How to Prepare for the 1st October Changes to the Health Professionals Award
From the first full pay period on or after 1 October 2026, the pay and classification structure for health professionals under the Health Professionals and Support Services Award 2020 changes completely.
If you employ health professionals including occupational therapists, physiotherapists, psychologists, dietitians, podiatrists, medical imaging technologists or other allied health professionals, this is not a straight forward wage adjustment. It is a full reclassification exercise, and it is built on qualifications and years of experience rather than the old flat pay points.
Practices that have never paid much attention to award compliance, because salaries have traditionally sat well above the minimum, are the ones most exposed right now.
What Actually Changes Under the New Structure
Every health professional employee covered by the Health Professionals and Support Services (HPSS) Award needs to be reassessed against the new structure before 1 October 2026. That reassessment is based on their Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF) level, their total years of experience in the profession, and the duties they actually perform.
The old Level 1 pay point system is being replaced entirely. This applies regardless of how long someone has worked for you, because progression is now based on professional experience, not tenure with your business.
If you have been treating award compliance as something that only matters for lower-paid roles, it is worth taking a different approach with this. You have probably been so focused on client care, rosters and keeping the practice running that award classifications have sat in the background, doing their own thing without much scrutiny. That has worked fine while pay rates sat comfortably above the award floor. The problem is that the floor is about to move, and for some employees it will move a long way. A margin that felt safe in July can look a lot thinner by October, and thinner again once the staged increases keep landing through to 2030.
In many, many cases, employees who are now a Level 2, will be reclassified as a Level 1, and this is going to require careful communication with the team members involved to ensure they understand the changes, and they are not worse off under these changes.
Why the Change Is Happening
The Fair Work Commission handed down its decision on 26 May 2026 as part of a broader review into gender-based undervaluation across female-dominated professions. The Commission found that the existing HPSS structure had not properly reflected the qualifications, complexity and responsibility involved in allied health work, and that the flat pay point system had let that undervaluation persist.
The fix is not a single pay bump. It is a five-stage phased increase running from 1 October 2026 through to June 2030, layered on top of the usual Annual Wage Review rises, which the Commission has confirmed will stack rather than offset each other.
How the New Classification Structure Actually Works
Instead of one generic Level 1 with pay points based on tenure, employees are now classified using two factors together: their AQF qualification level and their total years of experience in the profession. A graduate physiotherapist and a physiotherapist with six years of experience are no longer treated the same simply because they both started at your practice on the same day. The years of experience that count are professional years, not years with your business specifically, which matters if you have hired anyone experienced from another practice or from overseas. Duties also matter here. Employees performing specialist, supervisory or management functions may sit at a different level again, so this is not a box you can tick from a position title alone.
What You Need to Do Before 1 October
The practical work starts with a list. Identify every employee covered by the HPSS Award, separating your health professional stream from any support services staff, since the two are treated differently under this change.
For each health professional, confirm their qualification and AQF level, their total years of professional experience including time gained before they joined you, and a clear picture of their actual duties, particularly anyone doing specialist or supervisory work.
From there, map each person to the new classification structure and compare their current pay against the new minimum. Where an increase is required, you will need to update your payroll system, confirm allowances, penalties, overtime and superannuation all flow through correctly, and communicate the new classification and rate to the employee clearly.
None of this is complicated in isolation. It becomes a genuine project when you are doing it across a whole team on a deadline.
What Happens If You Get It Wrong
The risk here is underpayment, not just an awkward conversation. If a margin above the award has narrowed or disappeared and you have not reclassified correctly, you can end up underpaying an employee without ever intending to.
The new determination does include a retained rates clause, so nobody currently employed loses money on the transition itself.
That protection does not extend to getting the ongoing classification wrong from 1 October onward.
Underpayment claims under a modern award are not limited to base rate, either. They flow through into penalties, overtime, leave loading and superannuation, which is exactly why the classification work needs to happen properly before the pay run, not after someone raises a question about their payslip.
In working with my PowerBoss clients and members of our People Powered HR Community, we are seeing complexities arise when specialist or senior clinical roles have never been clearly defined, and there is uncertainty about where staff should actually be classified. This is resulting in some tricky conversations we are helping them navigate, because some team members may perceive their experience to translate into a senior role, but in reality it doesn’t.
It helps to compare the old system with the new one directly. Under the old structure, a health professional's pay point was largely a function of time in your business, which meant two employees with very different professional backgrounds could end up on the same rate simply because they started around the same time.
Under the new structure, that same pair could sit two or three classification levels apart, because qualifications and total professional experience are now doing the work that tenure used to do. This is a genuinely different way of thinking about pay, not a relabelling of the old levels, and treating it as a simple rename is where most of the risk sits.
Does This Apply to Every Allied Health Employee?
It applies to anyone covered by the professional classification stream of the HPSS Award, which includes physiotherapists, occupational therapists, podiatrists, psychologists, audiologists, chiropractors, dietitians, medical imaging technologists and a range of other allied health professions. Support services staff, such as receptionists and practice managers, are covered by a separate part of the award and are not affected by this particular change.
What If My Staff Are Already Paid Above the Award?
Being paid above the award today does not guarantee you stay above it after 1 October. The safest approach is to run the classification exercise regardless of current pay levels, because the size of the increase for some classifications is substantial enough to close gaps that have existed comfortably for years.
Does Experience Gained Before They Joined My Business Count?
Yes. Progression under the new structure is based on total years of experience in the profession, not years of service with you specifically. An experienced hire brings their professional years with them.
What Happens to Stage Two Through Five?
The 1 October 2026 change is stage one of five. Further increases land every 30 June from 2027 through to 2030, in addition to whatever the Annual Wage Review adds in the years in between. Budgeting for this needs to look further out than the immediate pay run.
If you have not started mapping your team against the new structure yet, this is the week to start, not the week before it takes effect.
We are running a dedicated workshop on the 24th September covering exactly this reclassification process step by step, including how to confirm AQF levels, count professional experience correctly, and avoid the most common mistakes practices are making right now.
If you’re interested in registering for that you can click here to do that today.
