Foundations Not Fluff

The start of each year is a time for many of us to set New Year’s Resolutions for ourselves and our businesses. We are ready and willing to do what it takes to create a better us or company. But as the weeks creep by, things might slip and suddenly we are back in our old patterns again.

Well there is always next year, right?
When it comes to HR foundations, business owners really can’t afford to push them off into the future with a “one day I’ll get around to it.” Described by some as boring or too hard, these three little things will give you compliance and peace of mind.

1. Record Keeping
Due to COVID-19, some business owners might not have even noticed that the government introduced Salary Annualization legislation in March 2020. “No big deal, it didn’t really apply to my business as I pay above award” is what I hear regularly from clients. But that is not the case. Businesses are now legally required to provide an Annualized Salary Statement at least once a year for all employees covered by a number of different awards and if there is any underpayment, backpay the employee. If there is an issue and you haven’t kept the required records for 7 years (including time, wages, leave, etc.) the penalty is now even higher and in some states wage theft is now a criminal offense.

Thankfully, there is now technology to assist with the record keeping part of the process, but so that you can sleep peacefully at night you need to put in place the Annualized Salary Statement process.

2. Refresh People’s Memory on Important Policies
Many of us have ticked the boxes to have a WH&S Policy or a Bullying Policy in place. As I’ve been meeting with my clients’ team members recently, I’ve asked the simple question “What does your Bullying Policy say?” – try and pick the response I get most regularly from this list below:
A) I know it off by heart, go ahead and quiz me
B) Oh, I don’t know. Something like…
C) What? Do we have one of those? Where is it?
That’s right. C is the clear winner.

Don’t be complacent and think that a document stored on a server is enough. Getting your team up to speed on your policies doesn’t have to be hard. Send them to the team to re-read, turn them into a quiz competition with small prizes for people who answer them correctly, put them up on your noticeboard, go through them briefly in team meetings, if you can afford it buy some online training or speak to your insurance provider and see if they can provide it for free. All simple ways to make sure your team know what the policies are and how to comply with them.

Not doing this will limit your ability to performance manage poor behaviour or even terminate employment for non-compliance and that can cost you more than providing training.

Set expectations between yourself and your employees will help your business success.

3. Confirm What You Expect of People in their Roles
At the start of the New Year, we often hear business owners and managers saying “I’m going to have that difficult conversation that I put off at the end of last year” or “This year I’ll be tougher on people delivering to my expectations”.
As we are starting 2021, now is the time to take a hard look and see whether that has resulted in the change needed and wanted?
No one enjoys managing poor performance, so let’s put that aside just for the moment. Let’s have a conversation about what you need from the person in this position in your business and why. What behaviours would you like to see, what actions and tasks would you like them to do? You might ask them what the problems are with completing the tasks if they are struggling? Your position description should guide you through this conversation and the person in the position should be crystal clear about what you want from them going forward.
This might seem basic but once everyone is on the same level you will have the ability to manage performance more easily and because you started things in this way, it won’t be so challenging in the future.

Our blog post about creating high performing teams will help. Not tackling the poor performance of your business can cost you clients, money and your best team members who can easily find work elsewhere.
So, with the knowledge that we are about to end a very challenging year and commence one that is going to be so much better, it is time to dust off those HR resolutions and recommit.

This could be your best year ever, but we need to get the foundations in place.

Impact HR can assist you to create the solid HR foundations required to make your business compliant and achieve the goals you have for 2021.
Call us for an obligation free discussion on 1300 474 672.