By Mark Coyle, CEO of HeadFirst Global APAC
“Payday Super, which came into effect on 1 July, requires employers to pay superannuation at the same time as wages, rather than quarterly. While many organisations are focused on meeting the new seven-business-day payment window, they may be overlooking a bigger risk: whether they have a clear view of the contractors, casuals and labour-hire workers sitting outside the standard pay run.
Many organisations using contingent labour assume an ABN removes super obligations, yet some contractors can still be deemed employees for superannuation purposes, depending on how they are engaged. This becomes harder to manage when responsibility is split across HR, procurement and finance, with no clear owner for classification, payment processes or compliance oversight.
With the ATO gaining greater visibility into compliance, Payday Super makes clear what has always been true: workforce governance is a commercial issue, not an HR administration task. Procurement and finance leaders who approach it this way will be better positioned to manage compliance, assess supplier risk and understand who is working for the business, how they are classified and where exposure sits.
Rather than placing more pressure on payroll teams to catch issues at the end of the process, businesses should strengthen governance earlier. That means improving contingent workforce visibility, tightening onboarding checks, clarifying who owns classification decisions and regularly reviewing worker status.
The goal is to identify risks before they reach payroll, or the ATO. Flexible talent is now central to how many modern businesses operate, but if organisations want the agility of a contingent workforce, they need the internal governance to match it.”
