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Our friends at Hunter People Solutions are looking forward to a great year – a year of new adventures and bigger challenges with a good dose of change management thrown in to the mix.  They’ve been busy helping businesses with the workplace impacts that have occurred as a result of the final pieces of the Fair Work Act coming into effect.

In part one of this blog post, we have asked guest expert Colette Simon to ask some key questions to help you consider your workplace situation. Colette will then give you some practical staff management answers.

Colette:

Do you know if your business is sufficiently prepared for the Fair Work changes?  Or are you thinking you are just going to ‘wing it’?

You’re no doubt aware that a big component of the new laws is the introduction of the National Employment Standard (NES). 

There are 10 standards and they form part of the safety net that applies to all employees who are covered in the federal system. 

The piece of the NES that we believe has the most potential to impact businesses is the right for employees to request a change in their working arrangements.   

The right is available only to employees who are parents of, or have responsibility for the care of a child who is under school age (or, if the child is under 18 years of age, who has a disability). And the change in working arrangements must be for the purpose of assisting the employee to care for the child.

So, what sort of flexible ‘changes in arrangements’ are we talking about here?

While not being specific, the new laws suggest this might include changes in hours of work, in patterns of work or in working location.  So the sort of requests that should be expected will probably include switching to part time work by working fewer days per week or fewer hours across each day as well as requests to work from home or moving to another more convenient office location.

To be eligible to make such a request under the NES, employees must have completed at least 12 months continuous service. They have to put their request in writing and set out the details and reason for the change.

If and when you receive such a request, the new laws require you to do a number of things:

• You have to respond in writing within 21 days, advising the employee if their request has been approved or not.
• If you’ve refused the request, you have to provide the reasons for your refusal.
• You may only refuse if you have ‘reasonable business grounds’ for doing so.

See Flexible Work Arrangements – Part 2 for information on the ‘reasonable business grounds’ component.

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Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support