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Employment Law for SMEs
- 1. FOR SMALL & MEDIUM BUSINESS OWNERS Employment Law Issues DANNY KING Danny King Legal NEIL PARKER BridgePoint Group NATASHA HAWKER Employee Matters A BridgePoint Group Directors’ Briefing for SMEs April 2016
- 3. SHOULD I CONSIDER AN ENTERPRISE AGREEMENT? EMPLOYERS should consider the potential benefits and drawbacks BEFORE starting the process. PROS CONS • Streamline entitlements if many different instruments apply • Control over pay grades that make sense to your business • Flexible Hours & Conditions • Can turn out to be a long and difficult process • Dealing with Unions can be problematic (but this is not always the case) • If you don’t do it in your own time, the Union could start the bargaining process when you are unprepared INTRODUCTION COMPLIANCE WORKPLACE BEHAVIOUR POLICIES
- 8. Minimum Wage and Entitlements • Minimum wages can be found under: • Modern Awards • Enterprise Agreements • The National Minimum Wage • Technical compliance with the following entitlements is important: • Penalties • Allowances • Overtime INTRODUCTION COMPLIANCE WORKPLACE BEHAVIOUR POLICIES
- 11. Workplace Bullying • More people are becoming aware of avenues to pursue when they are not happy at work • Complaints of bullying are on the rise, and employers should take care not to make ill-informed decisions to resolve such situations INTRODUCTION COMPLIANCE WORKPLACE BEHAVIOUR POLICIES
- 12. Sexual Harassment • We know that, in reality, there is still a huge amount of sexual harassment in the workplace… but only 10% make a formal complaint • Employers should be wary of a “relaxed” workplace culture, as it is only a matter of time before employees, and women in particular, become more strident in calling out poor behavior in the office/at the site. INTRODUCTION COMPLIANCE WORKPLACE BEHAVIOUR POLICIES
- 15. Many employers just don’t conduct basic training… WORKPLACE TRAINING • Risk exposure is SIGNIFICANTLY reduced if you conduct training to support your policies. • Sexual harassment claims are hard to fight unless you can show that effort has been made to educate employees on what is and is not appropriate conduct in the workplace INTRODUCTION COMPLIANCE WORKPLACE BEHAVIOUR POLICIES
- 16. It’s not enough to have a policy…. Follow these steps: WORKPLACE TRAINING INTRODUCTION COMPLIANCE WORKPLACE BEHAVIOUR POLICIES 1 2 3 4 Email the policy to staff so it’s on the record that they received it Provide translated versions of the policy where your workforce is non-English speaking Run a simple training session to describe the way the policy applies to employees– e.g. a TOOLBOX TALK and INDUCTION TRAINING for all new hires Keep an attendance record of those present, with the policy and all translations created on file