Client story: Underpayment of wages review

Background

RSM Australia’s Fraud & Forensic Services team was engaged under legal professional privilege by a law firm to conduct an independent review for their client, who is in the educational sector, in relation to the underpayment of wages for casual employees. The law firm engaged us to assist in erroneous payments made to casual employees that their client had identified.

Scope - The scope of the independent review involved:

1. Reviewing and reporting on the self-audit process within the scope;
2. Providing quality assurance that the process for identification of the underpayments was reasonable;
3. Confirming whether all underpayments were identified for Saturday work for casual employees; and
4. Confirming whether (based on a sample) the calculations provided to RSM were correct.

Our tailored approach included:

• Briefings held with key stakeholders.
• Obtained and analysed relevant client documentation, including:
  • Spreadsheet calculations for underpayment of wages.
  • Timesheet records.
  • Payslips.
  • Employee contracts.
  • Email correspondence.
• Analysed the supporting documentation and collated results.

Challenges, Issues and Risks

• Ensuring that legal professional privilege was maintained.
• Working through a period of 5 years’ worth of transactions for 225 employees.
• Source documentation and records provided by the client were not automated, as they were manually maintained and scanned.

Outcomes

RSM delivered a written report of factual findings as per the scoping requirements. This report identified that the client had been underpaying casual employees, errors in their calculations and rates used, inappropriate recording of timesheets, and further potential underpayment of wages that the client was not aware of.

Received positive client feedback of “We found the report very helpful indeed and thank you”.