KEEPING UP TO DATE

3 HR mistakes SME owners make (and how to avoid them)

As the owner or Director of a small/medium sized business, it can feel daunting trying to keep on top of all your legal obligations relating to taking care of your people. In our years of experience helping small and medium size businesses manage HR, there are three common areas where managers often fail to meet their legal obligations:

• Paying people
• Letting people go
• Dealing with bullying and harassment

Paying People

Paying people is about attracting, retaining and rewarding people as well as your legal responsibilities under the award. There are a lot of things to consider when looking at your team’s pay, which award is right for your team, do you operate under a number of awards, what about overtime and penalty rates and loadings. Understanding and ensuring you pay people correctly will help you attract and retain the best people for your team and make sure you avoid nasty surprises like government fines or back-pay for unintentional mistakes. Click here to learn more about paying people correctly.

Letting People Go

In our experience, this is one of the things business owners and managers dread the most. They put it off until there is just no escaping the decision. Whether you need to make someone redundant, or deal with an employee whose behaviour and/or results aren’t meeting agreed levels of performance, its vital that you are across and understand what your legal obligations are to ensure the best outcome for the employee and your business. Click here to learn more about letting people go correctly.

Dealing with bullying and harassment

Workplace bullying has significant effects on those directly experiencing or witnessing the bullying, as well as their families, the work team and the organisation. As an employer, you have a clear legal obligation under work health and safety legislation to eliminate risks associated with workplace bullying as far as is reasonably practicable. This can be achieved through quality people management practices and specific workplace bullying strategies. Click here to learn more about preventing bullying at work.

If you would like support with any of these issues, please reach out to the Impact HR team. We can provide you with specific advice based on your individual circumstances and your business which makes sense and is easy to understand.