78. The HR Advice ChatGPT Can't Give You | Interview with Melissa Langton

In Episode 78, Gerda explores one of the biggest challenges practice owners face as they grow their teams: navigating HR with confidence.

Let’s be honest… HR can feel overwhelming. From changing legislation and compliance requirements to managing people, expectations, and workplace culture, it’s easy to find yourself tempted to type a HR question into ChatGPT (or ask a Facebook group) hoping for a quick answer, while still lying awake at night wondering, “Am I doing this right?”

So, how do you create a workplace that ACTUALLY supports your team, protects your practice, and sets you up for the future? Well… this episode is here to help. 

Joining Gerda is Melissa Langton from Exceler8 HR, who shares her insights into the HR foundations every practice owner needs to understand, why people management is a critical part of future-proofing your practice, and how to move from feeling uncertain about HR to feeling confident in your decisions.

In this episode, you will learn (among others):

• Why HR problems happen & how to set clearer team expectations.
• The simple leadership phrase that can save you from saying the wrong thing.
• The biggest HR myths and challenges practice owners face, including psychosocial safety and AI.
• The hidden costs of poor HR, and why leadership and culture matter.

Who this episode is for:

✔ ️Practice owners growing a team who want to feel more confident managing people.

✔ Business owners who feel unsure about HR, compliance, and keeping up with changing requirements.

✔ Leaders who want to build a supportive team culture that aligns with their practice vision.

Tune in for a practical and insightful conversation that will leave you feeling more grounded, more confident, and clearer on what HR support should actually look like, beyond what a bot can generate.

Here to help you build a practice you can’t stop smiling about 😍

Want Gerda's Help with your Business?

Gerda helps allied health group practice owners go from overwhelmed, overworked, and underpaid to fully empowered and financially thriving. If this is you, then make today the day you reach out. Complete this super short Triage Form here bit.ly/triageformpps and Gerda will personally reach out to you. 

Here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about :)

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Transcript

Well, hello there, passionate private practice owner. My name is Gerda Muller, and you are listening to the Private Practice Success Podcast, and this is episode number 78.

Today I have the pleasure of introducing all of you to the fabulous Melissa Langton from Exceler8 HR. Welcome, Melissa. It is so good to have you on the Private Practice Success podcast. 

Melissa: Thank you so much, Gerda, and again, really honoured to be able to have a chat or listen, have your listeners listen, so thank you. 

Gerda: Well, I'm happy to have you here with us. So for context, for everybody listening, Melissa is one of this year's expert guest speakers at the upcoming Private Practice Success Business Intensive, which is happening in August in the beautiful, gorgeous Byron Bay, and Melissa is running a presentation called The HR Questions You Ask ChatGPT at 10:00 PM, and I'm sure a lot of us can relate to that, if we are being honest.  So what we're going to do, I want to give everybody an opportunity to get a bit of a sneak peek into what Melissa's going to be sharing with us during her presentation, and for those of you that can't make it to this year's event, I still want you to walk away with some valuable insights, which I'm sure you will.  Now Melissa, this is not your first rodeo with Private Practice Success Australia. No? 

Melissa: No, it's not. So I'm very, very honoured to be able to be asked back. 

Gerda: Yeah, so we've actually had you back twice now, because you've spoken to the PPS Academy on performance coaching, which is really the most important thing you need to be doing, as well as then performance management. And coaching, of course, if you do that well, you don't need to do performance management, and those were two brilliant skill sessions that people still watch to this day in the portal. 

Melissa: Oh, wonderful. 

Gerda: Yes. So I thought, the Business Intensive this year's all about Future Proofing our Practices, and HR and getting it right is such an important part of that, hence you are joining us. But before we get into all the nitty-gritty of HR, I would love for you to start by telling us a bit more about yourself and your business, who you are, and what it is that you do. 

Melissa: Absolutely. So  I've had my own business now for 14 years, so I too am an employee. I have employees as well, so I have HR headaches myself. For 14 years I've had the business. So why did I get into the business? I was made redundant for the third time. So I went, "The next person who makes me redundant will be me." That's a little bit of a fallacy. No, there's a little bit more to it, but that was the trigger. But I had found some really amazing tools that really personally hit me, because my dad has had his own small business for 40 years. He's an accountant, or was an accountant, financial planner, business advisor. And when I saw these tools, I looked at them and the first thought was, "Geez, I wish Dad had had these when he was in business." So that's when I went, "Hang on, there's probably more people like Dad." And once I sort of got into it and started to understand how many small businesses make up the Australian economic landscape, I went, "Yes, there are definitely more people that need it." And hence my learning journey around small to medium. 

So I did HR in large corporates, in government. I did HR in small business as well, internally. I really just have such a passion for the small to medium, because I genuinely think that is the backbone of communities, and it's where we all connect. Those workplaces are an extension of the society in which we live in, and we, not to be too fluffy, but we are the custodians of that as small business owners, and I really want to support those small business owners to do that in the way that feels true to them and is with their purpose as well. I'm originally from Rockhampton, so I'm a Central Queensland girl at heart and a regional Queenslander, so again, I know how important it is for our regional communities to feel sustainable and contribute to something greater than themselves.  So yeah, that's me in a nutshell. 

Gerda: Yeah, love that. I can hear that business ownership runs in your blood it seems. You know, HR is probably one of the biggest headaches that business owners report to me, and I'm pretty sure they report to you as well. And I think not a day goes by that I don't get a Voxer or an email from a practice owner that I work with that's having to deal with an HR issue. And we're in the service industry, and we need people to deliver our services, so there's a lot of people that we need to manage, and I think practice owners do struggle with it. Not only practice owners, business owners in general, so it is such an important skill set and knowledge base that each of us need to cultivate. 

And you've not mentioned, so I'm going to mention it, that your clients refer to you as the people paracetamol. Because your job is to help us say goodbye to our HR headaches, and hello to the perfect people formula within our business. I don't think it will ever be perfect, but we aspire to do it as well as possible when it comes to HR. So excited to have you here. And I absolutely love the title that you came up with for our presentation at Business Intensive, because I think all of us, all of us has that 10:00 PM at night, even 1:00 AM, 2:00 AM at night moments where you're lying in bed and just wondering, "Am I doing the right thing? Am I being compliant? Have I made the right decision?" 

So I'm wondering, why do you think HR creates so much uncertainty for us as business owners? 

Melissa: I think when people enter into an employment relationship, and that's what I really very distinctly call it, a relationship, because it's about relationships, there's an assumption that I know what's going on for them, and they know what's going on for me - first mistake. 

No employee will ever think like a practice owner or business owner, and no business owner will ever think like an employee again, just because it's your own DNA. So you really have two different perspectives. And it can sometimes take a while for it to rear its, not ugly head, but for those differences to show. So when you're actually dealing with it, you go, "I thought I had this. How could they possibly think that?" There's absolutely a reason they do. That's the first. 

The second one is because it really feels big. When it comes to HR, compliance, dealing with people, our myths really disable us. So you hear legislation, and again, most of the information we'll get will be from sensational posts on LinkedIn or a Facebook post that, "Oh, can you believe this has just happened?" Or there'll be something in the news because they'll grab just the smallest part of it and it can just, "How am I supposed to run a business if this is happening? What am I supposed to do if that's happening?" So it just starts to become really big, when what we don't understand is, well, how does this actually impact just me and not knowing that. 

So that's why I think the uncertainty starts to come into play, is just because people sensationalize it. But we also have an assumption of, well, we know, I be people, you be people, we be same. No. So it's just, it can just feel really heavy. So, and it just feels scary as well because you always hear of the really bad impacts of, you can't do something, whereas I'm a big believer in you can do whatever you like, you just need to understand what the risks are in that approach.

Gerda: So true, so very true, because it's the sensationalist stuff that gets blasted across social media, right? And then everybody's jumping on the bandwagon, and then you just start to panic and get fearful and, and that can be quite paralysing as well in terms of not knowing what this means for you in your particular business. So, yeah, I see that happening all the time. And I love when you mentioned in terms of knowing what the risks are. The way that I talk to myself is always, I need to know what's the rules of the game here? And sometimes the rules change, and I think a lot of rules have changed of late. And we almost need to learn the new rules because the game has changed. And you can fight it or you can go, "Okay, let's learn the new rules, and how do I play a really great game within the context of these new rules?" So very true. 

And the thing that you started off with, the fact that employees will never think like a business owner and a business owner will never, again, think like an employee. And I think it's like you know this logically, but then you forget it in the day-to-day, right? You just forget. And then you get frustrated with your team members instead of going, "Let's step back. Okay, let's think like an employee." What are they thinking right now? What are they feeling like right now?" So I'm glad that you raised that as well. 

Melissa: Yeah. My pleasure. I see it a lot. And it's almost heartbreaking sometimes because it takes everyone - there isn't a, ‘Well, I guess’, because I have such amazing clients - but there isn't a client of mine that doesn't have great intentions at the start. Yeah. "I tried and I gave them this and I gave them that and I gave them this, and now I've had enough." Whereas you didn't actually g- have to give all of that, and if you'd established sort of expectations and rules of the game from the start, it wouldn't feel so heavy. And it's really hard to watch and try to advise on as well.

Gerda: Yeah, I get that. Alright, so if we think then in terms of HR, I do suspect a lot of business owners when they think HR, yes, they think people headaches, but they also think paperwork and compliance, and it's so hard, and there's so much. 

What would you say as an HR consultant that you believe is actually one of the foundations of building a business? Why is HR one of those foundational pieces that we just can't get wrong? 

Melissa: So I think one of the... I mean, not to change the name or anything, but if we just changed HR to just people, if you have people, you need a framework. Just like if you had one client, would you have a framework? Yes, you would. So it's no different.  It's just like, what's our client experience or our patient experience or our customer experience? What's the employee experience going to be? So if we use that comparison, how many of us spend so much time crafting that journey? So it could be, they'll get this piece of information at the start. I'll give them this follow-up. Why are we not doing the same thing with employees? 

The first part of that is having a framework in how we're going to engage. You spoke before about the rules of the game. Shouldn't we be establishing the rules of the game so that you know and they know what they are? So even, and I will 100% say there are, you can go over the top with this and become an economic and admin warfare. Like, you can have175 policies is what you could have in your business. Absolute overkill. But if your business requires it, then let's look at it. I try to apply not best practice, but which practice is it best for. So I'm not always talking to allied health or health professionals with that. It just fits perfectly. But even if you were looking at a law firm or a manufacturing business, it's still looking at what does your business need. Sort of like a Goldilocks set of policies. 

So if I was to look at a framework of HR, there's... I'd say there's about 14 policies every single business, if they're employing someone, should have, just 14 of them. That's a really good base, and then as you grow... Now, grow doesn't necessarily mean the amount of people. It could be growth in the number of customers. It could be growth in services, so your diversification, growth in your customer profile as well, growth in geographical spread. Whatever it might look like, it's making sure that the systems and policies that you have in your business suit that profile. And when people either forget about it and just think it's a plug and play, or they don't look at it -  it's the same as accounting, it's the same as marketing, it's the same as quality assurance, it'll be the same in terms of clinical supervision - all of that should really be looking at from a quality perspective. So if people view it as just part of having a great business that suits my needs and what I need into the future, it doesn't feel as big, but it's trying to make sure that when something goes wrong, because it will, and that's okay, you have a framework to fall back on. Imagine getting a question from an employee and you go, "I don't know what the answer is, but I know we've got a policy that focuses on this. Let me check." 

And that's probably the next tip I'd like to give everyone listening is you don't have to have the answer on the spot. The best response is, "That's really interesting. I don't actually know, but let me find out." Just that simple response. Don't get angry or frustrated, because people do, that's the question's being asked. And don't think you have to answer it straight away. When you have that framework, it's a great thing to fall back on. 

Gerda: And I would emphasise that that applies even to you as the practice owner, the business owner. 

Melissa: 100%. 

Gerda: It's okay if you need to go find out what the answer to that thing is, because sometimes people put so much pressure on themselves to know the answer right now. No, you don't need to, and you'll probably give the wrong answer, and then you need to backtrack, and that's a bit embarrassing, or you know, things go wrong. So, let's just avoid that altogether. 

Melissa: 100%. 

Gerda: And I do appreciate you actually giving us a number in terms of 14 policies. Because I think sometimes people go, "Oh, yeah, I know I need policies," but it feels too overwhelming to even start. But when you go, okay, 14 policies, for some people, that might still sound a lot, let's say if you're a small practice owner. But for the average group practice owner, that's actually, like, very, very doable. You know, starting with that and making sure that what I have is written specifically for my practice, and does the job that it is made to do, which is so important. 

Melissa: Yeah, and I think when it comes to those policies, a lot of the time people will spend an inordinate amount of time trying to craft them to make them look...which is great from a marketing or branding perspective. But those policies are just repeating what's in legislation. Don't try to make them too fancy. It's just literally… in that way, consultation is, "I can't change this, because this is legislation." So, all we're doing is packaging up what's already in a very complicated legislative framework, and putting it into a policy that's readable. Now, they may be dead boring, and I put myself to sleep all the time writing and reviewing these, but it's just what the legislation says. So, I can't really change this, so it's just let's suck it and see, and add in the little bits that make a difference in our business. 

Gerda: You obviously need to stick to the legislation. And of course, the other bit that I know people often get wrong is they have the policies, but they don't tell the employees about it, or they tell them about it once, never to be repeated again. And I know, especially when it comes to Fair Work and that type of stuff, they look at is there a policy. Did the employee know about it? Was it reasonable? Did you give updated training? Did you remind them about it? There are all those things that you need to make sure you are doing. 

Melissa: And did you follow it? Like, that's the other thing. The amount of times I've asked someone, because that's why I said people paracetamol, because unfortunately I very rarely work with people that are going great when it comes to their people. I come in at the pain point, and I'll go, "Okay, so what's your policy around this grievance?" "Oh, it's this." I said, "Your policy says to follow this process, but that's not what you've done." "Oh, because the policy's just stupid." Oh. Yeah. That's actually a mark against your name as well. So it's just really important to be aware of it. You don't have to know it off by heart, but having it and being aware of it and educating people around it, you've covered up 95% of your compliance. 

Gerda: Great reminder for everyone. Okay, so to me as a business owner myself, it feels like employment legislation has been consistently changing over the past 12 months. I think a lot of business owners out there have a bit of change whiplash when it comes to staying up to date with all of these things. And I do know that part of your presentation at the Intensive is going to be to do a bit of a HR audit with the attendees to look, you know, what's happened in the last 12 months that we need to be aware of, what's happening in the next 12 months, to prepare for all of that type of stuff. 

But I would love for you to share maybe, is there one, just one particular change that's already occurred that you are noting business owners out there have the most angst around right now? Just to let the rest of us feel that we're not alone and that it's very common. 

Melissa: I don't think anyone's going to be surprised when I talk about psychosocial safety. That is a massive unknown as well. So what I talk about now will probably be different from what I talk about in a month's time, because it is completely evolving. The reason it's evolving so much is because, one, when it came out it wasn't vague, but the issues that we're dealing with, and for those of us that are dealing even with a practice that deals with mental wellness, you would know that there is no linear to this. So I think one of the most important parts is to, one, educate what they are, and two, which ones can I tick off or which ones can I make sure I integrate into, there's about 14 of them when you look at a psychosocial risk. Some of them are almost… they should just be a given. 

So for example, everyone should have an employee assistance program, so EAPs. That's just, that is a really easy win to show that we are acknowledging that someone's psychosocial safety is important to us, and they need somewhere else to go. I have no doubt that some of your practices have started looking at providing those. So that is your number one tip for marketing. Get onto that. Every business, every business that I work with, the first thing I ask them is, "Where, what's your EAP?" Most of them go, "What are you talking about?" 

The second thing is understanding what your risks are. So I've actually started working with a legal firm that deals just with human rights, and they're a not-for-profit. So they've got a huge acknowledgement of psychosocial risks within the business  just because of the cases that they're dealing with. That's almost... that, that's just going to always happen. But what can we do to manage the others? So it's even trying to determine your business. Some of those are just almost a workplace hazard. They are always going to be there. It'd be like working with electricity, or working with coal or something like that, or silica, so we just have to manage what we can. 

What are the other ones that we can reduce just by... so one of the other psychosocial risks is job demands. How are we monitoring job demands? How are we gaining feedback from staff? So are we doing annual anonymous feedback surveys? Do we have our harassment? So this is Queensland at this particular point in time, but I have no doubt the rest of the country will follow, is every single employing entity in Queensland should have a sexual harassment prevention plan. Now, that sounds huge, and it just goes, well, that's just a whole heap of money being made somewhere. So I got some clarity from an employment lawyer to say, "That seems huge. How do we deal with that?" Because there's something like 400,000 in Queensland. And they said, "The regulator's not going to be checking everyone. What they are going to do, if there is a sexual harassment claim that is escalated outside of the business, they would then go back to say, 'Well, where's your sexual harassment plan, prevention plan?" 

So I think that's your biggest, biggest change because employees have, I'll say, cottoned onto it. Because there's a whole caveat around reasonable management action. If you don't have a process around what that reasonable management action looks like, it's very hard to defend it. So because work- psychosocial is not Fair Work. Psychosocial is WorkCover or your WorkSafe or whatever it looks like. A very different kettle of fish. That would be my advice, is getting an understanding of what does psychosocial risk look like in a business, and I think that probably be one of the takeaways from the session. What are, what are they talking about? What does it look like in real life? How do I do a psychosocial risk assessment? And we might give people the tools on how to do that for their business. Because it's not a matter of someone coming in and ticking it. They can ask the questions, so I might give you the questions to actually be able to ask those within your business. 

Gerda: I think people have heard about psychosocial hazards and risks in the workplace, but in terms of what does this actually mean, because I think a lot of practice owners just go, business owner in general, "No, we're safe, you know, we do the right thing, we look after our people." Well, there's more to it than that, and you need to make sure that you can future-proof your business by making sure you're compliant when it comes to all of those things. 

Like, for me, at my practice, The Psych Professionals, we've got an EAP program for our team members, and last year we actually developed an EAP program that we run for other businesses, because knowing how important it is, and it's been really interesting to see the uptake in that, because we've had to do a lot of education to other businesses to say, "This is why you need it. This is why this is important. Are you aware of these changes?" And a lot of them just ain't. They've heard of it, but they don't understand it completely. 

Melissa: And probably the one thing that if I was to look at every business, doesn't matter which business it is, the one thing that makes the difference are the leaders. They have the biggest impact on anyone's psychosocial safety, because they're the one link for an employee in a business. So whether it's a business owner, whether it be a team leader or an office manager, whatever it is, that person who is impacting an employee's workplace experience - not impacting negative or positively, they just have a direct link to it - they are the ones that can have a positive or negative impact on someone's psychosocial safety. 

Leadership capability is one of the most important things for any business to look at, and what does that look like for that business? It's not a plug and play. Don't just send people on a leadership development program. I think what's really important is you need to be measuring what the leadership impact is, and then how are we improving it? And I think you mentioned it in the intro around some of us have just found us in this - we were really great clinicians, we were really great technical experts - and then we decided to open my business, recognised we needed more people, and now we have to manage the people to do it. And that those accidental leaders are the one thing that will make a difference in psychosocial safety. 

Gerda: That is so important. I'm glad you're raising that, because the leader's just that. You're the leader whether you like it or not. Yeah. And a lot of people go, "But I'm not a natural leader." Well, if you choose to have a business, that's part of the choice that you make, you are choosing to lead, and you wanna do that responsibly. Which also means investing in becoming the best leader that you can be, a safe leader that's going to look after their people, and a leader that continues to grow. Like you said, one leadership course ain't going to make you the leader that you're meant to be, not even two. No. It needs to be an ongoing process of learning, self-reflection, improving, self-reflection, improving. 

Melissa: Yep, 100%. 

Gerda: Very true. Oh, this is so interesting. Okay, so continuing in that direction, if we then think future, in terms of we've spoken about what is this big thing that happened in the last couple of months or even longer, what is maybe one thing that you can flag for us as business owners that is on the horizon that we need to look out for in terms of HR legislative changes? 

Melissa: I've probably already mentioned them but if I want to put a layer of AI over it. New South Wales, was it, yeah, WorkSafe, so their equivalent of WorkCover or WorkSafe they have now flagged the implementation of AI as a psychosocial risk. What that means is if you are implementing AI, you need to ensure you have looked at the psychosocial risks associated with that. So let me just dumb it down for you. 

You have Mary sitting in an accounts role or a customer-facing role, and we've decided we're going to introduce automatic messaging to be able to take the calls wherever it needs to go. Or they're going to have a bot on the website that normally Mary would be entering in their responses, but the bot is now a whole heap more effective, and then we can get proposals off to them straight. So essentially, Mary's role has been reduced by 25%. YWe said, "How excited are we about that, Mary? How good is that? Let's do it." And Mary's sitting there going, "I have just lost job control, I've lost job clarity, and my job demands have been reduced." They are all psychosocial risks.  I'm 100% not saying to people you can't do it. 

What I'm saying is you need to, and hold onto your hats, you need to have a proactive change management process. That's all it's coming... simple and obvious, this sounds very simple, but the concepts of change management, which is about planning, consultation, involving the right people, giving it some time, which AI is not a friend of. If you think of the pace at which AI moves, you could decide to do one thing, and three months later it's null and void. You just go, "Well, that's not…. we're doing this now." That pace of change can be viewed as a psychosocial risk. 

So if we just mold all of this into it's, it is so important for business owners to be honed in on their why, their North Star, that vision, what they want to be achieving, and is this, and giving decision matrix around it to be able to...  because you can get to, you can get lost. There's bright, shiny things everywhere, and that is a psychosocial risk that you can generate with.. you can even generate a psychosocial risk by telling people of all of the options that we have, which is really lonely. Like, not being able to talk to your staff about all of the exciting options when they're sitting there going, "I'm a deer in the headlights, I don't know what's going on." That's where having peers, having a mastermind, having a coach to be able to allow you to do that big sky thinking, and then bringing it back to your team to say, "This is where I would like to go. How are we going to get there, because I want to involve you." You can't just implement it. So that is the one thing that I think, so thankful. I mean, there's legislative changes happening left, right, and center, but that's easily managed just by knowing what... you can ask someone a question. Probably could ChatGPT it. 

But what ChatGPT can't do is look at, “I've got this issue, and these are the people I have to implement it with. What do I do?” So yeah, that is just the biggest, it's just the pace of change, and everyone's so tired. Like, change is just, as you said, whiplash. Oh, my goodness. The chiropractors, and Osteos, and Physios out there, oh, my goodness,  just neck issues everywhere. 

Gerda: Yeah, I'm really glad that you raised that, and it also links back to what you said at the start that the business owner thinks differently to an employee, and the employee thinks different to the business owner, and never assume that, "Of course Mary's going to know how amazing this is," right? "And of course Mary's going to know that now we can use her with something else, so we can give her something else to do." Like, don't assume that Mary's on the same page as you, because Mary's filter that she's seeing all of this stuff happening is different to what you are looking at things, right?  So, you're looking at efficiency, going to help more people because we're going to be more efficient, and all of that type of stuff. But unless you're taking Mary with you every step of the way, she's not going to understand that, and that's where that psychosocial risks come in. So, I'm really glad that you raised that. 

Melissa: Yeah. So, I'm a huge fan of using personality profiling and understanding how trust is built, how trust is lost. All of those things are really important in an organisational setting. I have found that to be one of the best toolkits for our leaders, to understand or pre-empt some of those angsts that can can grow so big. They're just so big. 

Gerda: Interesting you say that. So, at last year's Private Practice Business Intensive, my principal psychologist, Chelsea, actually ran one of the sessions and it was on exactly that, where we shared with people the personality profiling that we do in our business and how we use it, the types and all the applications. And it was really interesting because, depending on that profile, it will tell you, what do people want to know? Some people want to know the why. Some want to know the steps, "Tell me all the steps," right. Others want to know when, "I need a timeline. I don't care about all this stuff, just tell me when it's happening."  So important to know each person that is with you needs something else in that communication through that change management. And if you are a certain profile, you're gonna be good at communicating that information, and you may forget about all the other people and what it is that they need to hear. So yes, super, super important. Mm-hmm. 

Ah, this is so good. I'm sure everybody listening's just going, "Yes, yes." Right. So, share with me, I want to hear, like, more bigger picture HR myths, right? What is that one HR myth that you hear over and over again from small business owners that you want to bust today for us? 

Melissa: I pay above award, therefore, no award is applicable. 

Gerda: Ooh. Yes, tell me more. 

Melissa: Probably the only person in your business that doesn't have an award applicable would be you as the business owner, or practice owner. I guarantee you. So, this is the simplest way to look at it. 

Pay is just one element of an award. Awards give us a framework for how we will engage with someone during their employment, full stop. Yes, there's 122 of them, how do you know which award is applicable? You have to profile the role properly, and it's by role not by business. So, some businesses... I've had clients where there's been five awards, and they've had 15 staff. So, it is role specific. But, what's important is that you know how to read it or get someone to, that's why I do what I do. But it's trying to compare, what does the award say, and how much am I paying them, or how much, what's their conditions of employment? How do they compare, and are they better off with what I'm giving them? They call it a BOOT, which is better off overall test. But I'm not going to bore people with all of the acronyms, because Fair Work love them. But that's essentially, I guarantee you, most roles will have them.  It depends on if you're paying people above the income threshold, which I think is $170,000. I don't know how many practices would have an employee that's getting paid that amount as a base salary. 

But yeah, that's the biggest HR myth, it has nothing to do with salary and has everything to do with the role that they're delivering. Not the industry you're working in. That's it. Please check, because you will have underpayment. Underpayments are now a criminal offense. You can be jailed for underpaying. Now, that's, that is a, a quite, whoa, don't be too concerned because it's, they're looking at millions of dollars in underpayments, can get to that point. But they have made it a criminal offense, especially if you knew what you were doing. No one on this podcast listening will be doing anything deliberately. It'll just be, "Oh, crap, I just didn't know." And it might be that you didn't pay a couple of thousand dollars, not millions, so yeah. But it's just important to give it the context and the gravity it deserves. 

Gerda: So what I'm hearing is that you need to know what award applies to you, and then you really need to know that like the back of your hand, and you probably also need to do what we do at the practice, we just did this two weeks ago. Every year in June, we review every job against the award. Like, is it still the right award? Is it still the right level? What's the pay structure like? And we actually document that entire process... in order to ensure that we get this right. 

Melissa: Gold star, Gerda! Good on you. Yes, that's exactly… It's called an annual reconciliation, and you should be doing it every year, if not every... If you've got a lot of changing hours for, and this is for everyone listening, if you've got a lot of changing hours in - whether it be shifts or whether it be overtime or a huge project that you did over a period of time that someone put in extra hours, you really should be doing it after that to make sure you haven't underpaid them according to the award. The most unsexiest part of what we do, but boy, is it important 

Gerda: Yeah. Well, I've learned something today. I didn't know that there's a name for it, an annual reconciliation. Because when I hear reconciliation, I think finance, but no, there's an HR reconciliation as well. 

So, we've just talked about to pay back money, it's a criminal offense, so what could happen then? You know, if we think of compliance, yes, it's probably more than just trying to avoid fines, getting in trouble with Fair Work and the ATO, that's the stuff that most of us are really scared about. But I'm pretty sure there's also a lot of other hidden costs of getting HR wrong. Do you want to touch on some of that perhaps? 

Melissa: Absolutely. So it's really that Fair Work piece is of... It's actually the cheapest consequence sometimes, and sometimes you may not even have that consequence, you suffer all of the others and don't even know it. So it's what's happening inside your business before, long before anyone makes a complaint. 

First of all, you can't prevent a complaint. That's really important. Someone that says, "Well, I just don't want a complaint," know that you can't do anything about that, because this is another human, who is interpreting what you're doing as a team. It all comes back to, are you living and breathing your values? How are they interpreted throughout your business? How are you linking your strategy to the actions of everyone's every day? And leadership, that is it. So all of the stuff getting wrong, it just comes down to no one knows what's going on. What are my expectations? Bob over here is doing one thing, Mary's doing something else, and Chelsea's sitting over there, I don't know, "Well, I was told I was supposed to do this," and they're doing something completely different. Just remember, the lowest performance that you accept, everyone, that's the bar. So everyone... that's as much as they have to go. So that is your biggest cost. Turnover, burnout, that's where your psychosocial starts to come into it. 

But If I was to be really frank about this, it's an erosion of your baby. This is your DNA. This is your business. You've worked so hard to maintain it and develop with your clients. Whatever effort you put into your clients to develop that brand is the same amount of effort you should be putting into your team members. Actually, scrap that. Don't worry about your clients. Your team members will look after your clients. You look after your team members, they'll look after your clients. Your clients will look after your business, business will look after you, and it's a cycle. I have no doubt that you've all seen a cycle. Just put the effort in there, and you will just reap rewards. But just make sure it's targeted. Make sure it's not this slap… and culture is not about... If I was to be really cheeky and say the other HR myth - culture is not about having half-day Fridays, having birthdays off and cake, and we have a barbecue every week. That is not culture. So if you think that's your culture, guarantee your culture's being managed by your employees, not managed by you. 

Gerda: Yeah, I call that the hugs and cuddles culture. That's not the culture that you want, because it's not about hugs and cuddles. It's about all that other stuff - leadership, values, working towards the same thing, knowing what the mission is that we're here to, pulling one another up, raising that bar, and  you need to actively work on creating that, or it creates itself, and then it might be a monster that you don't want in your business. 

Melissa: 100%. And it's linking, what am I doing now to that value, to that mission. Like today, if I empty this bin at this time of the day, how is that helping us to achieve the results? And you as a leader should make that alignment. 

Gerda: Yeah. Love it. I'm glad you snuck that second myth in, because I think it's very relevant. Okay, so if somebody's listening today and they realise, "Holy shit, I'm not fully compliant in this or that area," what would you tell them? Because they might be panicking and going, "I didn't even know there's this thing called psychosocial risks." What would you tell them? What should be their first thing that they should do? 

Melissa: Don't panic. So keep calm and carry on. I think what's really important is to try and understand, well, where do I think my pain points might be? Talk to other business owners. I think that's another... I mean, they can talk to me clearly, but I think it's really important, are there issues? And have I done any sort of pulse check on it? Have I spoken to anyone? Are there some trusted people or not so trusted people? Because sometimes the most... not always the noisiest voice is the one that has the right... It could be the quietest person. So again, go back to those personality profiles. So how are you measuring it? What data points are you looking at? What should be? So what awards are applicable? You may actually find that if you have an office manager or a practice manager or something like that, they may be all over it and you're not, because they've just solved it. So be aware. 

And I think that what's really important is you don't need to know this inside out. You just need to know where to look, and that's the one thing, what I'd like people to move from is if they've come on today and they were unconsciously incompetent, I want them to be leaving consciously incompetent and moving to consciously competent reference. I just need to know where to look. That's all I need. That's all you need. Because we are all experts in our field for a reason. Please do not ask me to counsel anyone, please do not ask me to do your books, and please don't ask me to do your marketing, because I'm really crap at it. But I'm really good at this. So get your experts in the right space. If someone says they can do it all for you, please make sure they can, because there are so many cow people, I'm not going to gender it, but so many people that are just randomly, "I'm great at all of it. I'm great at everything, and I'm an expert," and they probably aren't. So please make sure they've got the credentials, because you can lose a lot of money, and really hone in on, what is it that I want to solve first? So that would be my advice. 

Gerda: Very, very good advice. And correct me if I'm wrong, but my input would be don't get your advice from Facebook groups. That's probably... I know a lot of people have got good intentions to want to help and give you input, but they aren't HR experts, right? Or maybe if you are in a Facebook group for HR experts, but most of us aren't, because we're not HR experts. So that's not the filter through which you make HR decisions. This is where you have to go to an expert in HR to help you with these things. 

Melissa: There is no way you would make a financial decision based on Facebook. But not because, as you said, not because of bad intentions. You're not giving the full picture. It's exactly the same as going to ChatGPT. You will give ChatGPT the information you think it needs, and it will spit out the information that it thinks you want, because you have a history, and it knows what you want to see. So it actually feeds that same tone of voice, that same language, and it can be quite emotive or it can be quite fact-based. But there are so many pieces of context that are missing, so the advice actually lies in the listening. The advice doesn't lie in the telling. And that- that's where it's really important to be able to listen to what the issues are, because most people will come to me with a symptom, not a problem, because when I actually look at it, it's all of these symptoms they're feeling, which we need to solve them, but the underlying problem is so much deeper. And if you're only giving the symptom, it'll just give you a solution, which is not always the problem that we're dealing with. 

And even from a Fair Work perspective, what they're actually finding, they have had, like, a 200% increase in cases coming to them because employees are going to ChatGPT and saying, "This is what happened to me at work," their perspective. ChatGPT is coming back saying, "That's wrong. You can't do that. These are all the reasons why." That is being submitted into Fair Work. Fair Work is now coming back to those employees and saying, "Please understand, if you progress with this claim, we will be charging you, or you will have to pay if you're unsuccessful. You will have to pay the legal costs of the employer," because they are just overwhelmed with all of these ChatGPT lawyers. So yeah, that will only get worse as well. 

Gerda: And that emphasizes that whole point of that it assumes what you want. It gives you what you want to hear. It talks through that filter that you've inputted into it, that you've trained it to think like. So if I'm the business owner, it's going to think like me, right?  And it's not going to think of the employee, and it's going to side with me. So yeah, it's a very dangerous, slippery slope. 

So let's forward to August 2026. We're sitting in the room at the Business Intensive in gorgeous Byron Bay. If I'm an attendee and I'm coming and I think you are talking on the Wednesday, and I'm attending your presentation, what will I leave with that I didn't have or know before I walked into the room? 

Melissa: Well, if you've listened to the podcast, you're going to be a lot more prepared than someone who hasn't, for starters, because I will be talking about some of the things that I've been speaking about today. But if I just look at what we are going to walk out with, I just want you to be more confident. I want you to be confident you know where to look, you know how to counter some of the gossips, that barbecue gossip that you'll hear. "Oh, well, no, that can't happen." Actually, these are some of the some of the issues. 

So for example, if someone says, "Well, the right to disconnect, you can't contact your employees," that's actually incorrect. You are able to contact them, but you don't have to expect a response, blah, blah, blah. So I really want them to make sure they know what matters to their business. So I don't want to quote a whole lot of legislation. I want us to actually look at, well, what's happening for you right now, and what could be a solution? I also want them to be able to know where their support network is in the room. Because I'm one person, but there are 50 or 49 other really intelligent people who probably know a lot more than I do, and they'll be able to give you, either through learning, through stuffing it up, or doing it successfully, to actually know  where to go. So that's what they can leave with, is knowing their peer network is there, and also just that confidence level, and a to-do list. You'll have something to do. 

Gerda: Yes. So we're going to do, like, a bit of an HR audit to make sure that you've ticked all the boxes of what's been happening and what is on the horizon, so we can future-proof your practice from an HR perspective. And I know one of the things that you said was really important for you as part of your presentation is to have lots of time for Q&A. Why do you think that is important as part of this process? 

Melissa: No one remembers slide 37. They just don't. It's about conversations. And as I said, I'm not a huge fan of being just the one expert in the room and everyone listens, because everyone does have expertise, stories. That very specific concern that they'll have, I guarantee the concern that you've got, seven other people in the room have as well. So it's just trying to build on what other people know, because I know what I know, but there's absolutely things that I don't. And also, I don't know your business, I don't know your industry intimately. It's about adding all the layers in to actually get a solution that is, wait for it, which practice is it best for? 

So I want it to be interactive. And I, if I don't say once, "That's a really interesting question. I don't know. Let me find out and I will follow that up," then I haven't done my job, because there should be things that are challenging us. There should be things that we should go back and go,  I need to find out more about that. Because even future-proofing your business in HR legislation will be valid for probably 12 months, because a lot of people will start a practice or start a business based on their interactions or what they learnt in another business. So, many a time have said, "I took this policy from my last employer," very illegal, by the way. "I took it from and now it's mine, but I've had it for five years." It won't be valid. 

Gerda: I've heard that too. 

Melissa: Yeah. So it's really important that you know, again, what should I be looking for every year? So annual reconciliation is one of them. We won't be going through how to do one of those, because as you know, they are really, really intensive and fiddly. But it's knowing that I have to do that. When should I be doing performance reviews? When should I have performance conversations? What should performance conversations look like? All of those sorts of things, and what's valid for your business as well. That is what they will come away from, I hope. 

Gerda: Yeah. I love that. And, you know, this will be the third year that we're doing the Business Intensive, and I don't know, shouldn't be surprised, but I am surprised. Well, beautifully and pleasantly surprised every year at the questions that people do bring up. And that's the thing, I can't think of all the questions. You can't think of all the questions, but there's these other minds in the rooms, people all that think differently, that ask questions where, I go, "What did I think of that question?" Because this is so helpful, and for us to then come up together with a solution or response to that question. 

Melissa: 100%. 

Gerda: Cool. So I want you to complete the following sentence for me, also still in terms of future-proofing. The business, and this of course is from an HR perspective, the businesses that will thrive over the next five years are the ones that:

Melissa: Make decisions based on evidence and not assumptions. 

Gerda: Oh, good one. 

Melissa: Use your data. What data that is, come to the Intensive. But it's about really making decisions, and being confident about the decisions you're making. So again, they'll thrive, the businesses that are able to make confident decisions. They may not be the right ones. I just really want to highlight, they mightn't be the right ones, but you'll be confident that they look like the right ones, and then you'll get a curve ball. It's also those businesses that build leaders and not clinicians, full stop. And build leaders instead of technical experts. If I look at what's needed, that is, it has become one of the only competitive advantage. 

Gerda: I love that. I need to go write that down. Leaders instead of technical experts, because a lot of times we, we want our people to be technical experts, right? But we also need them to be leaders. Yes, as the owner, we need to be a leader, but we also need leaders within our business, very importantly. And the other thing, it's the second time I think you've mentioned the confidence piece, people needing to be confident, and I think that's so important. Because if you don't have the confidence, you won't make a decision, or you won't take that next step, and that's all the stuff that keeps us stuck. And then we get hard on ourselves because I'm not moving forward. I'm working so hard, but nothing's happening. It's because you didn't take that step, and it's about getting that confidence and that clarity to go, "I'm going to make the best decision I can with the information that I have on hand, and whatever happens, happen," and having the confidence that I can deal with that. Having the confidence that I've got somebody in my corner that can help me with it when I need  to be helped with it. That's super important. 

Melissa:  I wrote a blog about the confidence trap in leadership, and it's even challenging what your version of confidence looks like, because sometimes people have an assumption that a confident person is someone that walks into a room and commands it, or a confident person just makes decisions and sticks to them. That's not confidence at all in the, in the context of what we're working with right now. Have you read The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, Gerda? 

Gerda: Quite some time ago, yes. 

Melissa: That's actually, if I look at that framework, that is probably more important now than it was when it was written, because the foundation is vulnerability-based trust. So it's the ability, and this is where it's the confidence to say, "I don't know," or, "We got that wrong," or, "We need better something." It's having that confidence to be able to put your hand up to say, "Nup, stuffed that up. This is really... I can only make the decision based on the information I have right now. I'm confident right now, based on this. But you know what? It could change, but we've got this." So I just think people get trapped around what confidence is.

Gerda: I'm glad you raised that, and that most certainly is a book that I can highly recommend to anybody interested in this conversation. 

Well, I for one am so looking forward to your presentation and seeing you in person. It's going to be so super cool. So for everybody listening, if you found this of interest and you want to join us at the 2026 Business Intensive, please know registration is still open until midnight on the 17th of July 2026, so be sure to get your tickets. I'll put a link to the website in the show notes. I'll also put a link there to your contact details, Melissa. If anybody wants to reach out and have a powwow with Melissa about anything and all things HR, please feel free to do so. 

So thank you so much for your time, and really appreciate you coming and sharing with us here on the podcast. 

Melissa: I'm so happy to have the opportunity, and can't wait to see you in person. 

Gerda: It'll be amazing. Thanks, Melissa. 

And to all our listeners, thank you for tuning in, and as always, remember that I am here to help you build a practice you can't stop smiling about :)