The university also agreed to a Comprehensive External Review to assess further underpayments
The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) has back-paid more than $1.9 million to hundreds of employees that it underpaid as a result of payroll system errors.
A total of 433 employees received the payment, which includes wages and entitlements exceeding $1.748 million, interest of more than $143,000, and superannuation of more than $24,000, according to the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO).
Payments made to individual employees ranged from less than $10 to more than $78,000, including superannuation and interest.
"QUT values the contributions of its staff and has sincerely and unreservedly apologised for these errors," the university said in a statement.
"The University is committed to resolving these issues and ensuring all staff are paid appropriately and receive their full entitlements."
The back-pay is part of the Enforceable Undertaking (EU) that the university entered with the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO). The EU also requires the university to make a contrition payment of $250,000.
Cause of underpayments
The QUT became aware of the underpayments in 2019, and self-reported the situation to the FWO in 2021.
It said the underpayments were partially because of their payroll system's failure to ensure automatic payment of staff entitlements.
"The attendance record for professional staff is not integrated with QUT's payroll system meaning that a separate claim for overtime and any associated entitlements such as meal allowances is required," the university said on its website.
"Similarly, QUT systems do not ensure an automatic payment of minimum engagements for casual professional staff (minimum 3 hours) and sessional academic staff (minimum 2 hours)."
As a result, employees at the university's campuses in Gardens Point and Kelvin Grove in Brisbane were underpaid, with most of them professional services staff in a variety of non-teaching positions.
The university failed to pay the employees' overtime, time off in lieu of overtime, minimum rates for ordinary hours, meal allowances, casual loading, and the casual professional minimum engagement period payment under the relevant enterprise agreement, according to the FWO.
Payroll review underway
Under its EU with the FWO, the QUT agrees to a six-year Comprehensive External Review (CER) that will be independently carried out by KPMG.
The CER will cover approximately 18,000 current and former staff, aimed at identifying and rectifying further underpayments, according to the university.
Other commitments under the EU include the development of a new timesheet system, and carrying out proactive sample checks to validate payments made to employees against entitlements under enterprise agreements.
"Queensland University of Technology deserves credit for acknowledging its breaches and the underlying issues, and committing significant time and resources to put in place corrective measures that will ensure both full remediation of impacted staff and improved compliance for the future," said Fair Work Ombudsman Anna Booth in a statement.
"The commitments secured under the EU will help drive cultural change across the university, including through QUT's education campaigns for all staff regarding entitlements under the enterprise agreements, and standing agenda items for various governance committees to discuss EU obligations."
The QUT adds to the growing list of universities in Australia that are self-reporting underpayments, which the Australian Higher Education Industrial Association attributed to the "sheer complexity" of the sector's awards and enterprise agreements.
