At HRwisdom we regularly draw upon the collective wisdom of many staff management experts and smart Human Resources practitioners.

In our last blog posting we heard from our friends at Hunter People Solutions. 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, we asked guest expert Colette Simon to ask some key questions to help you consider your workplace situation and to then give you some practical staff management answers.

Last time Colette explained that if and when you receive a flexible work 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.

Now let’s hear from Colette as she outlines the ‘reasonable business grounds’ component.

Colette:

While not being specific, the new laws suggest such grounds might include:

• the effect on your business of approving such a request, including the financial impact of doing so and the impact of efficiency, productivity and customer service;
• the inability to organise work amongst your existing staff; and
• the inability to recruit a replacement, or the practicality or otherwise of the arrangements that may need to be put in place to accommodate the employee’s request.

Clearly, the reasonableness of any refusal will depend on the particular circumstances of the situation.
 
Most importantly in this new workplace relations area, it is imperative that you understand and adhere to your obligations as an employer when faced with requests for flexible work arrangements. If you don’t, for example, because you forgot to appropriately respond to a request within 21 days, you may face a claim for breaching the NES.  And a maximum penalty of $33,000 applies (ouch!).

Our HR advice? 
 
‘Winging it’ is probably not the best option. 

Understand your obligations so you can be on the front foot with your employees.  We suspect this new right will soon be as commonly understood as the existing right to 12 months unpaid maternity leave that we all take for granted.

Ask for help if you need it.  An independent ear and some professional advice can really make the difference to making a solid robust decision or something a little more risky.

For more HR policies and procedure and staff management resources, remember to visit the HRwisdom Library.

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support