From Classrooms to Compliance: Rethinking School Workforce Management

While Australia’s teacher shortage has dominated the education agenda, another urgent issue has been lurking in the shadows. As of January 2025, schools can now face serious legal consequences for staff underpayments, with directors potentially held personally liable. This shift has redefined payroll compliance from a back-office responsibility to a frontline leadership risk.

The challenge for schools is that compliance mistakes are already common. Across the sector, three issues come up time and time again: incorrect staff classifications, miscalculated entitlements like leave loading or higher duties, and the mismanagement of employees working under multiple contracts. These common errors are results of outdated systems that fail to keep up with the increasing complexity of award and enterprise agreement (EA) interpretations.

Too often, schools rely on legacy payroll systems and manual processes to interpret intricate industrial awards and EAs. When someone is temporarily acting in a higher role, working across campuses, or toggling between part-time and casual assignments, even well-meaning administrators can occasionally get it wrong. And now, schools can't afford to be getting it wrong.

The good news? This is a problem with a modern workforce solution. But it does require school leaders to rethink how workforce compliance is approached, embracing modern tools that make compliance a built-in function and embedding it at the core of their workforce planning, as opposed to treating it as an afterthought.

Leadership Time Is Being Wasted on Manual Fixes
School leaders are already under immense pressure. Many are spending up to 20% of their work week just managing staff absences and filling resourcing gaps. While these tasks are essential, they take away from time spent on strategic leadership and student support. Without adequate tools, this approach becomes unsustainable.

This is further compounded by the growing reliance on casual and relief teachers. Today, schools are competing daily for access to qualified educators. The ability to manage casual bookings quickly and accurately has become a differentiator. Schools that succeed in streamlining the process and automating pay rates, applying correct classifications, and managing documentation aren’t just compliant, they’re also becoming more attractive to the casual workforce.

Modern workforce platforms can take this weight off school leadership teams. These systems interpret EA and award conditions automatically, ensure entitlements are paid correctly, and provide real-time visibility into who’s working where, and under what conditions. This is where SAP and other cloud-based solutions shine not only in accuracy, but in scalability, flexibility, and security.

A Real-World Example
We’ve seen this approach work in practice. We’ve supported large education systems in transforming how they manage their workforce. In one case, across a network of 80+ schools, we implemented our SAP-based workforce management platform that enables leaders to oversee casual pools, automate compliance, and drastically reduce administrative burden.

The result? Not only are schools better protected from legal exposure, they’re also operating more efficiently. Casual staff can be deployed and paid properly without endless email chains or guesswork, and school leaders regain valuable hours to focus on improving student learning.

Rural Schools Can’t Be Left Behind
While metro schools often have access to dedicated administration teams and broader casual teacher pools, rural and remote schools are navigating the same compliance obligations with far fewer resources, which is not only inequitable but also unsustainable.

The nature of modern cloud-based solutions makes it possible for these schools to access the same tools as their metropolitan counterparts. With the right systems in place, a small school in regional NSW can interpret awards, manage staff contracts, and ensure payroll compliance with the same confidence as a large city-based campus.

But the conversation in these areas must go beyond casual management. For rural schools, attracting and retaining teachers is paramount. That means reducing administration overhead wherever possible, so teachers can focus on their students instead of chasing timesheets or fixing classification errors.

Planning Must Start with People
What’s needed now is a broader mindset shift. Workforce planning isn’t just about forecasting future needs, it’s about managing the present with clarity and control. Whether it’s tracking how entitlements are applied, identifying where talent is being developed, or responding to shifts in student enrolment, school leaders need a single, accurate view of their workforce.

Unfortunately, many schools are trying to do this using outdated or fragmented systems that can’t provide real-time insights. A modern platform, think SAP-backed, integrated across HR, payroll, and workforce management, ensures compliance and gives school leaders the data they need to plan, react, and improve.

Getting It Right From the Ground Up
At its core, this is about governance. Schools are complex workplaces with obligations under law. Getting those obligations right protects everyone, from directors and principals, to teachers, casuals, and ultimately, students.

Compliance risks are not going away, but they can be managed, and even minimised, with the right solution. Modern, cloud-based workforce platforms offer the control, transparency, and automation schools need to meet their obligations confidently and consistently.