Coronavirus Australian employer business

IMPORTANT UPDATE – COVID-19

Like all West Australians, you have likely started the week with more questions about the impact of the WA Government’s direction to lockdown. Some of the available information on the official government website (link below) HAS ALREADY BEEN UPDATED since yesterday – and we also have the first wave of COVID-19 last year to guide a ‘reasonable’ response to employees. Check regularly for updates on government advice as they are updating this information as they receive questions Quantum HR Summary …

BIG ‘IR’ change in 2021. Here’s what you need to know.

No-one can argue that COVID-19 hasn’t dramatically changed the working landscape for many businesses… sometimes not for the better! However, one of the positive things to come from the pandemic was agreement that a much-needed shakeup of Australian Industrial Relations (IR) laws was needed to make it easier for businesses of any size to navigate a complex awards system. So it was great to hear that on 9 December 2020, the Australian Government introduced its Industrial Relations Reforms – Supporting Australia’s …

When it’s not always black and white – the Art of Workplace Investigations

If you receive a complaint related to the workplace, how you successfully investigate the claims can be the difference to resolving them internally or the basis for how you defend the position you took before a court or tribunal. To make it even more challenging, many complaints are also not black and white. For example, it is about behaviours that are *felt* and not seen, there are no witnesses or no concrete proof exists that the events ever took place. …

Managing Employee Performance

If you employ people, chances are that you’ve had to consider a difficult conversation with one of them around their performance. Chances are, this has also generally been a behavioural issue so it’s been challenging to try and describe what you’ve been unhappy with in concrete terms… and this has caused you to worry about getting the conversation wrong. Sound familiar to you or a business you know? If it does, you’re certainly not alone . We believe there are …

Working from home

If there’s one thing COVID-19 / coronavirus (‘C-19’ for the cool kids) has shown the business world, it’s that remote working is achievable for many different types of roles and duties that might normally have been pushed aside in a request to work from home. Necessity is the mother of all invention as they say. If you have found yourself in this situation or know of friends and business colleagues who are, you might already have started thinking about what …

Coronavirus (COVID-19) and your workplace

To be upfront, this article is not to rehash the official and expert health advice on mitigating transmission of the Coronavirus. Instead, it is to help you PLAN for the employment related issues that will need to be answered. It focuses on the questions we are receiving right now from businesses just like yours (small, medium and large) and also on what we think should be best-practice. TIP: Given the increasing and rapid response in government initiatives taking place, we …

Redundancy 101

Business owners of all shapes and sizes will know that operating a business comes with a few risks. One of those risks can include what to do when a business is faced with some hard choices around its operations and the potential need for making people redundant….made harder when it’s having to be done at a time of year that might see a holiday about to happen. To help you address this issue, we’ve brought together some simple steps to …

casual offsetting

How to end casual ‘double dipping’

The Australian employment environment was rocked last year following the Federal Court of Australia decision in Workpac v Skene [2018] FCAFC 131. In short, this decision found that employers who incorrectly classify employees as casual instead of full-time or part-time could be responsible for back paying various entitlements under the National Employment Standards (NES). An immediate cry went up that this was effectively allowing ‘double-dipping’ for casuals to receive their casual loading (to cover not receiving the benefits of a permanent employee) …

Probation periods

Do probation periods matter?

[IMPORTANT NOTE: This article is written for National System employers– as rules about probation periods can be different for WA System employers] Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why contracts have a probation period in them? [1] You might think it’s to *protect* a business from unfair dismissals and to remove reasons for explaining termination (a.k.a ‘why it’s just not working out’)’. But what if I told you blindly relying on a probation period in your contract to guarantee …

SIck leave and under performance

Handling personal leave and under-performance – tips that work.

Getting sick is a fact of life but what happens when an employee is also starting to slowly under-perform and you’re finding it hard to broach the topics? This scenario is made all the harder because you know: If you terminate an employee for taking an entitlement to leave, you’ll face some very stiff consequences (called an ‘adverse action’). If you manage the employee’s under-performance and in any way make it because of taking leave – there remain stiff consequences …