Making award and rate changes a controlled payroll process

Published 7 October 2026 · Team member career experience

These stories describe experience gained by a SESAY team member in previous employment roles. They are not presented as SESAY client engagements. Employer and employee names are omitted. Outcomes reflect the team member’s career records and are not guarantees of future results.

More than five rate-change implementations

Situation

A complex payroll environment involved multiple awards, enterprise agreements and project arrangements. Rate changes and new configurations had to be translated into payroll-system behaviour, with the risk that an incorrect setup could affect subsequent pay runs.

Task

A SESAY team member led more than five award and annual rate-change implementations within Definitiv. The responsibility included understanding the applicable requirements and ensuring the system change was reviewed and validated before use.

Action

The team member reviewed and configured payroll rules, led testing and validation, and strengthened governance and change control around configuration changes. Related project-mobilisation work included employee classifications, cost-allocation structures and approval before go-live. This placed the rate update inside a wider payroll-control process.

Result

The documented outcome was delivery of multiple award and rate-change implementations and stronger implementation controls and audit readiness. There is no separately verified error-elimination percentage for these changes, so the story does not borrow metrics from unrelated improvement programs.

What this experience brings to SESAY

This experience informs SESAY’s approach to payroll systems: a changed rate is only part of the work. The affected rules, employees, effective dates and outputs need attention too. Technical implementation should remain connected to the approved employment requirements and accountable review.