May 2022 continued to raise a lot of HR & Workplace relations changes as well as some interesting client situations and challenges we were asked to work through as part of our membership.  My name is Andrew Koleda, I am the operations director of On Demand HR & this is our HR Round up covering our most popular & relevant topics for May 2022..  You can view the more detailed videos by clicking the Youtube link or visiting our website at ondemandhr.com.au

We begin with discussing how businesses can react when they are faced with an immediate and critical employee mental health crisis in their workplace.  We take you behind the scenes to share how On Demand HR members are supported in these tricky situations where employee suicide is a real possibility.

For NSW businesses who have an annual workers compensation premium of more than $30,000, they are considered to be “claims sensitive” meaning that a workers compensation claim will impact the amount of premium they pay in the future.  We discussed this topic as well as the key factor impacting premiums as well as some high level actions that your business can take to minimize premium impact.  

On Demand HR has been very vocal over the past 12 months around businesses reviewing their recruitment processes in order to continue to attract talent in a competitive recruitment market.  However, we understand that process is only one of the key components of success here.  Today, following a recent educational session we attended with Seek, we wanted to share some of the candidate expectations as well as most valuable perks that candidates are taking into account when making employment decisions. 

We took a look at some of the business considerations when it comes to the maximum weekly hours employees can be asked to work before being required to pay overtime penalties.  With businesses struggling to find suitable candidates to fill vacant positions, many businesses are required to ask their existing workforce to do more to pick up the slack.

Finally, as workplaces “return to normal” following the pandemic, there is no doubt that both candidate and employee expectations  have changed when it comes to flexible working arrangements.  We unpacked some of the employer obligations under the Fair Work Act and National Employment Standards governing how employers can handle employee requests for flexible working arrangements. 

That’s it for this monthly HR roundup and we trust that you find this content valuable and look forward to seeing you next month.