Ensuring your business is compliant with Australian employment law is often overlooked by many employers. And we get it, it can be challenging to keep up to date with the ever changing requirements in employment law, especially when you have an infinite number of other problems to deal with.
In this new series of posts we will aim to shine a light on some of the common stumbling blocks that we as HR Consultants come across for Australian business owners.
What is the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (FW Act)?
FW Act is the legislation governing Australia’s employment relations system. The FW Act lays out the minimum workplace entitlements and obligations applicable to the majority of Australian employees. The FW Act has established two independent government organisations to manage the system: the Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) and the Fair Work Commission (FWC). Together they play a key part in regulating the Act.
Requirement: Fair Work Information Statements
Australian employment law requires that all businesses must provide:
- The latest Fair Work Information Statement – to all employees; and
- The latest Casual Employment Information Statement – to all casual employees (in addition to the above).
From a HR compliance point of view, this is one of the simplest problems to solve but often we find employers are not aware of it. This places themselves and their businesses exposed to significant penalties from Fairwork.
The penalties for not providing these documents are $16,500 per contravention for an individual and $82,500 per contravention for companies.
Solution 1: Provide the documents manually
The first option is to provide documents manually to your employees to satisfy this requirement and/or provide a link to the Fairwork website within employment contracts. This is the simplest option to ensure immediate compliance, but it does require you to regularly monitor the Fairwork website for when these links/documents are updated and also provide to new starters as part of inductions.
The documents you need can be found here:
Solution 2: Automation
Many HR systems out there have built-in automated workflows which take care of this for you.
These workflows typically allow the employee to read and acknowledge the documents so your business has a record of which employees are compliant.
When looking for a system, our recommendation is to ensure it ticks some of the following boxes:
- Employers should be made aware when newer versions of the documents are available
- The employee should be able to access to the latest versions of the documents at any time
- The employee should get notified when newer versions of the documents are available
- The employee should be required to read and acknowledge the documents
- The employee should receive regular reminders if they have not yet read and acknowledged the documents
- The system should be backed by experts in Australian employment law
Your HR System
Your HR System has tackled this problem with its HR Policy feature. We automate the sign-off process and keep you up to date with the latest documents that are required by Australian employment law. Our team of experts proactively update these documents in the background ensuring that your business is never at risk of a fine.
If you want to learn more about, please reach out and one of our HR Consultants will be in contact with you.