Adverse Action: The sleeping giant of the Fair Work Act is slowly waking up and will soon be terrorising SMEs everywhere!
Adverse action means that just when you think you’ve dealt with an employee and that a workplace problem has been finalised, it hasn’t.
Adverse action means that just when you think the termination for poor performance has been finalised, it hasn’t.
Adverse action means that just when you think you’ve selected your best candidate and that the recruitment process has now been finalised, it hasn’t.
Adverse action means that just when you think all your managers have been trained effectively in how to treat their staff, they haven’t.
In effect, adverse action can result from any situation where an employee has a workplace right and the exercise of that right is impacted in some way or other by decisions of the employer. More significantly, it can occur when decisions are made on behalf of the employer by staff who don’t fully understand the implications of their decision or have not adequately followed a process which led to the particular decision.
The Fair Work Act contains general protection provisions which state that an employer must not take any adverse action against an employee, or contractor or prospective employee or contractor, because that person has exercised or proposes to exercise a workplace right.
Workplace rights are very broad and include, for example, rights as a union member, the right to make complaints about their employment, the right to enquire about terms and conditions of employment, the right to request flexible work arrangements.
An action is adverse if it affects the employee adversely. Any reasonable or normal action taken by the employer in exercising their role, such as instituting performance management or disciplinary procedures, or implementing a work change, or refusing overtime or TOIL, could be adverse if the employee believes the action was taken because they were exercising a workplace right.
Some examples:
Recent cases heard by Fair Work Australia or dealt with in other jurisdictions have covered situations where managers failed to adequately train staff; where overtime was required without any additional payment; where termination resulted from union activities.
Adverse action claims can be lodged up to 6 years after the event! And the penalties are not limited to, for example, 6 month’s pay for an unfair dismissal. Each breach can result in fines of $33,000 for the organisation and $6,000 FOR INDIVIDUALS.
Oh, and an HR Manager who acts in a way that leads to the adverse action, can also be fined!
Protecting yourself from adverse action complaints requires a disciplined culture of HR and IR compliance: a culture that acknowledges and supports the role of the HR Manager in ensuring line managers adhere to policies and procedures; a culture that trains and supports managers in their decision making and which rewards them accordingly.
Policies and procedures need to be updated and enforced and record keeping needs to be maintained.
HR Managers will need to be especially diligent in ensuring the actions of managers do not lead to claims of adverse treatment: the penalties and consequences are too great.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Friday, April 8, 2011
Just a Million Strokes: Leadership vs Management
Written by Ron Jones for HRiQ
I had spent some time in recent weeks trying to really come to terms with the difference between leadership and management. I know that there are plenty of theoretical and research-based differences about roles, personality types and a range of other key components. What I was looking for was what we as HR practitioners could do to tangibly promote leadership.
And then I attended a presentation by Roz Savage.
For those of you who don’t know, Roz was the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean, having already conquered the Atlantic. In the next few days after her talk, she would set out to conquer the Indian Ocean.
During her presentation, she commented that the first leg of the Pacific was ”just a million strokes." I don’t pretend to know anything about what it is like to embark on such a journey, but it gave me a jolt to think that most of us are overawed by such large numbers and the challenge that this presents.
There was also another realization that struck me: most of us are really good at giving up on something when we don’t like it and then moving onto something else.
But if you’re in the middle of the Pacific, and you’ve only done 350,000 strokes, you can’t give up! Where else would you go? Savage’s journey meant making a huge commitment—and having made the commitment, being prepared to see it through to the end.
Most of us in the workplace get stuck at some point. We give up on the task we are doing and move to something else; we go home and complain about the boss, the work, or something else— although we don’t often complain about ourselves!
A million is a huge number of strokes! Imagine the prospect of waking up each day and repeating the same action 10,000 times before you go to sleep again, only to wake up and do the same thing over, and over, and over.
Savage spoke about what inspired her to make the first solo journey. It was very much a personal exploration – something which took her completely out of the comfort zone of everything that she had done and what she was doing at the time.
It occurred to me that one difference between leadership and management is that management occurs within our comfort zone; true leadership takes us outside of that zone.
Think about the people who most inspire us as leaders. They inspire us because they take that extra step, do something which is counter-intuitive or really put their own interests on the line.
Most of us in HR roles like to play it safe. We rarely step outside of our own comfort zones, and many of us just strive to effectively maintain the status quo in our organizations. We are hardly ever presented with a mandate to take ourselves outside of our defined role, and yet this is precisely what we need to do. We need to challenge many of the assumptions within the organizations we work in. We should constantly be looking for the organizational challenges which not only build our own leadership capacity, but which also provide opportunities for others.
How many of us set out to do our ‘million stroke journey’: to challenge ourselves so completely that we forget what our comfort zone is?
I don’t know what my threshold is. I do know that every now and again, the challenges in the workplace can create ideal experiences to learn more about myself – and if I know that, then perhaps I can use Roz Savage’s example to be more effective as a leader to others.
I had spent some time in recent weeks trying to really come to terms with the difference between leadership and management. I know that there are plenty of theoretical and research-based differences about roles, personality types and a range of other key components. What I was looking for was what we as HR practitioners could do to tangibly promote leadership.
And then I attended a presentation by Roz Savage.
For those of you who don’t know, Roz was the first woman to row solo across the Pacific Ocean, having already conquered the Atlantic. In the next few days after her talk, she would set out to conquer the Indian Ocean.
During her presentation, she commented that the first leg of the Pacific was ”just a million strokes." I don’t pretend to know anything about what it is like to embark on such a journey, but it gave me a jolt to think that most of us are overawed by such large numbers and the challenge that this presents.
There was also another realization that struck me: most of us are really good at giving up on something when we don’t like it and then moving onto something else.
But if you’re in the middle of the Pacific, and you’ve only done 350,000 strokes, you can’t give up! Where else would you go? Savage’s journey meant making a huge commitment—and having made the commitment, being prepared to see it through to the end.
Most of us in the workplace get stuck at some point. We give up on the task we are doing and move to something else; we go home and complain about the boss, the work, or something else— although we don’t often complain about ourselves!
A million is a huge number of strokes! Imagine the prospect of waking up each day and repeating the same action 10,000 times before you go to sleep again, only to wake up and do the same thing over, and over, and over.
Savage spoke about what inspired her to make the first solo journey. It was very much a personal exploration – something which took her completely out of the comfort zone of everything that she had done and what she was doing at the time.
It occurred to me that one difference between leadership and management is that management occurs within our comfort zone; true leadership takes us outside of that zone.
Think about the people who most inspire us as leaders. They inspire us because they take that extra step, do something which is counter-intuitive or really put their own interests on the line.
Most of us in HR roles like to play it safe. We rarely step outside of our own comfort zones, and many of us just strive to effectively maintain the status quo in our organizations. We are hardly ever presented with a mandate to take ourselves outside of our defined role, and yet this is precisely what we need to do. We need to challenge many of the assumptions within the organizations we work in. We should constantly be looking for the organizational challenges which not only build our own leadership capacity, but which also provide opportunities for others.
How many of us set out to do our ‘million stroke journey’: to challenge ourselves so completely that we forget what our comfort zone is?
I don’t know what my threshold is. I do know that every now and again, the challenges in the workplace can create ideal experiences to learn more about myself – and if I know that, then perhaps I can use Roz Savage’s example to be more effective as a leader to others.
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Building employee engagement
Written by
Ron Jones, Ron Jones Consulting
Workplace Management: Strategy & Advice
Almost every article on employee engagement refers to the importance of culture.
I have struggled at times with understanding how the culture of the organisation is really defined, since so much of it seems to come from the approach adopted by line managers. We constantly claim that ‘people join organisations, but leave managers’.
This suggests that the interpretation and practice of the corporate culture adopted by managers is a key determinant in the day to day experience of staff and how they describe the culture. The actions and behaviour of managers will influence each staff member’s description of the culture as they experience that behaviour.
My work with a wide range of organisations suggests that there are really 5 areas of influence which ultimately determine the level of engagement.
These are Purpose and Direction, Values and Behaviour, Consistent Treatment, Empathy and Responsiveness, Effective Communication.
For each manager, there is a fundamental need to build a level of confidence and trust with staff around their commitment to these areas of influence.
This will mean taking action to do the following:
Purpose and Direction - Be clear about the purpose and direction of the organisation
Managers should know what the business model is and how that impacts on the area they manage. Knowing how each component part of the business links to others is vital in creating a sense of involvement and excitement. All companies have a story about what they do, the name, their history: these should be told with passion.
Values and Behaviour - Be clear about the values and behaviours
Managers need to model and demonstrate behaviours that clearly associate them as having a strong values base which is aligned to the organisation’s core values and beliefs. The extent to which staff feel welcome and included is also a key outcome of the behaviour of managers.
Consistent Treatment - Be consistent in your treatment of staff
All treatment of staff should reflect the values and be capable of a test of consistency: this particularly applies to issues such as to the types of behaviour that are rewarded and those that are not.
Empathy and Responsiveness - Be engaged in the work issues that staff deal with or are concerned about
Managers need to enquire about what is happening and acknowledge and respond to the concerns of staff. Simple displays of recognition and communicating to staff about successes - and even failures – are important in demonstrating understanding and creating a strong sense of pride.
Effective Communication - Be open and authentic in your communication
Managers often need to be trained in how to be effective in their written and verbal communication. The ability to convey a message authentically is a vital feature of establishing and building trust.
There may be other equally important features of building and sustaining employee engagement, however these five areas have been the most significant in my experience.
The challenge within our organisations is to recognise their importance and establish the basis on which we appoint people demonstrating these characteristics into leadership roles.
Ron Jones, Ron Jones Consulting
Workplace Management: Strategy & Advice
Almost every article on employee engagement refers to the importance of culture.
I have struggled at times with understanding how the culture of the organisation is really defined, since so much of it seems to come from the approach adopted by line managers. We constantly claim that ‘people join organisations, but leave managers’.
This suggests that the interpretation and practice of the corporate culture adopted by managers is a key determinant in the day to day experience of staff and how they describe the culture. The actions and behaviour of managers will influence each staff member’s description of the culture as they experience that behaviour.
My work with a wide range of organisations suggests that there are really 5 areas of influence which ultimately determine the level of engagement.
These are Purpose and Direction, Values and Behaviour, Consistent Treatment, Empathy and Responsiveness, Effective Communication.
For each manager, there is a fundamental need to build a level of confidence and trust with staff around their commitment to these areas of influence.
This will mean taking action to do the following:
Purpose and Direction - Be clear about the purpose and direction of the organisation
Managers should know what the business model is and how that impacts on the area they manage. Knowing how each component part of the business links to others is vital in creating a sense of involvement and excitement. All companies have a story about what they do, the name, their history: these should be told with passion.
Values and Behaviour - Be clear about the values and behaviours
Managers need to model and demonstrate behaviours that clearly associate them as having a strong values base which is aligned to the organisation’s core values and beliefs. The extent to which staff feel welcome and included is also a key outcome of the behaviour of managers.
Consistent Treatment - Be consistent in your treatment of staff
All treatment of staff should reflect the values and be capable of a test of consistency: this particularly applies to issues such as to the types of behaviour that are rewarded and those that are not.
Empathy and Responsiveness - Be engaged in the work issues that staff deal with or are concerned about
Managers need to enquire about what is happening and acknowledge and respond to the concerns of staff. Simple displays of recognition and communicating to staff about successes - and even failures – are important in demonstrating understanding and creating a strong sense of pride.
Effective Communication - Be open and authentic in your communication
Managers often need to be trained in how to be effective in their written and verbal communication. The ability to convey a message authentically is a vital feature of establishing and building trust.
There may be other equally important features of building and sustaining employee engagement, however these five areas have been the most significant in my experience.
The challenge within our organisations is to recognise their importance and establish the basis on which we appoint people demonstrating these characteristics into leadership roles.
Wednesday, January 19, 2011
Why Job Descriptions Matter
One of the challenges for HR is preparing job descriptions that are effective in addressing the strategic needs of the organization and linking this to the outcomes expected of any particular position.
Somehow we seem to have separated the job from the organization in such a way that we describe the focus of the organization in strategic terms but describe jobs by reference to the tasks they perform. Managers have clearly decided that the best way to control the workforce is to describe jobs in this way and this has been aided and assisted by HR departments.
Interestingly, of course, the position descriptor then becomes fairly useless as a reference point for performance development and management. Most people are capable of demonstrating that they can easily undertake the tasks in the position descriptor since these are usually set in such a way that they describe what the job used to do, not what it needs to do. Sadly, someone who can’t do the tasks assigned to them is probably not going to benefit from any performance development process.
Position descriptors need to be outcome focused and linked directly to the areas of accountability in a strategic or business plan.
I recently reviewed and rewrote a set of position descriptors for a large service sector organization that had used a very traditional task description system that categorized activities according to whether they were performed daily, weekly, monthly or occasionally, and the percentage of time to be spent on each task group.
Not surprisingly, this agency experienced a high degree of turnover from staff whose commitment and loyalty to the organization was affected by a high level of control and what they also perceived to be a lack of trust.
By changing the description of the roles to reflect the strategic nature of the position, and through developing a strong link between the successful achievement of position outcomes and organizational success, we were able to reduce turnover and improve morale.
This change was only possible because the CEO recognized the benefit of doing something different and being prepared to adopt a practical and relatively easy to use system. A similar approach has been adopted by another service sector organization and is being implemented within an expanding resource sector operation.
Every organization sets out to establish a performance culture and attempts to reinforce this through a management and development system.
We need to understand that when we recruit people or promote them, we are usually looking to match their capability and potential with the future needs of the organization. To limit this possibility by inappropriate job descriptions is to deny the organization – and the individual – of realizing the full impact of their talents and contribution.
HR owes both parties a better deal.
What do you think?
This article was written for Human Resources IQ.
Somehow we seem to have separated the job from the organization in such a way that we describe the focus of the organization in strategic terms but describe jobs by reference to the tasks they perform. Managers have clearly decided that the best way to control the workforce is to describe jobs in this way and this has been aided and assisted by HR departments.
Interestingly, of course, the position descriptor then becomes fairly useless as a reference point for performance development and management. Most people are capable of demonstrating that they can easily undertake the tasks in the position descriptor since these are usually set in such a way that they describe what the job used to do, not what it needs to do. Sadly, someone who can’t do the tasks assigned to them is probably not going to benefit from any performance development process.
Position descriptors need to be outcome focused and linked directly to the areas of accountability in a strategic or business plan.
I recently reviewed and rewrote a set of position descriptors for a large service sector organization that had used a very traditional task description system that categorized activities according to whether they were performed daily, weekly, monthly or occasionally, and the percentage of time to be spent on each task group.
Not surprisingly, this agency experienced a high degree of turnover from staff whose commitment and loyalty to the organization was affected by a high level of control and what they also perceived to be a lack of trust.
By changing the description of the roles to reflect the strategic nature of the position, and through developing a strong link between the successful achievement of position outcomes and organizational success, we were able to reduce turnover and improve morale.
This change was only possible because the CEO recognized the benefit of doing something different and being prepared to adopt a practical and relatively easy to use system. A similar approach has been adopted by another service sector organization and is being implemented within an expanding resource sector operation.
Every organization sets out to establish a performance culture and attempts to reinforce this through a management and development system.
We need to understand that when we recruit people or promote them, we are usually looking to match their capability and potential with the future needs of the organization. To limit this possibility by inappropriate job descriptions is to deny the organization – and the individual – of realizing the full impact of their talents and contribution.
HR owes both parties a better deal.
What do you think?
This article was written for Human Resources IQ.
Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Monday, October 4, 2010
SMALL BUSINESS - URGENT ACTION
WHEN IT COMES TO FAIR WORK, SMALL MEANS BIG
Urgent action is required by small business to address change in definition
The Fair Work Act has defined a small business as one with fewer than 15 employees. Employees may be full time, part time or casuals employed on a regular and systematic basis.
An employee of a small business is unable to pursue a claim for unfair dismissal unless he or she has been employed for at least 12 months.
A small business is also exempted from paying redundancy benefits in the event that the business makes an employee’s position redundant.
These measures have been introduced to assist small business growth and development and to help insulate them from some of the costs which would impede that growth.
Under the provisions of the Act, it is anticipated that as business grow, they will be able to meet the same costs as larger businesses.
However, the definition of small business has another twist: for the period up to 31 December, 2010, the number of employees is calculated according to an assessment of ‘full time equivalent’ status.
This means, for example, a business employing 20 long term casual and part time staff whose total hours over a 4 week period were less than 2280, would be classified as a small business.
If the number of hours was greater than 2280, then it would not be a small business.
From 1 January 2011, the definition applies to head count only. In other words, the business employing 20 casual and part time staff whose total hours over 4 weeks are less 2280, will be a small business because of the total number of people employed.
The implications for many businesses are significant and will force a complete reassessment of the cost structures which apply to the organisation.
In the example given above, there has been no change in the size of the business, no increase in revenue or sales, and no improvement in productivity: all that has changed is the definition.
This business will now be subject to the application of unfair dismissal and redundancy provisions: if it wants to dismiss anyone, it better do it in December and not wait to January!
Australia’s definition of small business defies logic. Whilst other developed economies have a higher headcount figure (for example, 500 in America and 100 in Europe) they usually also have a revenue or profit component as well.
Australia has opted for a simplistic definition – one which will not serve the interests of small business and may act to stifle growth across many industries.
Businesses and organisations which currently operate under the protected definition of 15 FTE have less than 3 months to review their current staffing profile and take the necessary steps to ensure compliance with the new requirements from 1 January 2011.
You will need to act now – contact Ron Jones Consulting for confidential advice and assistance.
Or email ron@rightworkadvice.com.au
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