The Health Professionals Award: a practice owner's guide

The first time you employ a physiotherapist, OT or speech pathologist, you take on an award whether you have read it or not. For employed allied health clinicians in private practice, that is generally the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020, and getting it wrong rarely shows up straight away. It shows up later, as an underpayment claim, a back-pay bill or an inquiry from the Fair Work Ombudsman, usually long after whoever set the pay rate has forgotten why.

This guide covers the shape of the award: who it covers, how classification works, and the parts that most often catch practice owners out. It deliberately gives no rates. Pay rates and allowances change at least once a year, and the Fair Work Ombudsman's pay guide for the award is the place to check them.

Who the award covers

The award covers employers in the health industry and their employees in two broad streams:

• Health professional employees, which includes the allied health disciplines a practice is likely to employ: physiotherapists, occupational therapists, speech pathologists, podiatrists, dietitians and exercise physiologists, among others.
• Support services employees, which can include reception and administration roles, depending on the duties.

Three points worth checking for your practice:

• Contractors are not employees, but the label does not decide it. A genuine independent contractor is not covered by the award. Whether someone is a contractor depends on the real working relationship, not the title on the contract. If you control when, where and how someone works, supply their patients and pay them by the hour, get advice.
• An enterprise agreement replaces the award for the employees it covers, and has to pass the better off overall test against the award to be approved.
• Coverage is by role, not by practice. Check each position against the award, because what the person actually does decides where they sit.

Classification levels, changed from 1 October 2026

The classifications for health professional employees changed on 1 October 2026, with new minimum rates, after the Fair Work Commission's review of gender-based undervaluation in this award. If you set anyone's pay before then, check it against the current award now. In outline:

• Level 1 is set by the qualification level the award lists for the profession and the employee's years of experience in the profession, in bands.
• Level 2 covers senior clinicians, specialists, supervisors and educators, split by years of experience in that role.
• Level 3 covers advanced clinicians, senior specialists and section managers, and Level 4 covers managers.

The award sets out how employees on the old classifications at 30 September 2026 move across. Support services employees still sit on levels with pay points, moving up yearly if full-time, or after a set number of hours of experience if part-time or casual.

Getting the level right is the decision that matters most, and it turns on the job, not the job title. A senior physiotherapist title on someone doing entry-level work does not move them up a level. A graduate title on someone carrying a complex caseload, supervising students and leading a service may understate where they sit. Read the classification definitions against what the person actually does, write down why you chose the level, and review it when their role changes.

Check how the award counts prior experience before you set a new employee's rate, too. Level 1 counts experience in the profession, so someone with years of experience elsewhere is not a first-year employee because they are new to you.

Hours, overtime and penalties

The award sets ordinary hours and when they can be worked, and higher rates for work outside them. The parts that matter most in allied health:

• Overtime for hours beyond ordinary hours, at rates that rise with the length of the overtime
• Penalty rates for weekend and public holiday work
• Rules for part-time employees about agreed hours and what happens when they work beyond them
• Casual loading and minimum engagements, alongside the casual employment rules in the Fair Work Act

A mobile practitioner whose last visit runs late, or a clinic open on Saturday mornings, can cost more than the base rate suggests. Model the real hours before you advertise them.

Allowances that often apply in allied health

• Vehicle allowance. If an employee uses their own car for work, such as driving between home visits, the award provides a per-kilometre allowance. In a mobile practice this is often a large and easily missed cost.
• On-call allowances, and the rules for pay when someone is recalled to work, if staff are rostered to be available outside their hours.
• Meal allowances when overtime runs beyond set lengths.
• Uniform and laundry allowances if you require a uniform and do not supply or launder it.
• Higher duties when someone acts in a more senior role.

Check each against the current pay guide, which lists every allowance with its current amount and the conditions that trigger it.

The obligations around the award

The award sits on top of the National Employment Standards and the rest of the Fair Work Act. At a minimum, practice owners need to:

• Give new employees the Fair Work Information Statement, and the Casual Employment Information Statement where it applies
• Issue payslips on time and keep employee records for as long as the law requires
• Pay superannuation at the current guarantee rate and by the current deadlines, which have been changing; confirm both with the ATO
• Report pay through Single Touch Payroll
• Apply the annual wage review increase from the date the Fair Work Commission sets, usually the first full pay period on or after 1 July

Keeping it organised in AspireOS

AspireOS is not a payroll system and does not decide award rates; that stays with you, your payroll software and the Fair Work Ombudsman's pay guide. What it does is keep the people side in one place. Each staff file records whether the person is an employee or contractor, their hours and FTE, and their rate card, visible to the owner only. Guided onboarding at a new practitioner's first sign-in collects their details, licences, insurance and checks into their file, and emails employees the Fair Work statements. The Compliance matrix tracks credentials such as Ahpra registration by expiry, which our post on credential expiry covers in depth.

On the Full plan, timesheets drawn from completed visits go through line-by-line approval, leave is approved against balances, and Payroll prep gives you each fortnight's approved hours per employee with problem flags and import files for QuickBooks Payroll. It does not lodge Single Touch Payroll or pay super. AspireAi can also search the web for general questions such as award rates, but the pay guide remains the source to confirm against. The product overview shows how these pieces fit together.

Whether you are hiring your first employee or your fifth, book a demo and we will show you the staff file, onboarding and payroll prep on screen.