework” that will ultimately drive the committee’s recommendations.
Inside the proposed changes
A major theme running through submissions is the need to fix parts of the NES that are no longer working as intended, particularly for workers with non‑standard patterns of hours.
Unions argue that gaps and inconsistencies in the current framework mean some employees miss out on entitlements they were meant to receive or find that the real value of their entitlements erodes once modern shift patterns and rostering practices are taken into account.
There is strong pressure for the safety net to operate more consistently across different industries and work arrangements, and to better reflect the reality of longer shifts, complex rosters and changing business models.
Alongside these technical concerns, the inquiry is also grappling with broader questions about working time. Evidence before the committee highlights that many workers are struggling with long hours, unpaid overtime and growing work intensity, often within a seven‑day trading environment.
Against that backdrop, unions are pushing to rebalance time and recovery by strengthening minimum leave standards and re‑examining what should count as a standard full‑time working week. The case being put is that the current settings were built for a very different era of work and have not kept pace with the way jobs are now structured or with the productivity gains that have flowed through many sectors.
Rostering practices sit at the intersection of these concerns. The inquiry has heard that unstable and last‑minute rosters can undermine financial security, caring responsibilities and mental health, particularly for part‑time and casual workers. Stakeholders are calling for a greater emphasis on predictability and fairness in how hours are allocated and changed, and for more human oversight where automated systems are used to build rosters.
The underlying theme is that minimum standards should do more than define the ceiling on hours – they should also support a baseline of stability and predictability in how those hours are organised.
The review is not limited to time and scheduling. It is also canvassing whether the NES should recognise newer forms of leave and caring responsibilities that have become more visible in recent years.
Building on relatively recent additions to the standards, unions are pushing for the framework to acknowledge a wider range of health, cultural and family obligations, and to update long‑standing entitlements so they align more closely with contemporary patterns of work and care.
If this direction is adopted, the NES could shift from a narrow set of traditional leave categories towards a more expansive view of the time workers reasonably need away from work over the course of their lives.
For HR leaders, the inquiry sits alongside other expected shifts in the regulatory environment and points to a period of sustained change in how employment is governed. The overarching message is that the NES may move closer to the realities of modern work by tightening up weak spots, strengthening minimum time‑off and working‑time protections, and recognising a broader range of employee needs.
In practical terms, that would require organisations to revisit how they design jobs and rosters, how they calculate and administer leave, and how they manage psychosocial risks linked to overwork and instability.
With further hearings still to come, the precise shape of reform is not yet clear. But the direction of travel is towards a more robust and contemporary safety net, and towards greater scrutiny of how hours, leave and security are structured in practice.
HR leaders who start mapping their exposure to these themes now – and who think proactively about more sustainable working‑time models – will be better placed to influence the debate and adapt quickly once the government’s response is released.
