Diversity & equal rights

Work imageWhat will work look like in the future and what lessons can employers take from that? Two recent reports have identified the trends in the way in which we will work in Australia over the next 20 to 40 years.

In the first, Tomorrow’s Digitally Enabled Workforce, the CSIRO looks at what they describe as six ‘megatrends’ for jobs and employment markets over the coming twenty years:
Continue Reading The future of work – what are the lessons for employers?

FinanceScott Morrison’s first Federal Budget announced the creation of the ‘Youth Jobs PaTH’ (Prepare-Trial-Hire) program – a program designed to encourage up to 120,000 unemployed youth into the workforce through skills training programs, paid internships and incentive payments for prospective employers. While further details will come to light over the course of the Federal Election campaign, employers who want to participate will need to look before they leap, to make sure their participation in the program doesn’t lead them, later on, to fall foul of the minimum wage provisions in awards and legislation. 
Continue Reading Are you on the right path with interns?

EyeWhen it comes to managing bullying in the workplace, the focus tends to be on dealing with the bullying behaviour after it has occurred or at least after the bully has started work. But are there ways to stop bullies from being recruited in the first place?

One place to start is screening during recruitment. There are certain personalities who deliberately inflict harm or lack the ability to understand the harm they are doing to others. These personalities fall within a category that psychologists call the ‘Dark Triad’ which comprises three sub-personalities: Machiavellianism, sub-clinical narcissism and sub-clinical psychopathy.
Continue Reading Screening for psychopaths – managing the front end of workplace bullying

As the Australian Football League 2016 pre-season approaches, there is a lot of talk in the media about “list management” by clubs. This generally involves retiring or trading “older” players – usually over the age of 28.

It is often assumed – rightly or wrongly – that football players lose their athletic edge around this age. But is it fair – or legal –  to use age as a blunt proxy for performance?  There are players (like Dustin Fletcher of Essendon fame) that perform brilliantly into their late 30s and beyond.
Continue Reading AFL “list management” – a polite term for age discrimination?

Bullying behaviour comes in all shapes and sizes.  Identifying and deciding how to respond to diverse bullying behaviour by a worker (or workers) can create challenges for employers.

Recent headlines have cautioned that unfriending on Facebook could be considered bullying. That this seemingly innocuous action has been elevated to “bullying” has been the subject of many concerned water-cooler discussions since hitting the mainstream press.
Continue Reading Death threats and unfriending – what is bullying?

The spectre of claims under anti-discrimination legislation (and the related media) appears to drive nervousness in some businesses. This is especially the case when dealing with longer term ill or injured employees. In this blog we make two suggestions about how to handle this issue in the context of non-work related illness and injury:

  • Be open and transparent with employees when determining what their illness or injury means for their ability to work, and
  • In deciding whether a business is required to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ in the workplace to enable a disabled worked to continue working, the inherent requirements of the role must be able to be identified with ease and precision.

These suggestions are discussed in more detail below.
Continue Reading Enabling the ‘disabled’ to work

Are participants in a workplace investigation, as complainant or alleged perpetrator of misconduct, ‘untouchable’ by their employer – can their performance be managed, can they be disciplined, can they be retrenched without risk of court proceedings against the employer?

There is a view in legal and HR circles that the threat of claim by employees in the Fair Work Commission’s ‘adverse action’ jurisdiction means participation in a workplace investigation makes participants immune from any ‘adverse action’ by their employer. The action is not even justified by circumstances unrelated to the facts the subject of the investigation if it is merely contemporaneous with the investigation. This is a myth!
Continue Reading Participants in a workplace investigation – The Untouchables?

The workplace gender equality reporting requirements have been criticised for being too onerous on employers.  But changes are afoot.  On 25 February 2015, Senator Eric Abetz, the Minister for Employment, and Senator Michaelia Cash, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women, announced changes aimed at reducing the complexity of the reporting requirements. 
Continue Reading The devil is in the detail – the new gender reporting requirements

Recently, Virgin Group announced through its CEO Richard Branson, that it would be removing its workplace policy that limits holidays for employees. The ‘no policy’ approach to annual leave is to be implemented as a flexible working policy measure that allows all salaried staff to take off as much time as they want, whenever they want with no managerial monitoring of time away from work. The announcement was made during school holidays in Australia.
Continue Reading Unlimited annual leave policy, you’re kidding right?