SCHADS Sleepover Changes 2026: What Changed and What Providers Must Do

The change comes from Fair Work Commission Full Bench decision [2025] FWCFB 292 (handed down 22 December 2025), which varies the SCHADS Award (MA000100). It is a set of clarifications and rule changes to how sleepover shifts work — not a change to the sleepover allowance dollar figure.

Critically, the variation does not switch on at a hard 1 June 2026 cutover. It applies from the first full pay period that starts on or after 1 June 2026. For most providers that means a slightly later in-practice start date, depending on where 1 June falls in your pay cycle. Check your own pay-period calendar and confirm the exact first affected period before you update payroll.

The four substantive changes are:

• Single continuous shift — work immediately before and after a sleepover is treated as one shift, not two.
• Sleepover is not a rest break — a sleepover period does not count as a break between periods of work (clause 25.4).
• Up to 12 ordinary hours by agreement — by written agreement, up to 12 hours across a sleepover shift can count as ordinary hours, capped at 8 hours either side.
• Loadings split across the sleepover — the work before and after the sleepover is assessed separately for shift allowances and penalties (clause 29.3).

The plain-English authority is the Fair Work Ombudsman page Changes to sleepovers in the SCHADS Award, and the underlying decision is [2025] FWCFB 292.

This is the change with the biggest payroll consequence. Under the variation, the period of work immediately before a sleepover and the period of work immediately after it are treated as a single continuous shift (clause 25.7). Previously these could be read as two separate shifts.

Worked example. A worker does an evening engagement of 6 hours, sleeps over, then works a morning engagement of 4 hours. That is now one shift with 10 hours of work attached to the sleepover — not a 6-hour shift and a separate 4-hour shift. Because the two work periods combine, the total counts toward overtime thresholds and the span of the shift as a single engagement.

For providers, this matters most where the combined before-and-after work pushes past ordinary-hours limits. If you have been treating the two sides as independent shifts for overtime purposes, your overtime calculation may now be wrong. See our SCHADS overtime rules reference for the thresholds.

The variation makes clear that a sleepover period does not count as a rest break between periods of work for the purposes of the break provisions in clause 25.4. In other words, you cannot treat the hours a worker spends sleeping over as the rest break they are entitled to between shifts.

There is a long-standing, separate rule that the general 10-hour rest break between shifts can be reduced to 8 hours by agreement on sleepover-contiguous shifts. That reduction-by-agreement mechanism is not what changed here — and the exact post-variation wording of clause 25.4 should be checked against the consolidated award before you quote it, because the two ideas are easy to conflate.

The practical takeaway: if your rostering logic ever assumed the sleepover hours satisfied a worker's rest entitlement, that assumption needs to be removed. Rest-break compliance must be assessed on actual non-work, non-sleepover time.

The variation introduces flexibility on ordinary hours. By written agreement between the employee and employer, up to 12 hours of work across a sleepover shift can be counted as ordinary hours (clause 25.7), subject to a cap:

• No more than 8 ordinary hours in the period before the sleepover, and
• No more than 8 ordinary hours in the period after the sleepover.

Any time worked beyond what the written agreement allows attracts overtime. Without a written agreement, you cannot rely on the 12-hour-ordinary arrangement — the agreement is the precondition.

Remember the continuing requirement that at least one of the work periods immediately before or after the sleepover must be rostered and paid as at least 4 hours of work for the sleepover arrangement to attach. The minimum 4-hour engagement must sit on one side of the sleepover — it cannot be split across it (for example, 2 hours before and 2 hours after). Read the two together: you need that minimum 4-hour engagement on one side, and you can structure up to 12 ordinary hours across the shift if both parties agree in writing.

Even though the before-and-after work is one shift for overtime and span purposes, the shift allowances and penalty rates are determined separately for each side (clause 29.3). The portion of work before the sleepover and the portion after it are each assessed on their own when working out which loading applies.

Worked example. An evening portion that runs into the night may attract a night-shift loading, while the early-morning portion after the sleepover may attract a different loading — or none. One side can earn a shift allowance and the other side may not. You cannot apply a single blanket loading across the whole engagement just because it is now treated as one shift for overtime. (The Full Federal Court decision in Fair Work Ombudsman v Jats Joint confirmed a sleepover does not, on its own, make the adjoining work attract the night-shift loading; the variation codifies this.)

This is the subtlety that trips up payroll: one shift for overtime and span, but two separate assessments for penalty loadings. See SCHADS penalty rates explained for how the loadings work.

The 2026 variation does not change the sleepover allowance itself. The allowance remains 4.9% of the standard rate per continuous (approximately 8-hour) sleepover night.

The dollar value of that allowance was approximately $60.02 per night as at 1 July 2025 (2025-26 figure — confirm the current figure via Fair Work, as published dollar values vary slightly by source and rounding). That number moves with the Annual Wage Review, not with this sleepover variation, so the post-1-July-2026 dollar value is a separate question. Before you put a current dollar figure into payroll for the 2026-27 year, verify the 1 July 2026 rate against the FWC pay database. For a fuller breakdown of how sleepovers are paid, see our SCHADS sleepover shift pay guide.

So there are two independent things to track: the rules changed on the first full pay period on or after 1 June 2026, and the allowance rate changes (if at all) with the Annual Wage Review from 1 July 2026.

A short action list to get ahead of the variation:

• Find your first affected pay period — work out which pay cycle is the first full period starting on or after 1 June 2026 and lock that as your change-over date.
• Fix overtime logic for combined shifts — make sure before-and-after sleepover work is summed as one shift when testing overtime thresholds.
• Put 12-hour ordinary-hours arrangements in writing — if you want to use the up-to-12-ordinary-hours flexibility, get a written agreement, and respect the 8-hour-each-side cap.
• Stop treating the sleepover as a rest break — assess rest-break compliance on real non-work time only.
• Split your penalty calculations — apply shift loadings separately to each side of the sleepover.
• Confirm the 1 July 2026 allowance rate — do not carry the $60.02 (1 July 2025) figure forward without checking the Annual Wage Review outcome.

This is a lot of moving parts on overnight shifts that are already hard to roster. CrossVault's Timesheet Validator reads your timesheets and flags sleepover shifts where the before-and-after work has not been combined for overtime, where loadings have been applied as a single blanket rate, and where the allowance is missing or mispriced.