How exposed are you if Fair Work investigates?
This 21-question scorecard measures your compliance across six critical areas — contracts, Modern Awards, payroll and super, leave, WHS and termination — then pinpoints your specific gaps and the order to fix them.
~8 minutes · 21 questions · No login to start
Employment Contracts & Records
Modern Award Compliance
Payroll & Superannuation
Leave Management
Workplace Health & Safety
Termination & Dismissal
About this tool
Compliance Scorecard
Most Australian small and medium businesses don't fail employment compliance on purpose — they drift out of it. Modern Awards update, the National Employment Standards shift, superannuation rules change, and psychosocial safety becomes an explicit duty, all while the owner is busy running the business. The result is a quiet accumulation of gaps — an unsigned contract here, an unverified Award classification there, a leave balance nobody has reconciled — that only becomes visible when the Fair Work Ombudsman or the ATO comes asking. The Compliance Scorecard is a free self-assessment that surfaces those gaps before someone else does, giving an owner an honest, structured read on where their employment obligations are solid and where they're exposed.
How it works
The scorecard walks you through a set of plain-English questions across six areas of employment compliance: employment contracts and record-keeping, Modern Award compliance, payroll and superannuation, leave management, workplace health and safety (including psychosocial hazards), and termination and dismissal. For each question you pick the answer that best matches how your business actually operates today — from fully systematised and audited down to informal or absent. Your responses are scored within each area and rolled into an overall percentage and letter grade, so you can see both the headline picture and which specific area is dragging it down. Rather than inventing a dollar figure for your exposure — which genuinely depends on your headcount, pay history and how long a gap has run — the tool describes the qualitative risk behind each weak area (for example, why misclassification or late super matters and where it leads) and produces a priority remediation plan that orders the fixes, flagging the most serious gaps as critical. It's an indicative self-assessment to decide where to look first, not legal or financial advice.
Who it’s for
Australian SME owners and managers who employ staff and want a fast, honest read on their employment-compliance exposure before a Fair Work or ATO issue forces the question.
- Covers the six areas where employment-compliance problems actually surface for Australian SMEs — contracts and records, Modern Award compliance, payroll and super, leave, WHS (including psychosocial hazards), and termination — and grades each one so you can see exactly where the weakness sits.
- Deliberately shows qualitative risk and a prioritised remediation order instead of a fabricated dollar exposure, because real liability depends on your headcount, pay history and how long a gap has run — factors a self-assessment can't know.
- Turns a vague worry ("are we compliant?") into a concrete, ordered to-do list, flagging the most serious gaps as critical so you know what to fix first and what can wait.
Frequently asked questions
Is this a substitute for a proper compliance audit or legal advice?
No — and it doesn't try to be. The scorecard is an indicative self-assessment based on your own answers about how your business currently operates. It's designed to show you where the likely gaps are and the order in which to address them, so you can have a much sharper conversation with a specialist, bookkeeper or employment lawyer. Treat it as a diagnostic to direct your attention, then verify the areas it flags against current Fair Work, ATO and state legislation before acting.
Why doesn't it give me a dollar figure for my compliance risk?
Because any single number would be misleading. Real exposure from an underpayment, super shortfall, safety breach or unfair dismissal depends on things the tool can't see — how many staff are affected, your actual pay history, and how long a gap has been running (back-pay and shortfalls compound over years). Instead of a false headline figure, the scorecard explains the qualitative risk behind each weak area and prioritises your fixes, which is far more useful for deciding where to act first.
Which areas of compliance does it actually cover?
Six that map to where SMEs most often come unstuck: employment contracts and record-keeping; Modern Award compliance (classifications, penalty rates, and updating pay after the annual review); payroll and superannuation (including Single Touch Payroll and paying super on time); leave management (annual, personal/carer's and state-based long service leave); workplace health and safety, including the newer duty around psychosocial hazards; and termination and dismissal, covering procedural fairness, notice periods and redundancy. Each area is scored and graded separately.