Casual academics perform a significant share of the work that keeps universities operating.
They teach classes, mark assessments, supervise exams, consult with students, develop course material, and support learning across every faculty. Much of this work happens outside scheduled class time, not because it is ad hoc, but because higher education is designed around flexible, outcome-based delivery.
That flexibility is essential to how universities function, but when academic work is not visible inside workforce systems, compliance cannot be assured.
In today’s regulatory environment, lack of visibility is no longer just an operational inconvenience. It is an institutional obligation and a growing legal risk.
Planned but unscheduled work: this hidden compliance risk
A large proportion of casual academic work is planned but not tied to a specific time on a roster.
For example:
- A casual academic may be allocated 10 hours of marking to complete across a teaching period
- A professor may have exam supervision hours spread across multiple days
- A tutor may have student consultation and feedback time to be delivered flexibly
These are not unplanned tasks. They are formally assigned activities that must be paid for. They simply do not fit neatly into a timetable. When this type of work is not captured as a structured activity inside a workforce management system, universities are forced to rely on after-the-fact timesheets, email approvals, spreadsheet tracking, and payroll interpretation without context.
This creates three major risks:
- Work can be missed or underpaid
- Award and EBA rules cannot be consistently applied
- Universities cannot demonstrate compliance if audited
Planned but unscheduled work is now one of the largest sources of wage risk in higher education, more significant than rostered teaching hours alone.
Where minimum engagement fits into this picture
Minimum engagement rules are an important protection for casual academics which ensure that fragmented or short activities are paid fairly.
The challenge is that minimum engagement often interacts directly with unscheduled work:
- Marking or consultation time may fall below minimum thresholds
- Split activities may need to be grouped
- Multiple activities across the same day or week may change entitlements
When this logic is applied retrospectively, accuracy depends on payroll interpretation rather than system-enforced rules at the point of work. That is where inconsistencies arise.
Why retrospective compliance no longer works for Higher Education
Many universities still operate on a model that assumes:
- Academics do their work
- Timesheets are submitted
- Payroll applies Award and EBA rules
- Errors are fixed later
This approach might work in small, simple environments. It does not scale to:
- Thousands of casual academics
- Multiple faculties and campuses
- Variable activities and pay rules
- Complex Enterprise Agreements
By the time payroll receives the data, the compliance risk already exists.
How workforce management platforms shift compliance
Leading universities are shifting away from payroll-only compliance models and toward workforce systems that reflect how academic work is actually performed: flexibly, across multiple days, activities, and locations.
For casual academics, work is rarely confined to a single shift or session. Preparation, marking, student support, and assessment tasks are often completed at different times across the week or semester. When those hours are captured only through retrospective timesheets, accuracy depends on memory, manual interpretation, and payroll reconstruction.
Modern workforce management platforms connect:
- Scheduling: teaching and academic activities are planned with visibility
- Award and EBA logic: minimums are applied automatically; flexible work time is captured and signalled, giving context to activities performed
- Time and attendance and transactions: actual work, including flexible, unscheduled hours is recorded, reviewed, and approved before payroll runs
This ensures that casual academics can confidently record the time they spend working while approvals reflect what was truly delivered, incorporated Award/EBA rules.
When flexible academic work is captured accurately and approved at source, both universities and staff gain confidence that people are being paid correctly for the work they do.
How universities are closing the compliance gap
1. Scheduling that includes academic activities, not just classes
Modern workforce scheduling platforms allow universities to allocate not just teaching time, but also marking, supervision, and preparation as structured work.
This gives faculties visibility into:
- What work has been assigned
- When it is expected to occur
- What it will cost
- Whether it complies with Awards and EBAs
2. Time and attendance that supports activity-based work
Rather than relying on generic timesheets, non-standard academic schedule, leading institutions use activity-based time capture.
This allows academics to record their activities easily and be confident they are always paid correctly. By enabling activity capture at source, with pay/transaction details pre-defined, governance is amplified through contextual data: dedicated pay rules, minimum engagement thresholds, and Award conditions.
This creates a single, auditable record of what work was actually performed.
3. Award and EBA rules applied automatically
Instead of leaving interpretation to payroll, modern workforce systems apply rules directly to:
- Scheduled teaching
- Unscheduled activities
- Minimum engagement
- Preparation and academic load
If an activity breaches a rule, it is flagged immediately, not weeks later.
4. Approval workflows that match how universities operate
Work is approved by the right people, based on Location, Faculty/School, Activity type, Academic role. This ensures accountability exists where work is planned, not buried in payroll queues.
What integration Workforce Management means for universities
When all academic work, scheduled and unscheduled, is visible and governed:
- Underpayment risk is reduced
- Disputes fall
- Fair Work exposure declines
- Academics gain confidence in how they are paid
- Leadership gains a defensible compliance position
Most importantly, compliance compounds to operational governance, systematic controls, and thriving teaching communities.
Learn more about nimbus for Higher Education
nimbus works with Group of Eight and large Australian universities to make all casual academic work, scheduled and unscheduled, visible, governed, and compliant by design.
This ensures casual academics are paid accurately for the time they work, and universities can demonstrate compliance with confidence.
If your institution is grappling with visibility into planned unscheduled academic work, minimum engagement, or retrospective payroll corrections, please contact us to discuss your current challenges and compliance priorities.
