Who is Robert Watson and how can he help your business?

If you have not yet taken advantage of the excellent information shared with you for free by Robert Watson – now is the time.

Robert is a highly experienced management consultant and executive coach who has literally travelled the world examining the management systems of some of the most successful companies in the world.

Robert has the knack of taking high level business best practice and turning it into practical, simple systems and actions that businesses can apply everyday for better results.

Knowing that Robert has helped many businesses achieve tremendous business improvements by focussing on the quality of the people they bring into the business, HRwisdom has managed to get Robert to share some of his business secrets in the area of recruitment & selection.

These special insights are available to you now for free as our way of saying thank you for being part of the HRwisdom community.

Robert Watson – First Free Resource

To begin, every business can benefit from having well-prepared questions to learn more about your job candidates. We asked Robert to come up with his Top 10 Interview Questions to help you find the right person for the right role. Not only will you get the well thought-out questions, you’ll also get the exact type of answer you would expect from the type of person you want contributing to your organisation. Click here for Robert’s Top 10 Interview Questions.

Robert Watson – Second Free Resource

Most businesses spend thousands of dollars every year on print and online advertisements to find job candidates. In this special online video presentation, Robert walks you through the Four Mistakes In Job Ads. This one presentation has the potential to save your business thousands of dollars and vastly improve the quality of candidates you bring into your selection process. Side Note: When a major Australian business site recently published the link to Robert’s video it actually crashed the video server due to the sheer demand. So, do make sure you see the presentation while it is still online. Click here for Four Mistakes In Job Ads.

Robert Watson – Third Free Resource

At HRwisdom we have over a thousand different businesses, large and small, in our community. One of the most popular topics has been how to manage Gen Y employees. We asked Robert for some comments and simple tips that could be applied at any type of business, large or small. This short article gives you some excellent ideas to use when managing Gen Y staff.

As mentioned earlier, Robert has the knack of taking high level business best practice and turning it into practical, simple systems and actions that businesses can apply every day for better results.

Robert works as a freelance management consultant and executive coach. If you’d like to contact Robert, you can reach him on his private email address at: rgw2005@optusnet.com.au

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support

As the world awakens from its economic slumber, talk in the Australian business community is gradually turning to the familiar topic of the skills shortage.

As you probably know by now, at HRwisdom we are very much focussed on businesses taking a proactive approach to skills shortage issues. This means we regularly encourage our community members to take positive action when it comes to employee retention and reducing staff turnover.

In today’s HRwisdom blog post we have some excellent free HR resources to help you be even more proactive with your employee retention planning.

Employee Retention – Why Is It So Important?

Put simply, an organisation that is bad at retaining talent:

• Loses a lot of new recruits
• Loses a disproportionate percentage of high performers
• Loses an increasing percentage of all staff
• Experiences increasing grievances
• Fields increasing customer complaints
• Records increasing compliance breaches
• Sees an increase in staff sick leave
• Records increases in safety problems
• Takes longer to fill vacancies
• Pays higher recruitment costs
• Attracts lower calibre candidates

To help you become a high-performer in the area of employee retention, we have called upon our friends at Retention Partners who have kindly agreed to share some of their powerful employee retention tools with you.

Click on the following link to download (for free) the highly informative Retention Success Guide: Guide

Click on the following link for free access to the powerful Employee Retention Calculator Tool: Calculator

Finally, if you have friends and colleagues who would benefit from this information, please feel free to share the following link with them: Employee Retention Blog

The link: http://blog.hrwisdom.com.au/2010/07/employee-retention-new-tools/

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support

Here are a few quick questions to ask yourself as a business manager or an HR professional:

• In your professional career so far, how many job ads have you run in newspapers and/or online?
• On average, how much does each sort of job advertisement cost?
• Over your whole career, how much have you spent on job ads?
• What’s been your return on investment for all those job ads?
• Have your ads ever attracted poor quality candidates or even none at all?

If you’re like most business managers and HR professionals (yes, even us here at HRwisdom), at some point you’ll have run at least one job ad that generated zero interest from job candidates.
 
Chances are you’ll probably also have paid for at least one job ad that only attracted dud candidates for your vacancy.

Avoid The Four Big Mistakes When Writing Job ads

In today’s HRwisdom blog post, we’ll help you avoid making the four big mistakes in writing job ads.

We’ll do this by sharing with you a simple model used by professional consumer products advertisers to sell their products and services all over the world.

What is the model and how can it help you attract and hire better quality employees?

You may have heard of the advertising model known as the AIDA model:

A = Attention
I = Interest
D = Desire
A = Action

An acronym based on a few short words may sound silly but with the economy improving and the return of the global skills shortage starting to loom on the economic horizon, it makes good sense to follow the model to dramatically increase your recruitment hit rate – not to mention your return on investment.

Learn From Real Life Recruitment Examples

To explain exactly how to use apply the AIDA model in your recruitment process, we’re going to walk you through some real life examples via a special online video presentation right here on the website.

Not only will the video explain the four big mistakes made when writing job ads but you’ll also get to see examples of ads that work well and those that don’t work so well. You’ll see examples of photographic ads, text ads, and even a two-line job ad.

HR Video Presentation

To get started, just click on the following link to watch the video presentation.

Click here: Writing Job Advertisements

As always, we’re keen to hear your thoughts – just leave a comment below here.

Remember to visit the HRwisdom home page to access more great free resources to help you find, keep, and manage your employees.

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support

ps. Don’t forget to share you thoughts and ideas below…

HRwisdom have added a new Contract of Employment template to the HRwisdom Library.

The 21 page document includes explanatory notes to help you create a written employment contract to suit your requirements and circumstances.

We have also included additional employment contract information on this HRwisdom Blog post to help you understand some of the key issues.

The employment contract template can be used by all employers throughout Australia, except the following excluded employers:

• non-constitutional corporation employers in Western Australia
• State public sector employers; and
• Local Government employers — except in Tasmania

The contract is suitable for full-time and part-time employees of all employers who can use the contract. The contract is not intended to apply to casual employees or independent contractors.

Employment Contract Coverage

The contract considers coverage of the following matters:

• nature and status of employment
• reason for the contract
• commencement date
• employer details
• employee details
• position
• general details
• probationary/qualifying period
• reporting relationship
• location of employment
• hours of work
• remuneration
• return of property
• deductions
• confidential information
• policies and procedures
• superannuation
• period of notice and
• termination.

You may also consider amending your contract to reflect your position on optional clauses concerning:

• compensation for all legal entitlements
• guarantee of annual earnings
• annualised salary
• intellectual property
• reporting lines
• non-cash benefits
• bonus and incentive payments
• performance review
• salary review and post employment obligations
• company credit card
• mobile phone
• laptop
• performance
• driver’s licence
• drugs and alcohol
• uniforms
• continuing education
• leave
• public holidays; and
• resignation from offices held.

Particular matters to consider:

Circumstances for making the contract

The reason for making a contract of employment will differ depending on the circumstances. This will, in turn, affect a number of clauses. So, for example, a new employee will be entitled to either accept or reject the contract of employment. However, an existing employee who does not receive any benefits from signing the contract (eg additional remuneration) may decline to enter the contract.

An employer who is using the contract for award covered or enterprise agreement covered employees may wish to supplement the contract with an Individual Flexibility Agreement (IFA). Those employers may also give consideration to utilising optional clauses such as:

• compensation for all legal entitlements
• guarantee of annual earnings
• annualised salary

HRwisdom Library members should be aware that it is not possible to ‘contract out’ of an industrial instrument using a contract of employment. Accordingly, if an employee is entitled to minimum conditions of employment in accordance with an industrial instrument, an employer should comply with the relevant industrial instrument.

Such a clause seeks to offset an employee’s total remuneration against any entitlement the employee may have under any law or industrial instrument. Adopting this approach will not extinguish an employer’s obligations under an industrial instrument or alter the fact that technically an industrial instrument was been breached, nor can it protect an employer from prosecution and imposition of a penalty for that breach. However, it does give the company good grounds to argue that an employee has been compensated in full for all entitlements and the employee should not be permitted to ‘double recover’ the amounts.

HRwisdom Library members should therefore carefully consider whether to use such a clause and whether full compliance with the award, use of an IFA, enterprise agreement, giving a guarantee of annual earning or complying with an annualised salary provision of an award is a better option.

Guarantee of annual earnings

Rather than complying with the terms of an award, an employer can instead provide a written ‘guarantee of annual earnings’ to an employee. Such a clause can only be offered to employees who are covered by a modern award and earn more than the high income threshold (presently $108,300 per annum), but doesn’t include certain remuneration elements.

The guarantee means that the employer agrees to pay the employee no less than $108,300 per annum (indexed annually and exclusive of superannuation and contingent elements such as bonuses and commissions) during the ‘guarantee period’ and in exchange for that guarantee, the relevant modern award that covers the employee ceases to apply.

The ‘guarantee period’ must be for 12 months or more, unless the employee is employed for a period which is less than 12 months. No more than 14 days can elapse from the date the guarantee is offered to the employee and the employee agrees to accept it and:

(i)  the day the employee commences employment; or
(ii) a day on which the employer and employee agree to vary the employee’s terms and conditions of employment.

Annualised salary arrangement

Alternatively, some awards include a provision which allows an employer to offer an annualised salary to an employee which takes into account award payments such as overtime, penalty rates, and allowances. Where an employer offers an annualised salary as permitted by an award, the employer is then exempt from the obligation to comply with the award terms which have already been compensated for in the salary.

Post-employment restraints

Depending on the nature of the duties being performed by the employee who will be subject to the contract, it may not be necessary to require an employee to agree to a post-employment restraint. You should seek to customise the restraint to relate to the specific employee.

In order for a post-employment restraint to be enforceable it must be ‘reasonable’ in the circumstances of the particular employee’s employment. Specifically, the restraint must be reasonable in relation to the activities sought to be restrained, the geographic area, and the duration of the restraint. The courts will not enforce restraints that impose an unreasonable restraint of trade on an employee, or that extend beyond protecting the legitimate business interests of an employer.

The particular restraint clause included in the contract includes provisions enabling a court, if it is to review the contract, to read down the covenants in relation to the employee if they are found to be void, invalid or otherwise unenforceable. ‘Reading down’ the strict wording of an unreasonable clause means to modify it until the clause is expressed in a way that is legally enforceable.

Link to policies and procedures

There is an increasing willingness of courts to incorporate policies into employees’ contracts of employment. Contracts of employment that do not expressly exclude such incorporation may cause problems for employers. While the contract contains an express exclusion, it is important that employers both comply with and broadly word their policies and procedures, to further reduce this legal risk.

Other leave

The ‘Other Leave’ clause in the contract indicates that long service leave, parental leave, and compassionate leave entitlements will be made in accordance with legislative requirements.

Withholding amounts from employees

The employment contract template indicates that the employer can withhold remuneration from the employee where the employee fails to provide the employer with adequate notice when terminating their employment, or fails to return employer property in a fair condition (including tools and uniforms). The general rule is that these types of clauses are not enforceable unless the employee specifically authorises the deduction. As such, the clauses allowing the employer to withhold remuneration for these reasons have been drafted to contain such an authorisation.

You should be aware however, that if the employer exercises their rights under the clauses, it is possible that the employee may make a complaint to the Fair Work Ombudsman, a court or industrial tribunal alleging the employer has not paid them their appropriate accrued entitlements or their guaranteed remuneration.

We recommend you seek legal advice if you are considering withholding remuneration from an employee. There may be other options available which can be explored.

Fringe benefits tax

A contract may allow for employees to be provided with benefits such as mobile phones, company vehicles and laptops, with limits provided for. You should seek financial advice in relation to potential fringe benefits tax liability before providing an employee with company property which the employee is allowed for personal use.

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support

HRwisdom have now uploaded a comprehensive new report on the Fair Work System.

The report is also available to all free and paid members of the HRwisdom community.

To access the report, simply enter your first name and email address in the free subscription box on the HRwisdom home page.

Feel free to share the report with friends and colleagues.
 
Why have HRwisdom produced the report?
 
The workplace relations system that governs Australian workplaces is commonly known as the Fair Work system.
 
The Office of the Fair Work Ombudsman enforces compliance to the Fair Work System.
 
Have you seen some of the media release headlines from the Fair Work Ombudsman recently?
 
Take a look:

• Brisbane managers face court for allegedly underpaying workers $70,000.
• Sydney company faces court for allegedly underpaying young worker almost $5000.
• Perth business faces court for allegedly failing to provide employment records.
• Two Melbourne companies reimburse underpaid workers almost $400,000.
• Court hands down $50,000 penalty for underpaying Deniliquin worker.
• Whyalla company back-pays four workers $10k.
• $35,000 back-pay for three Darwin workers.
• Tasmanian resort faces court over alleged underpayments and sham contracting.
• Random audits at Sydney Fish Market return $278,000 to underpaid workers.
• Kalgoorlie audits recover $139,000 for 26 security workers.
• Fair Work inspectors to call on northern Victorian employers.
• $6000 penalty for $629 underpayment.

Did you notice the last headline?
 
An underpayment to an employee of $629 cost an employer $6000 in penalties alone (not to mention possible legal costs, management time, and disruption to the operation of the business).
 
This is why it is so important to have at least a basic understanding of the Fair Work system.
 
In this special staff management report, HRwisdom will walk you through the major components of the Fair Work system and point out a few things to watch out for along the way.
 
As always, you can find various staff management ideas, employment documents, and HR templates in the HRwisdom Library.
 
Kind regards,
 
HRwisdom Support

The recent debacle at Toyota which has seen the company lose a reported $155 million per week has been widely reported. With continuing product recalls around the world, the losses are estimated to have caused an astonishing $30 billion loss in Toyota’s valuation on the stock market.

At HRwisdom we always focus on ideas and practices that can actively improve or protect a business. Today, we refer you to an excellent analysis of how poor HR policies and staff management practices potentially led to the $30 billion loss at Toyota.

The Eight Bad Staff Management Practices

In his excellent analysis, John Sullivan lists the eight bad staff management practices that contributed to Toyota’s massive downfall.

1. Rewards and recognition — The purpose of any corporate reward process is to encourage and incentivise the right behaviors and to discourage the negative ones. It’s important for the reward process to incentivise the gathering of information about problems. It’s equally important to reward employees who are successful in getting executives to take immediate action on negative information. Key questions — Were rapid growth (sales have nearly doubled recently) and “lean” cost-cutting recognized and rewarded so heavily that no one was willing to put the brakes on growth in order to focus on safety? Were the rewards for demonstrating error-free results so high that obvious errors were swept under the table?
2. Training — The purpose of training is to make sure that employees have the right skills and capabilities to identify and handle all situations they may encounter. Toyota is famous for its four-step cycle — plan/do/check/act — but clearly the training among managers now needs to focus more on the last two. In addition, in an environment where safety is paramount, everyone should have been trained on the symptoms of “groupthink” and how to avoid the excess discounting or ignoring of negative external safety information. Key question — If Toyota’s training was more effective, would the managers involved have been more successful in convincing executives to act on the negative information received?
3. Hiring — The purpose of great hiring is to bring on board top-performing individuals with the high level of skills and capabilities that are required to handle the most complex problems. Poorly designed recruiting and assessment elements can result in the hiring of individuals who sweep problems under the rug and who are not willing to stand up to management. Key questions — Did Toyota have a poorly designed hiring process that allowed it to hire individuals who were not experienced in the required constructive confrontation technique? Were their hires poor learners that did not change as a result of company training?
4. The performance management process — The purpose of a performance management process is to periodically monitor or appraise performance, in order to identify problem behaviors before they get out of hand. If the performance measurement system included performance factors to measure responsiveness to negative information, Toyota wouldn’t be in turmoil today. Key questions — Was the performance appraisal and performance monitoring process so poorly designed that they did not identify and report groupthink type errors? Did Toyota’s famous high level of trust of its employees go too far without reasonable metrics, checks, and balances? Did HR develop sophisticated metrics that produced alerts to warn senior managers before minor problems got out of control?
5. The corporate culture — The role of a corporate culture is to informally drive employee behaviors so that it closely adheres to the company’s core values. Because these errors occurred under difficult driving conditions, it’s hard to blame the production group, which has a well-known reputation for Six Sigma quality in its construction. The negative reports came to functions like government, risk analysis, corporate and customer satisfaction. As a result, it is the culture within the corporate offices that need to be more closely monitored rather than assuming that the culture was aligned. It appears that the corporate culture created leaders so concerned with “saving face” and so adverse to negative publicity, that they for years postponed making the announcement of a massive recall. Key questions — Did HR’s failure to measure or monitor the corporate culture contribute to its misalignment? Was the corporate culture (the Toyota Way) so biased toward positive information that employees learned not to make waves, in spite of their professional responsibility to be heard on safety issues?
6. Leadership development and succession planning — The purpose of leadership development and succession planning processes are to ensure that a sufficient number of leaders with the right skills and decision-making ability are placed into key leadership positions. It is likely that the leadership development and the promotion process both failed to create and promote leaders who were capable of confronting problems and making difficult decisions. Key question — Was the leadership process at Toyota so outdated that it produced the wrong kind of leaders with outdated competencies, who could not successfully operate in the rapidly changing automotive industry?
7. Employee Retention — The purpose of a retention program is to identify and keep top performers and individuals with mission-critical skills. Key question — Did the retention program ignore people that brought up problems and as a result, did these whistleblowers often leave out of frustration?
8. Risk assessment — Most HR departments don’t even have a risk assessment team whose purpose is to both identify and calculate risks caused by weak employee processes. Clearly HR should have worked with corporate risk management at Toyota in order to ensure that employees were capable of calculating the long-term actual costs of ignoring product failure information. Key question — Should HR work with risk-assessment experts and build the capability of identifying and quantifying the revenue impacts of major HR errors, including a high hiring failure rate, a high turnover rate among top performers, and the cost of keeping a bad manager or employee?

Final Thoughts from John Sullivan

Toyota’s problems are not the result of a single individual making an isolated mistake, but rather due to a companywide series of mistakes that are all related to each other. So many corporate functions were involved, including customer service, government relations, vendor management and PR, that one cannot help but attribute the crash of Toyota to systemic management failure. Unfortunately, in this case, the famous Japanese saying is true. “The nail that stands out” was not encouraged to be different, but instead it was “pounded down” to conform.

The key lesson that others should learn from Toyota’s mistakes is that HR needs to periodically test or audit each of the processes that could allow this type of billion-dollar error to occur.

For more staff management advice and HR ideas you can join our mailing list or get your HR templates and Employee Retention information now.

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support

At HRwisdom, we regularly recommend to our free subscribers that they actively plan ahead to improve employee retention and today’s blog post is some further food for thought. By actively planning ahead you’ll not only decrease staff turnover, you also:

• Recruit better quality people who actually do what they say they will do.
• Expand your pipeline of good employee candidates.
• Improve employee morale.
• Boost management confidence.
• Increase in business efficiency and profitability.
• Raise your reputation in the marketplace.

So today we draw your attention to some interesting thoughts from Kevin Wheeler’s online comments (part 3) where he discusses the need to expand the labor pool.

Remember, for instantly downloadable employee retention support, click on the following toolkit code: retention employee.

Kevin Wheeler: We Need to Expand the Labor Pool

Many available people are older or retired and have skills that have become obsolete or are not needed right now. However, these people could be retrained for some of the open positions if we took a different attitude. Unfortunately most of us, or most of our employers anyway, would rather spend money on search fees, agency fees, administrative overhead, and advertising rather than on intensively training people with decent basic skills. Granted, we cannot train people for every job because many of them do require experience, or time in the saddle, as they say, in order to be successful. However, I think we could significantly lessen the labor shortage if we were willing to be a bit wider in our job expectations and definitions.

This is why I constantly argue for integrated staffing and development because I believe their functions are inextricably intertwined. It is very difficult to do one without doing the other. If we are to look at recruiting as a process, we are going to have to incorporate development into our staffing thinking and staffing into our training thinking.

Access Code: Retention Employee

Whether this is done through merging departments or whether it is done simply through good collaboration doesn’t really matter. What is critical is that there is a dialogue between the two functions. If you work in a small company where there are no separate training and recruiting functions, then this becomes even easier for you to do.

You need to always think whether an open position is better trained for or hired for. Is it a job that would be impossible to train someone for in a reasonable period of time, or is it a job that someone could be trained to do fairly quickly?

When management and recruiters both develop a broader understanding of the issues and step up to the fact that in many cases skilled people are just not available at a reasonable cost, then developing people becomes sensible and cost effective.

There are no labor shortages or surpluses — there are just shortages of imagination and an unwillingness to accept responsibility for filling our own needs.

- Kevin Wheeler -

Toolkit Code: Retention Employee

As always, HRwisdom has world class support instantly available to you to help you retain employees. To retain good employees, click on the following access code: retention employee.

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support

At HRwisdom, we regularly recommend to our free subscribers that they actively plan ahead to improve employee retention and today’s blog post is some further food for thought. By actively planning ahead you’ll not only decrease staff turnover, you also:

• Recruit better quality people who actually do what they say they will do.
• Expand your pipeline of good employee candidates.
• Improve employee morale.
• Boost management confidence.
• Increase in business efficiency and profitability.
• Raise your reputation in the marketplace.

So today we draw your attention to some interesting thoughts from Kevin Wheeler’s online comments (part 2) where he discusses the importance of developing people as a requirement for success.

Remember, for instantly downloadable employee retention support, click on the following toolkit code: retention employee.

Kevin Wheeler: Developing People is a Requirement for Success

I spent many years working in the semiconductor industry when it faced a labor shortage of skilled process engineers and equipment operators. We eventually devised training programs that took basic electrical engineers and developed them into capable process engineers quickly. IBM trained thousands of programmers throughout the 1960s and 1970s to meet its own huge needs. At the same time, IBM and other companies quietly worked with academic institutions to develop today’s academic computer curricula.

This training and development does not have to be of the same type that a person would receive at an ordinary academic institution. In most every case, corporate training can concentrate on skills that are needed right now and forego the theoretical, the basics, and the nice-to-have-but-not-critical things. Whether or not a person goes back at some point to get those basics remains a question, but I believe that efficient training can address the labor shortage issue quickly.

Access Code: Retention Employee

In both world wars, the U.S. Armed Forces reverted to intensive training programs to fill critical positions. They have learned that this can be as efficient a process as having a huge standing army.

The trick is in accepting that there is a responsibility on the part of employers to develop the people they need. Employers should be willing to provide the training and development for the jobs they have a need to get done. Waiting for the school system or the government to do your job for you has never been a very good strategy.

Toolkit Code: Retention Employee

As always, HRwisdom has world class support instantly available to you to help you retain employees. To retain good employees, click on the following access code: retention employee.

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support

As a follow-up to our recent HRwisdom blog post (Compliance Changes Required For Fair Work Act) we wanted to remind all HRwisdom members that we have been busy updating the HRwisdom Library documents to comply with the new Fair Work employment laws, particularly those that took effect from 1 July 2009. During this process, we have also taken the opportunity to fine tune many of the documents to improve their look, feel and content.

Please also note another recent HRwisdom blog posting (HR Links and HR Web Sites) we shared a useful list of HR links for HR web sites and sites for human resources staff and employers in general.

Below are some more details on the recently updated employment templates, employment letters, HR policies, HR forms, and other such human resources documents.
 
HR POLICIES
 
Anti-Discrimination & EEO Policy
This Policy has been updated to: fine tune the document; comply with the Fair Work Act; and include additional references to associated documents.
 
EEO for Women in the Workplace Policy
This document has been updated to: clarify purpose, commencement and application of the policy; include additional references to associated documents; and revise the commentary to ensure consistency with suggestions made by the Equal Opportunity for Women in the Workplace Agency (EOWA).
 
Emergency Evacuation Policy
The Emergency Evacuation Policy has had a format change for enhanced user-friendliness and the commentary has been revised.
 
Employee Input Policy
The Employee Input Policy has been updated: to note it’s not to be used for EEO or harassment complaints; to refine its wording; and to add reference to associated documents.
 
First Aid Policy
The commentary to the First Aid Policy now includes references to associated documents, and the Policy has been updated to clarify that it does not form part of the employee’s contract of employment.
 
Induction Policy
This document and its commentary have been updated to: clarify the commencement date and application of the Policy; revise content with respect to mentoring of new employees; comply with the Fair Work Act; and include additional references to associated documents.
 
No-Smoking Policy
The layout of the No-Smoking Policy and commentary has been updated and is now a clearer and more useful tool in assisting employers to implement a no-smoking policy in their workplace. The Policy has also been updated to comply with the Fair Work Act and now includes additional references to associated documents.
 
Performance and Misconduct Policy
The Performance and Misconduct Policy and commentary have been updated to comprehensively explain the concept of the management of performance and conduct. The updated Policy takes into account the introduction of the Small Business Fair Dismissal Code, and any applicable exclusions under the Fair Work Act.
 
Probation Employment Policy
The Probationary Employment Policy has been updated to revise the commentary, contents and terminology for consistency with the Fair Work Act; and to include references to associated documents.
 
Timesheet Policy
This document has been updated to: include additional references to associated documents; revise the commentary, in particular to ensure that the record-keeping requirements are explained in a way that is consistent with the provisions contained under the Fair Work Regulations 2009 (Cth); amend the content of the Policy to make clear its objective; and amend the format of the policy to include user-friendly headings and provisions relating to its commencement and application.
 
EMPLOYMENT AGREEMENTS
 
Deed of Release
This document will help you to create a simple Deed of Release, whereby a payment of money is made to an employee to conclude the employment relationship, in exchange for the employee agreeing to settle or not to bring a claim, against the business.
 
CORRESPONDENCE
 
Letter — Advising of Future Redundancies
This document has been updated to: include additional references to associated documents; revise the commentary, in particular with respect to the meaning of genuine redundancy under the Fair Work Act; and to reflect considerations of redeployment prior to an employer’s definite decision to terminate employment due to redundancy.
 
Letter Enclosing Deed of Release 
This document and its commentary have been updated to comply with the Fair Work Act and include references to associated documents.
 
Letter to Employee Regarding Voluntary Redundancy
This document has been updated to: include additional references to associated documents; revise the commentary, in particular with respect to the meaning of genuine redundancy under the Fair Work Act; and revise terminology.
 
Letter to Employee — Termination Due to Redundancy
This document has been updated to: include additional references to associated documents; revise the commentary, in particular with respect to the meaning of genuine redundancy under the Fair Work Act; and revise content to reflect considerations of redeployment prior to definite decision to terminate employment due to redundancy.
 
Notice of Meeting
This correspondence document has been updated as follows: to clarify that if the employee chooses to bring a support person (such as a union representative) into the meeting, the support person may not answer on the employee’s behalf or disrupt the meeting; amendment of the correspondence to cater for national and non-national system employers; revision of the commentary; and inclusion of references to associated documents.
 
Probation Terminated Letter
This document has had the following updates: changes to the content in line with the Fair Work Act; removal and addition of checklist content; revision of the commentary; and inclusion of references to associated documents.
 
Redundancy Letter to Centrelink
This letter and its commentary have been updated to comply with new redundancy notification requirements which apply to national and non-national systems employers under the Fair Work Act.
 
Redundancy Letter to Union
This document has been updated to: include additional references to associated documents and revise the content and commentary in accordance with the Fair Work Act, for example, with respect to the meaning of a genuine redundancy.
Summary Dismissal Letter
This document and its commentary have been updated to comply with the Fair Work Act and include additional references to associated documents.
 
Warning Letter
This letter has been updated to refine the wording and include references to associated documents.
 
CHECKLISTS
 
Performance Management Checklist
This document has been updated to: include additional references to associated documents; revise the commentary; and revise the steps in conducting the interview and the ongoing processes.
 
Property Return Checklist
This document and its commentary have been updated to provide a more streamlined checklist for the return of employer property upon the termination of an employee’s employment. The document has also been updated to comply with the Fair Work Act and include additional references to associated documents.
 
Redundancy Checklist
This document has been updated to: include additional references to associated documents; revise the commentary, in particular with respect to the meaning of genuine redundancy under the Fair Work Act; re-categorise and re-format the Checklist under convenient sub-headings so that the checklist reflects the sequence of tasks to be completed in the process of redundancy; revise the content to ensure employer considers options of redeployment prior to making the decision to terminate employee(s) due to redundancy; revise the content to include consideration of objective selection criteria when choosing which employee will be terminated as a result of a redundancy; and amend the Checklist to remind user to comply with consultation in accordance with any applicable award, contract or workplace policy.
 
Resignation Checklist
This document and its commentary have been updated to: include additional matters that may be attended to by an employer on the resignation by an employee; comply with the Fair Work Act; and include additional references to associated documents.
 
Termination Checklist
This document has had the following updates: format and style change; changes to the content in line with the Fair Work Act; removal and addition of Checklist content; revision of the commentary; and inclusion of references to associated documents.
 
We will keep you updated as we add more documents and resources to the HRwisdom Library.

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support

At HRwisdom, we are always striving to keep our members up to date and informed of both legislative changes and clever ways to manage their staff.

We have compiled a useful list of HR links for HR web sites and sites for human resources staff and employers in general.

Amongst others, we have included such HR web sites as:

• ACT Human Rights Commission
• Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)
• Australian Fair Pay Commission
• Australian Human Rights Commission (formerly known as HREOC)
• Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations
• Department of Immigration and Citizenship
• Fair Work Ombudsman
• Fair Work Online
• Northern Territory Anti-Discrimination Commission
• NSW Industrial Relations Commission
• NSW WorkCover Authority
• Queensland Anti-Discrimination Commission
• Queensland Department of Employment and Industrial Relations
• Queensland WorkCover Authority
• Safe Work Australia
• South Australian Equal Opportunity Commission
• South Australian Industrial Relations Tribunals
• South Australian WorkCover Authority
• Tasmanian Industrial Commission
• Tasmanian Office of the Anti-Discrimination Commissioner
• Tasmanian WorkCover Authority
• Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission
• Victorian Industrial Relations
• Victorian WorkSafe Authority
• Western Australian Equal Opportunity Commission
• Western Australian Industrial Relations Commission
• Western Australian WorkCover Authority

You can find the HR web sites at: HR Web Sites.

Kind regards,

HRwisdom Support