Casual Conversion in Australia: The Employee Choice Pathway and What Your Rosters Show

Casual conversion is how a casual employee becomes a permanent one. Since 26 August 2024 the National Employment Standards route is the employee choice pathway: a casual with at least 6 months’ employment, or 12 months with a small business, can tell their employer in writing that they believe they’re no longer casual. The employer must consult and answer in writing within 21 days.

The answer turns on a question your rosters have been answering all along: how does the work actually run? A casual who has worked the same four night shifts every week for a year, beside permanent crew doing the same job, has a record that says something. So does a casual who picks up a shift when one comes up and knocks back half of them.

This guide covers the pathway, the definition it tests and the records that decide it. Pay rates, loadings and leave belong to your award and your payroll system, and this is general information, not legal advice.

What changed on 26 August 2024

The Fair Work Legislation Amendment (Closing Loopholes No. 2) Act 2024 rewrote both the definition of a casual and the way a casual becomes permanent. Before that date the NES pathway was called casual conversion and ran on employer offers and employee requests. From that date it became the employee choice pathway, where the casual decides whether to give notice and the employer can refuse only on set grounds.

The Fair Work Ombudsman’s page on becoming a permanent employee says employment before 26 August 2024 isn’t counted when working out eligibility, and that casuals already employed then could first give notice from 26 February 2025, or 26 August 2025 with a small business. Both dates have passed, so for any crew you run in late 2026 the employee choice pathway is the only NES route. A casual can still go permanent at any time if you both agree, and the casual can choose to stay casual and never use the pathway at all.

Who counts as casual now

The definition is where every notice starts, because the casual’s claim is that they no longer meet it. A person is a casual employee if, when they start, the relationship has no firm advance commitment to ongoing work, and they’re entitled to a casual loading or a casual pay rate.

Whether there’s a firm advance commitment is assessed on “the real substance, practical reality and true nature” of the relationship, in the Ombudsman’s words, and the Ombudsman’s casual employees page lists the factors that must be considered:

• whether the employer can offer or not offer work, and whether that’s happening
• whether the employee can accept or reject work, and whether that’s happening
• whether it’s reasonably likely there will be future work of the kind the employee usually does, based on the nature of the business
• whether full-time or part-time employees do the same kind of work in the business
• whether the employee has a regular pattern of work, even if it changes over time because of reasonable absences such as illness, injury or leave

No single factor decides it, and the list isn’t closed. The Ombudsman is explicit that a regular pattern of work on its own doesn’t mean there’s a firm advance commitment, so a casual rostered every week can still be a genuine casual. What the law looks at is the contract plus the mutual understanding worked out from how the contract is actually performed. That is the part a roster records.

How the employee choice pathway works

Eligibility. A casual can give notice if they’ve been employed for at least 6 months, or 12 months if the employer is a small business, and they believe they no longer meet the casual definition. A small business employer has fewer than 15 employees, counting associated entities and counting casuals only if they’re engaged on a regular and systematic basis.

When they can’t. A casual can’t give notice while they’re in a dispute with you about the pathway, or within 6 months of you refusing a previous notice or of a dispute about it being resolved.

Consultation. Before you respond you must consult the employee, including on whether they’d be full-time or part-time, what their hours would be and when the change would start.

The 21-day response. Your written response is due within 21 days of the notice. An acceptance states the new status, the new hours and the start date. The change takes effect from the first day of the first full pay period starting after your response, unless you agree on another day.

Refusal. A refusal must give reasons, and the Ombudsman lists the only reasons available:

The Ombudsman publishes a checklist and response template for employers, and it’s worth using: a refusal without written reasons falls short of the rule before anyone looks at the roster.

What your rosters and timesheets show

Every factor in the definition is a question about how work was offered and done, and every one of them already lives in a record you keep. This is where the decision gets made, and where most businesses find out their records were never built to answer it.

Read the table as two sets of evidence. A casual pointing at 40 weeks of Monday to Thursday nights with the same crew has a pattern, and a business that rostered them rather than offered them shifts has some explaining to do. A business pointing at a worker who declined a third of the shifts offered, and whose hours swing with the job, has a genuine casual relationship on paper and in practice.

The pattern record is the one most often missing. A spreadsheet roster saved over each week keeps the current fortnight and loses the history, which is the only part that matters here. The same goes for timesheets on paper, where the approved hours exist but nobody can line them up by worker across 12 months. Our guide to the employee records you must keep covers the hours records the Fair Work rules already require for casuals paid by the hour.

Labour hire casuals and host sites

For an on-hire casual the employer is the labour hire provider, not the host, so the notice goes to the provider and the small business test runs on the provider’s headcount. The firm advance commitment factors are assessed in the employer’s business, which points to the provider’s own pattern of placements rather than any one host’s roster. How that plays out for a particular worker is a question for the provider and its advisers.

That creates a records problem the host doesn’t see. The pattern of work is set by host rosters, the confirmations happen on the host’s site, and the approved hours come back on host-signed timesheets. A provider asked to respond in 21 days needs that history by worker, across every placement, and can’t get it from a stack of client spreadsheets. Our guide to labour hire host employer obligations covers who holds which duty on site, and labour hire software built for on-hire crews keeps placements, confirmations and approved hours in one history per worker.

What you can’t do once a casual looks permanent

The Ombudsman is plain that an employer can’t act to dodge the pathway. You can’t reduce or vary a casual’s hours, change their pattern of work or end their employment to avoid the right to change to permanent employment. Giving notice, receiving a written response and taking part in a dispute are workplace rights, so adverse action against a casual for using them is prohibited under the general protections.

The roster is the record here as well. A casual whose shifts drop from four a week to one in the fortnight after they give notice has a story that tells itself, and the roster history is how it gets told. The rules run the other way too: it’s illegal to knowingly mislead a full-time or part-time employee into casual employment doing the same work, or to dismiss them to rehire them as a casual.

When a notice ends in a dispute

Disputes go to the workplace first. If talking it through doesn’t settle it, the Fair Work Commission’s casual to permanent page says the Commission can mediate or conciliate, make a recommendation or express an opinion, and if that fails a Commission Member can arbitrate. Orders can include that the employee continues to be treated as casual or is treated as full-time or part-time. The application is Form F10A.

An arbitration about casual status is an argument about how the work ran, which makes it a records argument before it’s a legal one. The side with dated rosters, confirmations and approved hours by worker is the side that can show what the mutual understanding actually was.

How many casuals this touches

The ABS Working arrangements release for August 2025 counted 2.4 million casual employees, 19% of all employees. Its household survey for 2024-25 found 73% of casuals preferred casual employment, mostly for flexibility, and 78% had never discussed converting to permanent with their employer.

Those two numbers explain why most notices never arrive. Most casuals want to stay casual, and the pathway is the employee’s choice, not an obligation on either side. The notices that do arrive tend to come from the worker who has been permanent in everything but the loading for a year, which is exactly the worker whose roster history you’ll be asked about.

A practical routine for casual-heavy crews

Know who has crossed the line. List every casual past 6 months’ employment, or 12 with a small business. They’re the ones who can give notice. The Casual Employment Information Statement is also due at set points: at 6 and 12 months and then every 12 months for most employers, and at 12 months for a small business.

Read the pattern before they do. For each of them, look at a year of rosters and approved hours. Same days, same start times and permanent crew beside them means you’re likely to accept, and it’s better to know that before the 21 days start.

Offer shifts as offers. If a role is genuinely casual, run it that way: publish shifts as available, let workers decline, and keep the record of who took what. A roster that never lets a casual say no doesn’t describe a casual relationship.

Keep the history. Rosters, confirmations and approved timesheets should survive the week they were built in. The roster templates guide covers what a roster should capture, including the employment type column most templates leave off.

Answer properly. Consult first, respond in writing inside 21 days, and if you refuse, name the ground and the facts behind it.

How Humanz keeps the record the pathway asks for

Humanz doesn’t calculate pay, interpret your award, use AI, track anyone’s location or give legal advice. It doesn’t decide whether someone is still casual or warn you that a notice is coming. What it does is keep the roster and hours history the definition is tested against, by worker and by week.

Employees, casuals and subcontractors sit on the same roster with their engagement type on every worker, so who does the same work on the same shifts is visible rather than reconstructed. Rosters publish to workers’ phones, open shifts go to the casuals eligible for them, and workers take or confirm shifts in the app, so the record shows which work was offered and which was taken up. Timesheets arrive pre-filled from the roster, are approved with an audit trail and leave as a clean payroll export, which makes 12 months of approved hours one worker’s history instead of 52 sheets.

That is what workforce management software for field crews should give you when a casual’s notice lands: a year of rosters, confirmations and approved hours for that worker, ready inside the 21 days. The definition asks how the work really ran. The record answers it.

If you run casual crews now, pick your longest-serving casual and pull their last 12 months of rosters and approved hours. How long that takes tells you how ready you’d be for a notice.

Frequently asked questions

What is casual conversion?

Casual conversion is the process of a casual employee becoming a permanent full-time or part-time employee. Since 26 August 2024 the National Employment Standards route is called the employee choice pathway: an eligible casual gives their employer written notice that they believe they no longer meet the definition of a casual employee. A casual can also become permanent at any time if the employer and employee both agree.

When can a casual employee ask to become permanent?

A casual can give notice under the employee choice pathway after at least 6 months of employment, or 12 months if the employer is a small business with fewer than 15 employees. They must also believe they no longer meet the casual employee definition. They can’t give notice while in a dispute with the employer about the pathway, or within 6 months of a previous notice being refused or a dispute about it being resolved.

How long does an employer have to respond to a casual conversion notice?

The employer must respond in writing within 21 days of the notice, after first consulting the employee about the proposed status, hours of work and start date. An acceptance must state the new employment status, the new hours and when the change takes effect. If the change is accepted, it starts from the first full pay period after the response unless both sides agree on another day.

Can an employer refuse a casual conversion?

Yes, but only on set grounds and with written reasons. The employer can refuse if the employee still meets the definition of a casual employee, if there are fair and reasonable operational grounds, or if accepting would mean not complying with a recruitment or selection process required by law. Operational grounds include substantial changes to how work is organised, significant impacts on the business, or substantial changes needed to keep the employee’s conditions compliant.

Does a regular pattern of work make a casual permanent?

Not on its own. A regular pattern of work is one of the factors used to decide whether there is a firm advance commitment to ongoing work, alongside whether work can be offered and declined, whether future work is likely and whether permanent employees do the same work. A casual with a regular pattern can still be a casual if there’s no firm advance commitment, which is assessed on the real substance and practical reality of the relationship.

Does the employee choice pathway apply to small business?

Yes. Casuals employed by a small business employer, meaning one with fewer than 15 employees counting associated entities and regular casuals, can use the employee choice pathway after 12 months of employment rather than 6. Casuals employed by a small business immediately before 26 August 2024 could first give notice from 26 August 2025.

What happens if a casual and employer can’t agree?

The dispute must first be discussed at the workplace. If it isn’t resolved, either side can apply to the Fair Work Commission, which can mediate or conciliate, make a recommendation or express an opinion, and arbitrate if the dispute still isn’t resolved. On arbitration a Commission Member can order that the employee continues to be treated as a casual or is treated as a full-time or part-time employee.