A guide published by Dotto
Business transformation: the duties that come with big change
When a business changes how it runs, duties follow the change to the people it touches. Award consultation clauses generally require an employer that has decided on major change in production, organisation, structure or technology to consult the employees it is likely to significantly affect, and a planned change to regular rosters or ordinary hours also needs consultation first. The Fair Work Ombudsman says redundancies must be genuine. Records have to survive a change of system, privacy is best built in at the design stage, and a change to customers’ standard terms can fall under the unfair contract terms law.
General information about the rules a changing business works within, not legal, employment, tax or privacy advice for any business or any job. The official places to check are the Fair Work Ombudsman, the Fair Work Commission, the ATO, the OAIC and the ACCC.
What counts as a big change
The Fair Work Ombudsman describes major workplace change as a change to the business that significantly affects employees, and gives different working hours, duties, work locations and redundancies as examples. Its redundancy page lists the kinds of change that can end a job: new technology that lets a machine do it, a slowdown in sales or production, a closure, a move interstate or overseas, and a restructure or reorganisation, including after a merger or takeover.
Customers can be touched too. The ACCC gives the example of a business that replaces in-person guitar lessons with online ones, or gym memberships with online workout plans, part way through an agreed period of service, and says consumers may then be entitled to a remedy.
The change calendar
Each duty has its own moment in a change project. Here they are in the order a project usually meets them, with the timing each source gives.
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Planning and design
Personal information
The OAIC says a privacy impact assessment should be done at a stage “early enough for it to influence how the project proceeds (for example, at the planning and design or business case stage)”.
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Once the decision is made
Consulting staff
Award consultation clauses generally apply once an employer has decided on major change likely to significantly affect employees, and ask it to tell those affected and their representatives, then discuss the change with them as soon as possible after the decision. A planned change to regular rosters or ordinary hours needs consultation with the affected employees before it is made.
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Before anyone is dismissed
Fifteen or more jobs
Under section 530 of the Fair Work Act, “If an employer decides to dismiss 15 or more employees for reasons of an economic, technological, structural or similar nature, or for reasons including such reasons”, it must give Centrelink written notice “as soon as practicable after making the decision” and “before dismissing an employee in accordance with the decision.” Section 534 leaves some employees outside this duty, including casual employees and employees dismissed for serious misconduct. Where any of the employees to be dismissed were union members, section 531 adds a duty at the same moment: to notify the union, with set details, and give it an opportunity to consult; the redundancy guide sets out its conditions.
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Before the old system goes
Records
The ATO’s ruling on electronic records accepts true and clear electronic copies of paper records, but not a copy whose conversion leaves it incomplete or inaccurate. Where records sit in cloud storage, the ATO asks businesses to download a complete copy before changing software provider and losing access.
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When customer terms change
Standard form contracts
The ACCC says the unfair contract terms changes of 9 November 2023 apply to standard form contracts made or renewed on or after that date, and to any term varied or added on or after it.
The five guides
- Consulting staff about major workplace change
Where the duty comes from, the steps a consultation clause sets out, and when consent is and is not needed.
- Redundancy and genuine redundancy after a restructure
Section 389’s test, redeployment, redundancy pay under the National Employment Standards, and the notice for 15 or more jobs.
- Moving business records from paper to digital
What a true and clear copy is, what still has to be kept, and what the ATO can ask for afterwards.
- New systems and personal information
Privacy by design, the threshold question, and the OAIC’s ten steps of a privacy impact assessment.
- Changing terms with customers
Variation clauses, the 9 November 2023 changes, and what the ACCC says makes a change more balanced.
How these pages are written
Each guide rests on one official source and names it under its title: the Fair Work Ombudsman’s guide to consultation, section 389 of the Fair Work Act, the ATO’s page on digital record keeping, the OAIC’s guide to privacy impact assessments, and the ACCC’s guidance on contracts. Laws and pages published under an open licence are quoted; the Fair Work Ombudsman’s and the Fair Work Commission’s pages are put in plain words. Each page lists its sources at its foot, and every page was checked against them on 8 October 2026.