Check whether your staff classifications match the work actually being done

This service is often useful for businesses with several roles that have changed over time, businesses hiring into new positions, or employers who suspect their current classifications were set informally and never properly reviewed. It can also help where managers, payroll staff and employment documents are not all using the same assumptions. Industries with mixed duties, shift work, supervisory layers or evolving responsibilities often benefit from a closer look because small role changes can affect the legal analysis more than employers expect.

The review can uncover mismatches between job titles and actual duties, inconsistencies between employment agreements and payroll settings, unclear treatment of supervisory responsibilities, and role descriptions that no longer reflect the work being performed. It can also highlight where internal documents use broad labels without enough detail to support the classification decision. The right wording depends on the deal structure, the documents exchanged and how the arrangement operates in practice, so the analysis is usually about substance rather than labels alone.

Because classification questions are rarely answered by a job title on its own. Two employees with similar titles may be doing materially different work in practice, with different levels of responsibility, autonomy, supervision or hands-on duties. If the documents say one thing but the workplace reality shows another, the factual arrangement can carry significant weight. That is why the review looks beyond the contract wording and considers how the role operates on the ground, including reporting lines, tasks and how the position has evolved over time.

It usually helps to provide employment agreements, role descriptions, organisational charts if available, payroll or classification records, and a practical summary of what each relevant employee actually does. If duties have changed since the documents were first prepared, that context is important too. The more accurately the material reflects the real role, the more useful the review will be. Where there are grey areas, we may ask follow-up questions about supervision, decision-making authority, roster patterns or how responsibilities are divided across the team.

You will receive advice on the main classification issues identified and the practical steps that may be worth considering next. That might include updating role descriptions, revising employment documents, checking payroll assumptions or getting further advice on a particular role if the facts are finely balanced. This service We will make the key issues clear so you can decide what to do next. especially if there is already a live disagreement or incomplete information about how the role operates in practice.

Just submit an enquiry via this page or click the 'get started' button on our website to submit an enquiry. After you've submitted an enquiry, one of our legal consultants will review your enquiry within 1 business day and get in touch to get a better idea of exactly what you are looking for.

Then your legal consultant will send through an email with a bit more information about the services you need, along with a fixed fee quote setting out costs, scope of the service and timing. Have a read through it, and if you're happy with the scope, you can accept and sign our engagement letter online - easy!

Once you've formally accepted, we'll connect you with a specialist lawyer and they will work with you to complete your project. They will contact you by email or phone if they need to get in touch.

Sprintlaw works on fixed-fee pricing wherever possible, so you can review the scope and cost before you decide whether to proceed. For the Award Classification Review service, pricing starts from $900.00.

After you enquire, a legal consultant will confirm what is included, the expected timing and whether any extra work is needed before you engage us.

We operate completely online, which means we can help you wherever you are in New Zealand. We have office spaces in Sydney, and in Melbourne, but our use of technology allows our team members to work remotely from around the world. Our legal team are mostly based in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth. We also have a London office for Sprintlaw UK.

Our legal team is made up of experienced lawyers, who are specialists in various areas of law and hold an Australian legal practising certificate. None of our Sprintlaw lawyers are New Zealand qualified lawyers and they do not currently hold a New Zealand practising certificate.

They provide legal services working remotely from Australia via our 'legal consultancy' model, through which (under section 6 and section 35 of the New Zealand Lawyers and Conveyancers Act 2006) our Australian legal team are permitted to provide legal services to New Zealand businesses provided they do not provide services in certain 'reserved' areas of law. You can read our FAQ page to learn a bit more about our 'legal consultancy' model.

Given the strong similarities between Australian and New Zealand law, and the areas of law in which we practice (being small business and startup law), we do not view the fact that our lawyers have not qualified in New Zealand as having any substantive impact on the quality of our service. We are committed to ensuring that we provide high quality, affordable legal services to all our New Zealand clients.

Our legal team have all trained at leading firms, but have left the traditional corporate law world to join us on our mission to create a new and better way of delivering legal services. They have specialist expertise in technology law, intellectual property law, contract drafting and review, corporate law and commercial law.