Individual flexibility arrangements

The Fair Work Act 2009 requires all enterprise agreements to have a clause permitting individual flexibility arrangements (IFAs). These are written agreements with individual employees that vary the operation of the agreement in relation to the employee concerned in respect of issues specified in the individual flexibility clause (which is contained in clause 7 of the University's Enterprise Agreement).

Individual arrangements are entirely voluntary, and must result in the employee being better off overall.

The Enterprise Agreement (EA) allows IFAs to be entered into for the purposes of participating in the “Reduced Working Weeks Scheme”, under which staff may seek approval to reduce their annual number of working weeks, and receive a corresponding reduction in pay, with the reduced payments being spread over a full year. Under the previous EAs, this option had only been available to general staff, but the new EA extends it to academic and Centre for English Teaching staff. As with the existing scheme, participation requires approval from the relevant supervisor.