What do the National Employment Standards (NES) do to my business?

So can anyone tell me who, in their current business, is entitled to redundancy pay? What are the new laws around parental leave? Do I have to hold a job open for two years? What does Flexible Work mean? Does this mean I have to let the individual work part time for five years? How will my business cope?

With the implementation of the Fair Work Act (1/1/10) and more specifically the National Employment Standards (NES), came a raft of changes to managing Redundancy, Parental Leave and Flexible Working. All SMEs need to ensure that their policies and procedures reflect these changes and have been updated and implemented accordingly.

So to give you a sense of some of the changes:

Redundancy now:

·         payable to anyone with more than a year’s service

·         not payable by “small business employers” (less than 15 employees)

·         you can apply to Fair Work Australia (FWA) to have the amount reduced

Parental Leave now:

·         there is no distinction between paternity and maternity leave

·         12 months continuous service prior to date of the child’s birth; this includes casuals who have been employed for at least 12 months

·         ability to request to extend leave period by a further 12 months ( 24 months in total)

Flexible Working now:

·         to care for children under school age or for children under 18 years old with a disability

·         examples of Flexible Working might be changes to hours worked, patterns or location of work

·         employers must have reasonable business grounds to refuse

So what should you do?

1.       have appropriate policies and procedures in place that remind employees of their obligations

2.      training about policies at induction and on an ongoing basis

3.      review all Redundancy, Parental and Flexible Work policies to ensure compliance with NES

4.      reverse-onus of proof in Adverse Action claims highlights the importance of keeping appropriate paper trials of disciplinary and performance issues

5.      ensure compliance with any obligations imposed by business policies

6.      ensure that managers have been trained to deal with requests appropriately

So make sure that in 2012 your policies and procedures are aligned with the National Employment Standards (NES) to avoid any issues with the FWA Ombudsman.

Natasha Hawker owns Employee Matters Pty Ltd; an HR Consultancy that assists small to medium businesses with their HR functions to make them more efficient and profitable. Their offering includes HR Management, Recruitment, Training, Coaching, and Exit Management – find them at www.employeematters.com.au