How to make sure your business is prepared for the new Fair Work Act.
click here to get a free trailDear Reader,
Of the many new laws the Fair Work Act has introduced, one area that people often overlook is the Act’s “adverse action” provisions.
What is adverse action?
In short, adverse action is any conduct that disadvantages another person in the workplace. For example, you could commit adverse action by:
Recently, the Federal Court handed down the first ever ruling on an adverse action claim in Barclay v The Board of Bendigo Regional Institute of Technical and Further Education [25 March 2010].
In the case, the Court rejected a senior Bendigo TAFE teacher’s claim that the TAFE had unlawfully taken adverse action against him. The teacher was also the Australian Education Union’s Sub-Branch President.
Dear Reader,
Welcome to today’s Bulletin.
I’m sure you heard about the cloud of volcanic ash that halted all air travel in and out of Western Europe last week.
Thousands of passengers bound for Australia were stranded in various European destinations and had to wait until airspace re-opened to fly home.
Why am I writing about this in the Workplace Bulletin, you may ask?
Lately, quite a few of our customer questions have been centered around how to be sure you are dismissing an employee lawfully.
So I thought today would be a good opportunity to go over what you must to do to protect yourself from being exposed to an unfair dismissal claim.
So, before you dismiss an employee for poor performance, make sure you take the following steps:
Dear Reader,
Having employees who work from home on a regular basis can have great benefits – both for you and your employees.
The employee can fulfill their family obligations more easily by not having to worry about long, time-consuming commutes, and it gives you an avenue to keep valuable staff happy and retain their services.
If any of your employees work from home on a regular basis, you have an obligation to make sure their home office environment is safe. In other words, you will need to do a full risk assessment of any home office before allowing employees to work there.
This will protect your from potential prosecution under OHS laws.
When conducting a risk assessment of a home office, you must:
1. Establish whether the role is suitable to do from home
Dear Reader,
There’s no doubt about it – employees who accrue too much annual leave can place a huge strain on your business.
Why? Because if too much accrued liability builds up, it can cause your business significant cash flow problems.
But there are ways you can get around this happening in your workplace…
To avoid the need to direct employees to take annual leave, you should explore ways to stop your employees accruing too much leave in the first place.
Here are a few suggestions:
Dear Reader,
The decision to dismiss an employee – for whatever reason – is a big deal.
It pays to make absolutely sure you have all your bases covered before you take the step of terminating someone’s employment.
Why? Because as a number of recent cases have shown, Fair Work Australia will have no qualms about reinstating a dismissed employee if they believe you terminated their employment unfairly.
Dear Reader,
Sometimes, it can be a little hard to tell exactly when you can dismiss an employee on the grounds of “genuine redundancy”.
So keep this in mind: In order for Fair Work Australia to consider a redundancy “genuine”, you must be able to prove that it was not reasonable for you to redeploy the employee elsewhere in your business.
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