Episode 58 To Document or Not Document? It's not a question, it's a Must Ron Mazumder Business Development Manager Peninsula (formerly Employsure)

The world of employment just keeps getting more technical and complex, especially as we migrate into a post-Covid world. There are emerging issues that will be impacted by rising salaries, interest rate pressure and what’s known as the great resignation.

So to keep in front of the curve and the competition, a business owner needs to make sure there is the appropriate level of documentation in place.

Peninsula (formerly Employsure) are one service provider that helps to fill this technical gap and Ron Mazumder provided great information on what steps to take in the Workplace Occupational Health and Safety area.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Firstly, having a COVID policy is very important and setting the expectations very clear that if there is a COVID infection, what are the steps that the employee needs to follow? If they're going for a test, are they going to be paid for that test? If they are positive, then what happens then? So having those expectations very clear is very important. Again, I would like to stay away from answering the legalities because they are changing rapidly and they change, they have changed quite a bit. So I could be giving one information which would change tomorrow. This is where our advice line is very useful because they are up to date with that information and it's just a matter of phone call where a business owner will just bring our advice line and give the situation.

SPEAKER_00 0:50

This week's conversation is a little different in that we're talking a little bit more technical in nature around some of the rules and regulations around people, workplace health and safety, and some of the documentation that needs to be in place to ensure that you, as an employer, are complying with the law. And in particular around COVID, we dive into a little bit of the requirements there. Please note that the information in this episode is general in nature and you shouldn't consider it as advice. And always consult with a professional in this field before making any changes to your human resource practices. Now that we've got that out of the way, I want to welcome you to the Inspiring Business Podcast, where we hope to inspire you, the business owner, and provide you with the knowledge and information you need to create a business that is scalable and ultimately independent of your daily involvement. I hope the information you're about to hear helps you navigate towards your success. My guest today is Ron Mazumla, who is a business development manager with EmployShaw. Now, EmployShaw is an Australian-based organization that offers 24-7 advice and support on employment relations and workplace health and safety to small and medium businesses. Welcome, Ron, to the Inspiring Business Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Thank you, Steve, for the invitation to do this podcast with you today.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Thanks, Ron. This is a slightly different type of podcast than we've done in the past, where normally we would have the business advisors or business owners who are coming on and telling their story. This one we were actually looking more about the technical and some of the human resource issues that business owners might have. So before we get into some of the topical points of today, perhaps you could just give the listener a little bit of your background and how you how you became the business development manager for EmployShore.

SPEAKER_01 2:57

Thank you, Steve. Yeah, a bit about me. I've got business development experience for the last 22 years. Worked across different industries, organizations, bank, worked with Citibank, Census, Yellow Pages, which is in digital advertising. I work for Lux Everyday, which is again in the digital space as well. News Corp and then Employee Show. I guess the biggest thing about my role is to find a solution for businesses till I joined Employee Show. But since for the last three years, I have been working for Employee Show, it's about giving business owners to sleep at night because Australia has some of the toughest HR and occult and safety legislations, which business owners are finding extremely difficult to get through and make sure that they're doing the right thing. But most importantly, um we they are mitigating those blind spots because that is often what I find that business owners don't come to know in their day-to-day running off businesses because they don't have a HR manager, they don't have the capacity to look into those legislations on a day-to-day basis. That that gives me enormous satisfaction helping businesses, making sure they're compliant, and obviously, as I mentioned, helping them sleep it.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

So if I understand it correctly, so the problem that you're solving, at least that employers as an organization is solving, is that the bigger end of town obviously has their human resource divisions or departments who then manage the compliance side and are obviously have individuals within that group that might be specialists in OHS or recruitment or whatever. And so employ shore then provides that facility, if you like, or internal outsourcing of human resources to the smaller end of town. What are the biggest issues that you see that face small enterprises that causes them to use your services?

SPEAKER_01 4:58

Yes. See, what you will find in this conversation, and I'll go through it quite a few times, is a lot on documentation. Now, the biggest challenge that I find with small and venial businesses, it's traditionally has been a very handshake, um, casual kind of situation where they're hiring employees with trust. Now, the problem that businesses face by doing that is when we don't have things in writing like an employment contract and an employee handbook, uh, which is a basic uh documentation which I would highly recommend for every business, whether it's small or large, is not present within the business. The challenges that we find, and I can pick a few examples being Australia being the largest, I guess, employer of casual employees, that I find that if we don't mention certain things in the documentation, that there can be challenges that employers can face due to non-compliance or not mentioning some of the key things like casual loading. I guess why businesses use us is basically to ensure that they are they are complying, but also if they have those patchy situations from time to time when uh employees are not following directions or they decide to go uh against the business and launch a fair work claim that they have that uh external support which we provide to businesses to mitigate those risks and problems, but often take that proactive approach rather to make sure that those problems don't arrive in the first place. That's what employers all about. We support small and medium businesses and sometimes even large businesses to be compliant in terms of documentation, managing employees, and mitigating these issues.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Obviously, the time that we're in at the moment, we are recording this session in July 2022, and we are in our, I don't know, umpteenth phase of COVID. And the responses that the employers and government have had to provide to their employees is obviously it's a difficult situation at the moment, and casual employees are uh no longer being funded by the federal government and the state governments. So there's obviously an issue there around their reporting. It's illegal not to report the fact that they've got COVID, but then they don't get paid if they don't go to work as a legal requirement. Now I know that you can't comment on that, but it'd be really interesting to hear your thoughts on the complexity of the casual employee and some of the pitfalls that an employer can overcome and the prevention of those situations. But before we get into the sort of specifics of a couple of the points of concern at the moment, what what is the general process that you would normally take an employer through to just get them to the point where that they are in a position where they are compliant and they are protected against any possible concerns, particularly in the human resource employment phase.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

Yes, Tim. So that's where my expertise comes in play in that process, Steve, because the first step that I usually do is to do a full compliance review of the business, asking a whole lot of questions in terms of how big the employer, how many employees do they hire, are they over 15? Are they less than 15? Because that makes a difference into the kind of advice that we provide. Once that advice piece is given, then we draft tailor-made documentation for individual businesses. Now, it's well and good that we draft those documents, but if they're not reviewed from time to time, sometimes it could be three months, sometimes it could be six months, sometimes it could be every week, could be every month. You spoke about casual changes. We've had numerous changes to the casual laws in the last two years. At one point of time, we were talking about casual conversion, how we convert a regular systematic casual into a full-time or a part-time arrangement. Now it's it's back to if you are over 15, then you proactively need to offer that the casual conversion. So I guess what I'm trying to explain is yes, we do that initial review, we prepare those documents, but my job is to visit the businesses from time to time and make sure that the compliance is all updated. They are looking into these sort of in into the contracts documentation from time to time, because if we just do it as a one-off, that is a very risky situation where businesses are investing quite a large sum of money to get the compliance up to date, but in all in three months' time, that document could be out of date. So that's where I guess my expertise is lies in then reviewing that documentation, making sure it's up to date, and also educating them on the changes from time to time.

SPEAKER_00 9:59

I know you're based in South Australia, but you look after Australia-wide in your role as uh business development manager. So there's two questions I have there. One, the difference between under 15 and over 15, and you spoke of the application of casual employees when you are more than 15. So I'm I'd really interested are there any other pitfalls that an organization that has over 15 employees needs to look for? And how does the state-based awards, how does that then apply? You get a difference across each state. And what if you're a national organization and you're having to deal with not just multiple awards, but multiple states? How does how do you deal with that?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

There's about two or three parts to that question, Steve. I'll try and answer as best as possible. Now, firstly, let me go through the scenario of more than 15 and less than 15 employees. Now, if an organization has more than 15 staff, it doesn't matter whether it's casual, part-time, or full-time. They're termed as a larger organization. Now, there is quite a few things around apart from casual conversion, which applies to that organization. An employer might have access to unfair dismissal rights a bit earlier, um, could be in six months if they are over larger or over 15 employees. So there's quite a few factors that can influence if they, if a business has more than 15 employees as opposed to less than 15 employees, doesn't mean that you cannot have more than 15 employees. It's just the documentation needs to be tailor-made towards that larger organization. In terms of the other changes, there could be changes you mentioned about awards. An employee can fall under two or three different awards. Absolutely. Again, the contract needs to talk about those awards. There could be, for example, there could be an organization where there is an employee who's doing a bit of manufacturing, but they also drive a delivery truck. So they could fall under the road transport award or the long distance road transport award. So in that case, we look at okay, what's the time he's spending in manufacturing and what's the time he's spending in driving a truck? And then we put those two awards and come to an assessment that this is the best rate, that's that this employee needs to get paid. The risk of not doing that is that the employee could come back and say, look, I was doing manufacturing as predominantly my main job, but I was also driving a truck and the business didn't pay me, and there is a risk of that underpayment. Hence again, why tailorment documentation is very important. I often see Steve businesses talk about downloading a template from Google or they're copying a documentation from another organization. Cannot stress enough how risky that is. It's it's because that documentation is not a true reflection of that particular organization. Going back to the third part of your question, which is with the award, is it sort of state-based? Now, awards are national, they are applicable across all states. However, the occult and safety is something which is state-based. We have Safe WorkSA in South Australia, there's work safe in Victoria. Following the individual state legislations in terms of occult and safety is very important. There could be some stipulation in terms of the awards, which are specifically state-based, but depends on the awards. But usually the awards are national. But again, occult and safety is another important area, and I see a lot of gaps in businesses where there is no occurrence safety. Hopefully that answers your question, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 13:28

Yeah, it does. It just feels like it's a minefield and that I've spent time in human resources, but not on the compliance side of things, more on the leadership of management and the organizational design and writing job descriptions, getting performance management programs in place. There's just so many rabbit holes that we could run down, and I'm just conscious of time. So there's probably two areas that I would I think would we could move on to. One is the job description itself. Don't treat them as compliance documents. They're living documents that enables the communication between the employee and the employer, setting some boundaries. But it also helps with the structuring of the contracts, obviously. If we could just look at that, what's the interplay or interrelationship between the job description that you write, the performance management program that you might implement, and then the contract that you sign as an employer employee?

SPEAKER_01 14:33

Very good question, Steve. To give you a bit of an understanding, a contract is a legal binding agreement between the employer and the employee. We put clauses like confidentiality, intellectual property, what's their job role, where is the place of employment, time, again, very important. So we put the important clauses in a contract as opposed to a handbook. And then we also add the job description with the contract. Although it's not a compliance document, but it is a very important part of a contract because unless we have a job description, you're 100% correct. It's very difficult to do a performance management for an employee. What are the KPIs that they need to comply or they need to achieve to be able to successfully be successful in that role? Unless we have that in writing, or if that expectation is given, how does an employee know what they're supposed to achieve in their 7.6 hours a day or weight? So it is a very important document. It goes with the contract, and that is exactly how you do a performance management, because then you base your KPIs based on the job role. You could have 10 or 20 KPIs, and when the performance management is done weekly, fortnightly, monthly, however the business wants to do it, then you're basing on those KPIs. This also has another effect if an employee is not performing. I guess the if an employee doesn't perform, the usual course of action from a business is to go through performance management and eventually termination. Now, if we terminate an employee and we don't have enough evidence on why that termination was conducted, that can lead to an unfair dismissal claim, wherein the business will have to provide evidence on what basis did they actually terminate that employment. Although it's not part of the main compliance, a performance management is very important and a job description is very important when you're hiring an employee.

SPEAKER_00 16:31

I'm always concerned when the only conversation that an employer has with their employee is the conversation around why you should leave. And it's always a difficult, it's a difficult role. And then I'm sure you see this in your travels is that the small business owners have greater difficulty in letting go of control because they feel as though they don't trust their employees and they get frustrated by that. And so having those compliance documents, but using those compliance processes to enable the opportunity to work together so that you have a common outcome. So I can see how the two fit neatly together. I guess in this current two years that we've been living it with COVID, virtual work has been something that has obviously become a norm. Some people are coming back to the office, and some don't want to come back to the office and feel as though they can do their job remotely. What are some of the tips that you might be able to give the employer who's facing that choice of whether to continue in a virtual world, have a hybrid world, or actually require their employees to return to a physical location because of the circumstances that they're in?

SPEAKER_01 18:12

I knew this question would be coming from you soon, Steve. Very relevant question. COVID has actually changed the way we've been operating our business for years. And one of the big changes, as you mentioned rightly, is working remotely. Now, for some businesses it has worked really well. For other businesses, it has been challenging, but they're slowly coming back to working from an office environment because simply they can't just can't operate from home. Now, there are two aspects to this question. The first aspect being if you've got employees working from home, what are the things you need to be mindful of because they are working remotely, they are working in an unsupervised condition. Now, there is a HR side to it and an occult and safety side to it. I'll try and cover this in brief, otherwise, we will be exceeding our time. On the HR side, making sure about that the confidentiality, the intellectual property is not compromised, i.e., are they working from their home computer? Are they provided a laptop or an iPad? Because that's that is a big issue that a lot of businesses could face if they're working from their home computer in terms of viruses, their confidentiality information and whatnot. The other thing is also looking after the sort of the mental health side of things for employees as well. Are they alone at home? Are they comfortable working from home? Are they a kind of person who needs that sort of interaction? They need someone around them when they're working. Do they have a safe space to work? Economics, that's been a big one in terms of occupant safety. Do they have a proper desk? Are they sitting in a garage? Are they sitting in their lounge room? Can they have a back issue? Is there a checklist that the employer is going through if they are providing that sort of work from home arrangement? Are they going to provide desks, workstations, computers? If are they fatigued or uh do they have any mental health issues? That's come up a lot in the last two years since COVID. So that's one aspect to it. Again, having policies, procedures. I have been drafting several contracts, policies, procedures around working from home. Our advisors have been very busy answering those questions. But also that has given an opportunity to a lot of employees asking to work from home. Now, this is again a situation which needs to be looked at on a one-on-one scenario. Two factors. Can that work be done from home comfortably? And will the business achieve the same results working from home? Secondly, if they can't work from home, then is there a particular individual situation that needs to be considered? Because often I've seen that employees have come and said, I cannot work from an office environment, I need to work from home. What that does is it spikes up a couple of questions. If you are allowing one employee to work from home, what's stopping other employees to come and ask that I need to work from home as well? Then we need to look at can this work happen from home? Secondly, what are the individual circumstances? And then make that informed decision. Otherwise, there could be the employees can be can go against the business and say, my business has not treated me fairly.

SPEAKER_00 21:21

So it's like knowing what questions to ask. It seems to be the common theme when I'm talking to business owners about certain areas of expertise that they don't have. It's that you can make assumptions in a number of areas, but if you don't know what questions to ask, that is you don't know what you don't know, then seek advice from experts. And obviously that's the role that you play.

SPEAKER_01 21:46

And you have a 247 advice line. And during COVID, and even after now we are in we are out of COVID, but we are still in COVID, we get thousands of questions from business owners in our advice. Line 247 asking these questions. Just the other day, I was meeting one of my clients, and he was saying, I've got these two employees asking me to work from home, but their role can be done from home. But that my concern is I've got another six employees who will come and ask me that I want to work from home. What do I do? So these are questions that we answer in our advice line. Our advice line has been inundated with such questions, and I'm sure there'll be challenges in future which will come up with as well.

SPEAKER_00 22:29

Yeah, and we'll get your information because I know what we'd like to do is provide some support to the listener, and so we'll make sure that your information is provided in the show notes. But I'd just like to circle back because we spoke uh earlier about the casual staff member um and the changes to the government support around COVID payments and the requirement for a legally for people who have tested positive to COVID to report that. And so we have this dilemma now with casual. So what is the advice that you're giving to your to the your clients around how to treat casual employees and the COVID conversation?

SPEAKER_01 23:14

Firstly, having a COVID policy is very important, and setting the expectations very clear that if there is a COVID infection, what are the steps that the employee needs to follow? If they're going for a test, are they going to be paid for that test? If they are positive, then what happens then? So having those expectations very clear is very important. Um, again, I would like to stay away from answering the legalities because they are changing rapidly and they change, they have changed quite a bit. So I could be giving one information which could change tomorrow. This is where our advice line is very useful because they are up to date with that information and it's just a matter of phone call where a business owner will just ring our advice line and give the situation. We also need to treat certain sensitive issues regarding employees so that we are not discriminating them or treating them unfairly, or they're from a certain background, or they may have certain other conditions that needs to be looked at. So every employee situation is different. So the best thing we can do is we can have some very robust policies around COVID infections, and then we look at individual situations and scenarios and give the advice accordingly. That would be my best advice at this stage.

SPEAKER_00 24:33

Yeah, thank you for that. Probably an unfair question to throw at you, but very well deflected. But it actually goes to the point of a business is individual in its makeup, the individuals within the business um obviously have their own nuances. So making assumptions is probably a dangerous thing. And so reaching out, as we've said, to a subject matter expert in this particular area where you don't have those resources is really important. So if the listener is a little concerned about maybe they don't have everything that they thought they had in place, or they just maybe like to do an audit on what they do have in place, how would they get in contact with you and Employee Sure?

SPEAKER_01 25:22

So EmployeeShore has been around since 2010. We support close to 32,000 businesses in terms of their HR and Occult and Safety. I often hear uh business owners saying that I am a very small business. Uh, ocult and safety doesn't apply to me. Every business needs to comply with occult and safety in terms of risk assessments, safe operating procedures. Whether it's a small psychological practice or a big construction, there are occult and safety legislations that apply to every business, and every business needs to comply and provide that safe workplace. So we are that external organization where we support employers as opposed to employees. So employers and their representatives, they call us and we help them to be compliant. The best way is to set up a one-hour no-obligation consultation. I'm happy to either jump on Zoom or come face to face if you're in South Australia, conduct that initial assessment, give you some general advice on what's the best course of practice for that organization, uh, give you an idea about the documentation that will be required, and then if you are interested, then we do a full review, which goes for almost half a day, and we can we prepare those documents and give you to that advice line. We also have what's called legal representation and protection, where if the businesses follow our advice, we actually protect them from any possible farewell claims and we also cover the costs related to that claim through our partner law firm employee show.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Thanks, Ron. I'll make sure that all of your details and employee shore details are in the show notes. I'd love to get you back uh sometime in the future. And obviously, as the legislation changes and issues become available, I'm sure that people, if they got onto your mailing list, then they would uh, you know, they'd be receiving those updates on a regular basis. So again, would recommend that people jump on that just to keep themselves informed. So thank you very much. I really appreciate that. Sadly, we are out of time. But like all of my guests, I have one last question to ask you, and that is what are you curious about?

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Just the regular changes that business owners are facing every day. I'm curious to make sure that they receive all the updated information so that they're compliant. Because I see so many instances where business owners have lost their sleep, they've lost quite they are in financial loss because of a piece of paper and because the legislation had changed in the background. So my job is to help these business owners to be compliant, make sure they're up to date. And if they face those challenging situations with employees, that they have someone who they can confidently call, get advice, and manage those situations very quickly. If we leave these situations too long, it becomes a bit of a problem, and then other employees take advantage of it. So we want to mitigate these risks as quickly as possible. That's what we try and aim, that's what my passion is, that's what my curiosity is. I am there to help business owners. Thank you so much, Steve, for providing me this opportunity. We also conduct seminars all over the country. They are free of cost, they're information seminars. If you need any further information, please get in touch with me. I'll be able to put you through one of the seminars all across the country.

SPEAKER_00 28:41

Wonderful. Thanks, Ron. Really do appreciate you being my guest on the Inspiring Business Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 28:47

Thank you, Steve.

SPEAKER_00 28:49

I wanted to discuss this topic so it is front of mind, particularly as we transition back to something that looks like a normal working life. However, this new normal will have some very challenging twists as we migrate our way through the rising interest rates, the pressure on salaries, and the need to keep and attract quality people. Over the coming weeks and months, I'll be discussing what it takes to be an employer of choice. Being in that situation where your staff are raving fans and advocates for your company. You've heard me speak of this many times that people and culture are the glue that holds the business together, but without systems and processes in place, the profits leak out the back door. So it's a three-legged stool. Take one of them away and it falls over. The idea is to get your business to a point where its value does not depend upon you. You've heard me say it many times: you get your business ready for sale so you don't have to sell it, and that way you can retire into your business. Your business is far more valuable without you as the core of the business. And as you know, I created the Skeletor Success system to guide and support you so you are able to be in control of the direction and goals that you've set. It's a step-by-step and proven system that over a relatively short period of time you'll be spending more time doing what you love and less time doing what your staff should be doing. It's a far more relaxing and less stressful business to be in, and it's more profitable and valuable. There's a link in the show notes to an exploration call where I can help you get very clear on what could be possible to achieve your ideal outcome. If you've enjoyed the conversation, go ahead and subscribe and you'll never miss the weekly episode. I'd also appreciate a review on your favourite podcast platform if you haven't done that already, as this helps spread the word. My name is Steve Sandor, and there are plenty of additional resources on our website at www.inspiringbusiness.net, and you can contact me on LinkedIn and Facebook. Thank you for listening, and my wish as always is to inspire and energize you to take action so you too can make a difference in your and others' lives.