Gyms and Fitness Studios: Casual Trainers and Split Shifts

The fitness industry has one compliance question that dwarfs every other: are your personal trainers actually contractors? The industry has treated them as contractors for decades, on ABNs, with service agreements. Since August 2024 that arrangement is judged by the real substance, practical reality and true nature of the relationship — and a written agreement is no longer the answer.

For a great many gyms, the honest answer to the substance test is uncomfortable. This guide starts there, then covers split shifts, minimum engagement for classes, and the unpaid preparation time that is endemic to the sector.

The trainer classification question

Apply the test to a typical arrangement. A trainer who:

• works shifts the gym rosters, at times the gym sets;
• uses the gym's equipment, in the gym's premises, wearing the gym's uniform;
• trains clients the gym allocated and bills through the gym's system;
• cannot send someone else in their place; and
• takes no commercial risk — no profit or loss, no quoting, no defect liability

...is very difficult to characterise as running their own business, whatever the service agreement says. Control, absence of a genuine right of delegation, absence of commercial risk and integration into the business all point one way.

Contrast a trainer who rents floor space or pays a licence fee, sets their own hours, finds and bills their own clients, brings their own insurance, and could send a qualified colleague. That is a genuinely different arrangement, and it is the one the contractor model was built for.

Most gyms have both, and treat them identically. The specific exposures if the classification is wrong:

• Superannuation — and note this applies even to a genuine contractor who is engaged wholly or principally for their labour, which describes most individual trainers. This is the most likely live liability, and under Payday Super it now surfaces within weeks rather than years.
• Award entitlements — minimum rates, penalties, leave, minimum engagement.
• Sham contracting, where the defence now turns on whether you reasonably believed the person was a contractor, which means not having checked is no longer protective.
• Workers compensation, which is state-based and has its own deeming provisions — and which surfaces at the worst possible moment, when someone is injured.

Our guide to employee versus contractor works through the full test. The practical step is to review each arrangement against the substance, write down the reasoning, and act on what you find.

Split shifts are the industry's natural roster

Demand is bimodal — before work and after work — with a quiet middle. So the natural roster is 5.30am to 9.30am and 4pm to 8pm, which is a split or broken shift, not two shifts.

Where the Fitness Industry Award 2010 permits broken shifts it does so on conditions, typically including a limit on the number of breaks, a maximum span for the whole shift, and an allowance. Three things follow:

• Check the span limit. A 5.30am start and an 8pm finish is a 14.5-hour span, which may exceed what the award allows regardless of how few hours are actually worked.
• Pay the allowance where one applies. It is routinely missed because the shift is thought of as two separate ones.
• Consider the fatigue and retention cost. A 14-hour span for six hours' pay is one of the main reasons the industry loses staff.

Minimum engagement and the one-hour class

A group fitness instructor comes in to teach a 45-minute class. The award's minimum engagement means they are paid for a minimum period, which is often longer.

This is not a loophole to route around — it is the award recognising that travelling to a workplace for 45 minutes is not a proportionate use of someone's day. The correct response is to build rosters that respect it: cluster classes, combine class delivery with floor shifts, or accept the cost as the real cost of running a class at that time.

Working out that a 45-minute class actually costs a minimum engagement plus preparation is also, usefully, how you find out which classes are not viable.

The preparation time nobody records

Endemic across the industry and rarely deliberate:

• Class preparation — programming, music, setting up and packing down equipment.
• Client programming — writing programs and reviewing progress outside session time.
• Opening and closing — an early shift that starts before opening because the doors need unlocking and the floor needs setting up.
• Cleaning, which increased substantially as an expectation and is straightforwardly work.

If the roster records "6am to 10am" and the trainer arrives at 5.40 to open and set up, the twenty minutes is worked time. Recording actual start and finish times rather than session times makes it visible — and lets you decide whether to roster it or remove it, rather than having it happen unpaid by default.

Twenty-four hour gyms and unstaffed hours

Many gyms operate staffed hours plus unstaffed access. Two implications for time and attendance:

• Staff working alone in early morning or late evening are lone workers, with the work health and safety obligations that follow — a means of raising an alarm, and a process for when contact is lost. A clock-in that does not happen is a welfare signal, not just an attendance one.
• Multi-site casual staff are common, and hours must be recorded per location. Someone covering two clubs in a week may be entitled to different penalties and may cross an overtime threshold that neither site's roster shows on its own.

A short checklist

1. Review every trainer arrangement against the substance test, and record your reasoning.
2. Check superannuation for anyone engaged principally for their labour, contractor or not.
3. Confirm your split shifts fit the award's span and break limits, and pay the allowance.
4. Apply minimum engagement to class-only shifts and roster accordingly.
5. Record actual start and finish times, so setup and pack-down are captured.
6. Treat solo shifts as lone working, with a check-in that is monitored.
7. Aggregate hours across locations for staff who work at more than one.

Where to check the detail

The Fitness Industry Award 2010 is on the Fair Work Commission website. The employee-contractor definition is in the Fair Work Act 2009; the superannuation labour test is in the Superannuation Guarantee (Administration) Act 1992. Workers compensation and lone worker duties are state and territory law.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Given the size of the classification exposure, this is an area worth paying for advice on.