Who would want to be working in a payroll/HR department if these awards and agreements have become so complex?
It's all computerized. Pay is made by the computer from the hours logged in Kronos via the finger scan, this "workjam" app, or manually on the adjustment sheet.
Store level office staff don't need to look at agreements unless they need to fix a problem.
Pay problems will come up for the following reasons:
Store office staff did not enter a manual adjustment correctly (sick, roster change, etc)
People Services (centralized HR) did not enter a new salaried contract correctly
People Services did not enter a new EBA correctly
Success Factors did not transfer a permanent roster change or leave approval to Kronos
Kronos stuffed up. (eg, putting someone on 15 weeks unpaid leave when they aren't and not let anyone change it)
The media might be tossing around large numbers of awards and agreements, but in Woolworths case, they have like 8 EBAs and 5 awards that apply to the group, and each time an award for a part of the group has changed, Kronos and Success Factors have been disabled to everyone except People Services while they update the awards in the system.
All of the common ways for pay to be messed up is easily noticed, if staff actually know what is in their agreement/contract and check their payslips. Of course, most don't.
For an underpayment to be this large (enough with the quoted amount being lower and claiming to cover fewer staff then it really does), and go on for so long, is for someone in Norwest to have decided to underpay people, likely in amounts each pay period that are too small to be noticed by any one person.