Miscellaneous Award [MA000104]: Employment types, rostering, and breaks

Author

The Rippling Team

Published

6 June 2024

Updated

22 December 2025

Read time

5 MIN

In this article

The Miscellaneous Award covers roles that sit outside standard classifications, including unique, mixed-duty, or hard-to-categorise jobs.

If you employ anyone under this award, you need to know whether they’re full-time, part-time, or casual, and what that means for their hours. You also need to set rosters that follow the award and give the right breaks at the right times. Getting these basics sorted can help you stay compliant and give employees clear, predictable conditions.

Miscellaneous Award employment types and ordinary hours

The Miscellaneous Award lets you hire employees as full-time, part-time, casual, or through a labour-hire agency. Each employment type comes with its own rules for weekly hours and patterns of work:

Full-time employees: Full-timers work an average of 38 hours a week on a regular pattern with fixed start and finish times. Their hours can run across up to six days a week and can go up to 10 hours a day, or 12 hours if both sides agree.
Part-time employees: Part-timers work less than 38 hours a week on a predictable pattern you both lock in when they start. Their ordinary hours follow the same rules as full-time employees: fixed start and finish times, a six-day spread, a daily cap of 10 hours (or 12 by agreement), and no more than 20 working days in any 28-day period. Any change to their pattern needs written agreement.
Casual employees: Casuals work as needed without guaranteed hours. They get the minimum hourly rate for their classification plus a 25% loading. And you must roster them for at least two consecutive hours each shift. Their ordinary hours follow the same daily and weekly limits that apply to full-time and part-time employees.
On-hire employees: If you hire through a labour-hire agency, the agency becomes the employer. But the employee still works under the same classification rules as your direct employees. Their ordinary hours match whichever category they fall into: full-time, part-time, or casual.
Apprentices and trainees: If an apprentice or trainee falls under the Miscellaneous Award, their ordinary hours follow their training contract. Once you confirm whether they’re full-time or part-time, the same rules apply: regular hours, fixed start and finish times, a six-day spread, and the daily hour limits set by the award.

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Miscellaneous Award rostering rules

The Miscellaneous Award doesn’t tell you when rosters must be published or how far in advance you need to share them. But it does set a few rules that affect how you plan hours and manage roster changes.

Award-enforceable rostering rules

These rostering rules come from the Miscellaneous Award itself.

01
Ordinary hours can only run across six days a week
Full-time and part-time employees don’t work ordinary hours over seven days. The award caps the spread at six.
02
No more than 20 working days in any 28-day period
Full-time and part-time employees can only work ordinary hours on up to 20 days over a four-week cycle.
03
You can change start and finish times with seven days’ notice
If you need to change someone’s usual starting or finishing time, you can do it with a week’s notice. Anything shorter needs agreement.
04
Ordinary hours must follow a regular pattern
You can only roster ordinary hours on a steady, predictable basis. Sporadic or inconsistent patterns don’t meet the award’s requirement for regular work.
05
You must consult employees about major changes to hours
If you introduce a big change, like new operating hours, a total roster restructure, or anything that affects a group of employees, you must follow the award’s consultation process. This involves notifying affected staff, explaining the impact, and genuinely considering their feedback.
06
Daily ordinary hours must stay within the award limits
Ordinary hours can go up to 10 hours a day, or 12 hours if both sides agree. Anything beyond that counts as overtime.
07
Minimum engagement applies to casual employees
You must roster casual employees for at least two consecutive hours each time you require them to attend work.
08
You must give an unpaid meal break after five hours of work
No employee can work for more than five hours straight. You must roster a 30-minute unpaid meal break before they get to the five-hour mark.

NES and Fair Work Act rostering rules

These rules don’t come from the Miscellaneous Award. They apply to every workplace covered by the Fair Work Act, including businesses that employ people under this award.

01
Employees can request flexible working arrangements
Certain employees can ask for flexible working arrangements under the National Employment Standards (NES). This includes parents of school-aged or younger children, carers, people living with a disability, employees aged 55 or older, and anyone dealing with family or domestic violence (or supporting someone who is). You must consider the request properly and can only refuse on reasonable business grounds.
02
Right to Disconnect applies to everyone
Employees now have a legal right to ignore contact outside their rostered hours unless refusing would be unreasonable. For example, if the contact is required by law or relates to genuine safety issues. You can’t pressure employees to stay reachable when they’re not on the clock.

Best-practice rostering (recommended, not enforceable)

These aren’t legal requirements under the Miscellaneous Award or NES. But they make rosters easier to manage and reduce disputes.

01
Share rosters as early as possible
As discussed, the award doesn’t set a notice period for publishing rosters. But giving people their hours early helps them plan childcare, transport, study, and personal commitments. It also reduces no-shows and last-minute shift swaps.
02
Communicate changes clearly
It's normal for rosters to need to change now and then. The friction usually comes from poor communication. Even without a legal notice period, giving people clear updates (and giving them early notice where you can) helps steer clear of missed shifts and misunderstandings.
03
Use tools that automate hours and compliance
Digital scheduling tools can save you from manual mistakes. For example, going over daily hour caps, forgetting a minimum engagement, or rostering someone on too many days in a cycle. Automating the routine parts cuts down on admin load and can keep you aligned with the rules.

9 practical tips for Miscellaneous Award rostering

Even though the Miscellaneous Award keeps its rostering rules fairly light, managing rosters for mixed-duty or hard-to-classify roles can still get messy. These practical tips can help you build rosters that run smoothly day to day, even when the award doesn’t spell out the details:

1. Use skills mapping to avoid bottlenecks

Because roles under this award often vary from person to person, map out who can do what. Roster coverage based on skill availability, not just headcount. This can help you avoid having the right number of people but the wrong mix of capability.

2. Keep duties balanced across the week

Mixed-duty roles can burn people out if you stack all the physical or mentally heavy work on the same days. Spread demanding tasks across the roster so no one ends up overloaded.

3. Build a buffer into your roster cycle

Absences can hit harder under this award because roles often blend multiple duties and rely on a specific person’s skills. Leaving some wiggle room in your weekly coverage can help you absorb sick days or last-minute changes without the entire roster falling apart.

4. Keep agency staff aligned with internal expectations

It can be easy for on-hire staff to miss internal comms. Build a simple process to brief them on expectations so they’re not lost in the roster.

5. Build your roster around natural workflow peaks

Under this award, roles often flex between tasks. Identify where your real pressure points are (not based on assumptions, but on actual workflow) and roster your strongest coverage there.

6. Avoid ‘Swiss cheese’ rosters

Short, scattered shifts may seem harmless, but they can create availability issues and reduce continuity in mixed-duty roles. Wherever possible, group hours into meaningful blocks so employees can complete full cycles of work.

7. Track how long duties actually take

Because job duties under this award can differ wildly, don’t rely on guesses about task duration. Track times. This can help prevent under- or over-staffing and keeps hours aligned with genuine business needs.

8. Create a shared handover system:

Non-standard roles often involve tasks that carry over to the next shift. A shared notes or handover process prevents mistakes and keeps the roster functioning well.

9. Roster breaks when workload naturally dips

The award only prescribes one meal break rule, so you have flexibility here. Use it to schedule breaks at moments where coverage is easiest to maintain, rather than an exact 'halfway through the shift' approach.

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How Miscellaneous Award rostering goes wrong (and how to fix it)

Jordan manages a small team where everyone’s job looks a little different. Some employees look after admin and customer service, others work across maintenance, logistics, or site support. Because the Miscellaneous Award covers mixed-duty and hard-to-classify roles, Jordan’s team doesn’t fit into tidy roster templates. When workloads spike, the roster starts to slip outside the award without Jordan noticing.

What went wrong

01
Hours drifted away from the 'regular pattern' requirement
Because duties changed day to day, Jordan kept tweaking people’s hours to match the work. Start times shifted, finish times crept out, and employees ended up with inconsistent patterns that no longer matched the award’s expectation for regular, predictable hours.
02
Start and finish times changed with little or no notice
Jordan often moved shifts around to cover urgent jobs or sudden absences. But he didn’t give the required seven days’ notice or get agreement when he needed to make a short-notice change.
03
The five-hour meal break rule kept getting missed
On busy days, employees worked long stretches without a proper break. Missing it even once put the business out of compliance.

How Jordan fixed it

01
Locked in a clear pattern for each role
Jordan created a simple weekly pattern with steady start and finish times for each employee. This gave structure to otherwise mixed-duty roles and made the roster predictable again.
02
Set up a quick approval process for changes
Before shifting someone’s hours, Jordan now checks in, gets agreement, and records the change (even if it’s just a text message). This keeps short-notice adjustments clean and compliant.
03
Added break prompts to the roster
Jordan built meal break reminders into the scheduling system so managers can see when someone is about to hit the five-hour limit. This helped the team stay compliant on busy days without relying on memory.

An easier way to roster under the Miscellaneous Award

Teams covered by the Miscellaneous Award don’t always fit into neat boxes. People do a range of jobs, hours shift around real workload, and you still need to keep patterns steady and compliant. It gets a lot easier when your systems talk to each other.

Rippling puts HR, payroll, time, and scheduling in one place. When someone updates their availability, changes their hours, or needs a variation to their pattern, the system updates their roster, timesheet, and pay rate automatically. You don’t have to follow up on changes or fix things in three different systems.

Rippling’s scheduling tool also understands the basics of the Miscellaneous Award, from the five-hour meal break rule, the daily hour limits, the six-day spread, and the need for a regular pattern of work. It flags issues before they turn into big problems and helps you keep everything neat and predictable.

And because approved hours flow straight into payroll, you don’t end up fixing errors at the end of the week. Penalties, loadings, and allowances land where they should. Less back-and-forth, fewer surprises, and a roster that really works in practice instead of just on paper.

FAQs

How do I roster a role that changes duties throughout the week?

Focus on keeping the hours regular instead of the tasks. The award cares about patterns of work, not the mix of duties inside the shift. You can vary tasks as needed as long as the employee’s agreed hours, break timing, and daily/weekly limits stay consistent.

Can someone move between full-time, part-time, and casual?

Yes, but the change isn’t automatic. You need to update their contract, confirm the new pattern of work, and make sure the hours match the category they’re moving into. For example, a casual moving to part-time needs a written, predictable pattern.

What if I don't know which modern award applies to a role?

Start by checking whether any industry award clearly covers the position. If the duties don’t line up with another award’s classifications, that’s when the Miscellaneous Award usually applies. It acts as a safety net when no other award fits.

Can I move someone’s normal duties to another worksite?

Yes, as long as the hours stay within the award rules. If the change will significantly impact the employee, for example, travel time, workload, or their regular pattern, then you may need to consult them under the award’s major-change clause.

What if an employee wants to change their availability?

Take it seriously, especially for part-time employees. If the change affects their regular pattern of work, you’ll need to revise the pattern in writing and make sure it still meets the ordinary hour rules for their employment type.

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Disclaimer

Rippling and its affiliates do not provide tax, accounting, or legal advice. This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied on for tax, accounting, or legal advice. You should consult your own tax, accounting and legal advisers before engaging in any related activities or transactions.