HR Central

A national child care provider is set to repay more than $2.6 million in underpaid wages, to over 3,000 current and former staff, after conducting an internal audit. This reinforces just how crucial it is for all employers to ensure their employees are paid correctly every time.  Being faced with such a huge cost that is completely outside your budget can have devastating effects. With the engagement of a company like HR Central employers can implement structured processes which ensure their  employees all their ent

As the school holiday period approaches, there tends to be a significant increase in questions around annual leave entitlements an employee has. Having an existing policy in place assists in what you can and cant do in terms of an employees annual leave request. This can become particularly pertinent where an employer is extremely busy and does not want any one to take annual leave. So the question often becomes "do I have to allow the employee take annual leave if it doesn’t suit my business?" Having a written po

We regularly speak of the need to ensure every workplace is discrimination free, including the appropriate steps a company must to take to ensure employees are aware of how serious it is and what type of behaviour is expected of them. While it might seem repetitive, a recent $4.5m sexual harassment claim lodged by a former executive of JB Were will drive home the importance of taking these precautions. has filed a $4.5 million sexual harassment case claiming when she returned from maternity leave she was the victim of

Here at HR Central we regularly meet with employers who are confident in their level of compliance with all relevant workplace laws. They explain what they do to keep up to date with the laws. We then provide them with the following results from a Fair Work Ombudsman survey:

• Around 50 per cent of hospitality businesses in Western Australia are fully compliant with workplace laws.
• Around 75% of pharmacies nationwide, are fully compliant with workplace laws

These surveys demonstrate just h

In many discussions around Occupational Health & Safety I hear employees and managers saying "it doesn't really apply to us, it's more about building sites isn't it?" The reality is, any workplace had the potential to have an incident which could to lead to a serious injury or even a fatality, so we all must ensure we are compliant with the OHS standards. It is also essential that all staff are trained on how to identify, report and manage these situations. For example, you might say an office environment is pretty sa

I frequently engage with a number of employees in a range of industries. I'm always interested to find out how they feel they are treated by their managers and fellow employees. What stands out in those conversations are those companies who take discrimination seriously. The answers of employees from these companies suggest they feel:

• Well informed on the company policy
• Time has been taken to explain to them
• Policies have been reinforced through training
• Complaints have been mana

In a recent case, a company terminated an employee for sending an offensive email from their work email. The company stated they had warned the employee previously, and that the employee knew the consequences of sending another such email. However, when pressed, the manager stated he had only had an informal discussion with the individual, not have a proper formal counselling session. He also admitted he had not recorded that an official warning had been given. The company didn't take the appropriate steps to check that th

In a recent case, the termination of an employee for swearing was upheld. There have been previous examples where swearing was deemed to be permissible, but it is a good decision for employers to implement a policy around it. This will ensure the workplace is kept free of unnecessary bad language. The key difference in this particular case what the interpretation between what could be considered ”everyday descriptive language” and swearing “aggressively and maliciously” at someone in the workplace. You may have rea

The decision to terminate a Sydney Harbour Captain for failing a drug test subsequent to his involvement in a ferry accident was overturned by the Fair Work Commission full bench. There was some discussion around the methods of testing employed, but the full bench stated “The core issue, the valid reason for termination of [the ferry master's] employment was his deliberate disobedience, as a senior employee, of a significant policy.” It was clearly stated that the company had a “zero tolerance” policy for drugs and

Employees of a Melbourne company have been back-paid almost $20,000 following an investigation by the Fair Work Ombudsman. It was found that Kanodia Nominees Pty Ltd had been underpaying employee’s amounts ranging from $106 to $4896 between January 2010 and August 2012. Employees were underpaid base minimum rates, overtime rates and annual leave loading. In addition, some also failed to receive paid rest breaks when working more than 1.5 hours of overtime above their ordinary hours. The investigation uncovered the fact t