In the last month of its omnipotence as sole regulator of the university sector, the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) has issued a Statement of Regulatory Expectations on “workplace obligations.”
The announcement identifies measures all HE providers – especially public universities – must take to demonstrate their payrolls are in shape. And to make it so, Vice-Chancellors are required to attest their university “has met” expectations, supported by an index of evidence.
Lest anybody assume TEQSA is just going through the regulatory motions, it also announces, “the expectations will be integrated into TEQSA’s regulatory activities, including registration and re-registration processes, and annual compliance and risk assessments.”
The agency also makes clear it is especially interested in public universities because it is where risks of non-compliance are concentrated.
What TEQSA less requests than requires, includes:
- Providers take independent advice to ”identify and address” potential risks in their payroll and employment systems
- Governing bodies oversight people and systems
- The buck stopping at the top. “The provider’s governing body takes active and on-going responsibility for ensuring compliance with all workplace and industrial obligations,” including; “robust, fit-for-purpose systems are in place to prevent, detect, and respond to non-compliance.”
In 2021, then-TEQSA Chief Commissioner Peter Coaldrake told universities to sort out their systems so staff were not underpaid. “The issue has been around long enough now that we are quite concerned at the unevenness that has been demonstrated across the sector.”
It’s been around a way longer now. That it has taken four more years and dozens of action by the Fair Work Ombudsman against universities for TEQSA to toughen up prompts the inevitable question – what took it so long?