Fair Work Commission

These tips have been developed to assist employers in making and lodging enterprise agreements. Visit making an agreement for further information.

Tips for the agreement making process

1. Comply with timeframes

Comply with the statutory timeframes for agreement making. Our Date Calculator can assist you with this.

2. Provide Notice of Employee Representational Rights (NERR)

Provide your employees with a compliant NERR. Our NERR generator can assist you with this.

3. Provide relevant information

Provide as much relevant information as possible when completing the application form and statutory declaration. This includes:

• when and how the NERR was provided to your employees
• effect of the agreement was explained to employees
• when and how you informed employees of the time and place of the vote, when the vote took place, as well as the method of voting; and
• details of any terms that are more or less beneficial than the relevant award(s) awards that would apply to employees

Attach any relevant documents about these matters to your application, including copies of the NERR, emails to employees about the voting process and copies of any material provided to employees to explain the terms of the agreement and the effect of those terms.

4. Sign and date forms

Ensure all submitted forms are correctly signed and dated. 

Please note: The agreement, including the signature page, will be pubished on the Fair Work Commission website. If you prefer to protect your privacy, you may wish to use your business address rather than your residential address when witnessing an agreement.

Tips for agreement content

5. Be aware of nominal expiry dates

Nominal expiry dates must be no more than 4 years from the date the agreement is approved by the Fair Work Commission (not the date the agreement commences).

6. Redundancy and notice of termination entitlements

Redundancy and notice of termination entitlements must provide at least the same entitlements as the National Employment Standards (NES). 

Apprentices must not be excluded from notice of termination provisions.

7. Shiftworkers

If the agreement covers shiftworkers, ensure you explicitly define them as 'shiftworkers for the purposes of NES'.

8. Dispute resolution provision

Ensure the dispute resolution provision allows the Fair Work Commission (or another independent person) to settle disputes and allows for representation of employees if there is a dispute.

9. Relationship to award

If the agreement relies on provisions from an award, make it clear that the agreement incorporates either those provisions or the entire award (rather than ‘is to be read in conjunction with the award’).

10. Public holidays

Any definition of public holidays must include 'holidays declared or prescribed by, or under, a law of a State or Territory'.