Technology has changed the way we do business, how we communicate and indeed the whole way in which our world operates. Whilst improving efficiency in many areas, also creates risk for business and people management headaches. But how often do we update our HR policies and practices for this changing world? Robyn Anderson poses questions that all business owners need to ask themselves in the Febru...

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Retailer Toys ‘R’ US (Australia) is in the press for breaches of the Workplace Relations Act, the predecessor to the Fair Work Act. A Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) investigation has resulted in the company creating a hotline for workers to complain about employment breaches and donating $300,000 to charity after admitting to underpaying its employees by almost $1,000,000. This was the deal...

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As of 1 January 2011, the Government's new Paid Parental Leave Scheme starts bringing it in line with many other western industrialised countries.Eligible working parents of children born or adopted from 1 January 2011 will be entitled to government funded paid parental leave for the first time. Eligible parents under this scheme will receive payments at the rate of the National Minimum Wage (curr...

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Owing to the 1 January Change to the Definition of a Small Business under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth.), the Government has now released a new version of the Small Business Fair Dimissal Code.   The Small Business Fair Dismissal Code has  been supplied by the Government to assist small business from unfair dimissal claims. However, despite its "simplicity", HR Navigation urges any sma...

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1 January 2011 brought with it a change to the definition of a small business under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth.). This has implications for unfair dismissal qualifying periods.  From 1 January 2011, the definition of a small business for the purposes of the Fair Work Act will change to less than 15 employees based on a head count of total employees rather than full-time equivalent emp...

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Small business often feel that they don't need formal human resources policies and procedures but effective human resources tool can benefit business of every size. Robyn Anderson, Managing Director of HR Navigation discusses how paying attention to HR can make a massive difference to your business in October's edition of My Business Magazine.   Click here to read more in this articl...

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Recent decisions at Fair Work Australia make it clear that performance management and dismissals in the Fair Work era are just as much about process as it is about the reasons why. Performance Management and employee dismissal hold many hidden risks for small and medium businesses. The Government’s much touted Small Business Fair Dismissal Code was meant to take the headache out of this...

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Employee or contractor; full time, part time or casual - these are just some of the labels we place on our workforce. Wrongly categorising your workforce can have serious ramifications. So what's in a name? A heck of a lot writes HR Navigation's Managing Director, Robyn Anderson in the August edition of My Business magazine.    Click to read more.

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Fair Work Australia (FWA) have recently ruled that an independent contractor has access to unfair dismissal after finding the contractor was really an employee.This was despite the fact that the worker (who was engaged to run training programmes on behalf of a training company) had an ABN, submitted tax invoices, was not paid any employment entitlements, determined his own hours and ...

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