Dear former colleagues,
I’m writing to you today to let you know about an error we have recently discovered in our payroll systems. This error affects some employees employed under the General Retail Industry Award and the Fast Food Industry Award and may have resulted in some employees not being paid correctly.
Firstly, I want to unreservedly apologise for this, and to personally reassure you that we will pay back every cent, plus interest, that we may owe to our current or former employees.
The error relates to entitlements under the Awards that were not correctly calculated by our payroll system. You may be affected if you:
• were a retail employee and worked two shifts without a twelve-hour break between those shifts; or
• were either a retail or fast food employee, employed on a part-time basis, who worked additional shifts or different hours from your usual roster without us first seeking your agreement to this.
We discovered this error while testing our new payroll system, Roubler, which goes live on 28 April 2019.
To help us better understand the scale of the error we have engaged external advisors who are working hard to identify who has been affected and how much we owe each person. If we identify any other payroll issues as part of this process, these will also be addressed and rectified.
I need to be up front and tell you that it may take several months to work through this process. I can however personally reassure you that we are completely focused on getting this issue resolved as soon as we can and paying you back what we owe. We have notified the Fair Work Ombudsman of this error and we will be conferring with them going forward.
As progress is made, we will keep you fully updated through our www.whsmith.com.au
As you no longer work for WHSmith, we need to ensure we have your correct contact details so we can contact you if we need your assistance in the rectification process, including to inform you of any money owing to you. Please use the above link to confirm your current contact details.
We know you may have lots of questions, so we have prepared an FAQ to help you understand the situation better. In addition, we have an email address, awardcompliance@whsmith.com.au to which you can send any questions not covered in the FAQ. At this stage we are unable to provide individual updates but we will keep you up to date and engage with you about the process as it progresses.
Finally, let me reinforce how sorry we are about this situation. We would never knowingly underpay anyone. We have fixed the problem going forward and we will absolutely pay back every cent to everyone who has been affected.
Kind regards,
Carl Hargrave
Managing Director
WHSmith Australia Pty Ltd
E: c.hargrave@whsmith.com.au
Click here to complete an Award Compliance Employee Information Form