How exposed is your venue to a Fair Work breach?
A quick self-assessment against the Hospitality Industry General Award. Tick the practices you already have in place, and we'll flag the areas most worth a closer look — classification, penalty rates, casual loading, records and more.
~3 minutes · 12 checks · No login to start
Penalty rates & loadings
Classification & junior rates
Breaks, rosters & hours
Records & casual statements
About this tool
Hospitality Compliance Risk Calculator
Hospitality is one of the most heavily regulated industries in Australia to employ people in, and also one where the rules move constantly. The Hospitality Industry (General) Award (HIGA) governs how cafes, pubs, restaurants and clubs classify staff, pay penalty rates and loadings, roster shifts, record hours and treat casuals — and it is enforced by the Fair Work Ombudsman, which repeatedly names hospitality a priority sector. For a busy owner-operator, the risk rarely comes from bad intent; it comes from not knowing which obligations apply, or assuming payroll software handles the award correctly when it may not. The Hospitality Compliance Risk Calculator is a plain-English self-assessment that helps you see, in a few minutes, where your venue is most exposed before anyone else comes looking.
How it works
The tool walks you through a checklist of the obligations that most often trip venues up under HIGA and related law — staff classification, weekend and public-holiday penalty rates, casual loading, break entitlements, allowances, roster notice, junior and training rates, annual-leave loading, record-keeping periods, casual conversion and information statements, and monitoring visa workers' hours. You tick only the practices you are confident are fully in place; anything left unticked is treated as an area to review, not a finding of breach. It then weights each item by how serious a gap would be, produces an overall risk score and a Low-to-Critical rating, and lists your flagged areas ranked by urgency with the relevant award clause beside each one so you know exactly where to look. A short "recent history" section — past audits, staff underpayment concerns, whether you run a time-and-attendance system, and your confidence in your payroll — adds context on how likely a gap is to be noticed. Deliberately, it puts no dollar figure on your exposure: penalty units are indexed and award rates change, so it points you to fairwork.gov.au for the current figures rather than baking numbers into the result.
Who it’s for
Owners and managers of Australian hospitality venues — cafes, restaurants, pubs, bars and clubs — who employ staff under the HIGA award and want a quick, honest read on where their compliance gaps sit.
- Hospitality is a standing Fair Work priority sector, and classification and penalty-rate errors are among the most common issues found — usually from oversight, not intent.
- The calculator scores your exposure across the HIGA obligations that matter most (penalty rates, casual loading, breaks, records, visa-worker hours and more) and ranks the gaps by urgency with the award clause for each.
- It quotes no rates or penalty amounts by design — those figures are indexed and change, so it directs you to the current official sources rather than risking stale numbers.
Frequently asked questions
Does an unticked box mean I'm breaking the law?
No. Leaving a box unticked simply means you haven't confirmed that obligation is fully covered, so the tool flags it as an area worth a closer look. It's a prompt to check, not a finding of breach — you might have the practice in place but not be certain, or you might genuinely have a gap. Either way, the flagged list tells you where to focus first, ranked by how serious a real gap would be.
Why doesn't the calculator tell me how much I could owe or be fined?
Because those numbers change and shouldn't be guessed. Civil penalty units are indexed and revised periodically, award rates are updated regularly, and any back-pay depends entirely on your specific hours, classifications and roster. Putting a fabricated dollar figure against your result would be misleading. The tool instead points you to fairwork.gov.au for current penalty units and award rates, and treats the assessment as general information, not legal or financial advice.
My payroll software is supposed to handle the award — isn't that enough?
Not always, which is why the tool asks how confident you are that your payroll handles HIGA correctly. Software still relies on staff being classified correctly, the right penalty and loading settings being configured, allowances being switched on, and rosters reflecting real hours. If any of those inputs are wrong, rate and loading errors can compound quietly across every pay run. The assessment helps you sanity-check the practices around the software, not just assume the software is enough.