Welcome news for employers, consistent Occupational Health and Safety regulations across the state boundaries.
Businesses who operate across states will welcome the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) signing an inter-governmental agreement that aims to end inconsistent OHS laws by no later than December 2011.
Dismissal due to blood pressure is unlawful
Employers should always carefully vet any proposal to dismiss an employee because of an impairment. The Federal Court has found an employer unlawfully discriminated when it dismissed an employee with high blood pressure.
Tests of the new employee revealed blood pressure of around 200/110.
The employer claimed it was an inherent requirement of the role that the employee be able to drive a car extensively and enabling the employee to do this would impose unjustifiable hardship on it.
In the recent survey conducted as part of the Quarterly Index is has shown that there are a number of businesses in the private sector that feel exactly this way.
The best outcome for this is to first find out where in the quadrant your business is sitting.
If you picture businesses as belonging to one of four corners of a square.
There is a line from top to bottom, and then across the middle dividing the square into 4 equal parts. The line through the middle from top to bottom is the STRATEGY LINE. The one going across is the ACTION LINE.
When you look at the results of the last Quarterly Index research there are a number of factors that are common to the small business and private sector.
So whats the simplest way of fixing theses issues
There are five easy steps or what we call the APPLY model. These are as follows.
You cannot start with any issues, regardless of the type or size, unless you analysis the concerns, issues.
Following on from my last blog, we now will look at the business perceptions of how they felt their business was compared to the last quarter.
The findings were as follows.
So what can be gathered from this information? Well the overview of the results is as follows.
It is of the up most importance that every business owner and manager are aware of the factions and feelings out there in the market place.
Because of this we are now able to let you in on the latest survey results in the Quarterly Index in H.R. matters that we undertake regularly.
We have been in the current process tracking these since 2006 and the data base and trends are starting to give us good patterns for researching.
In the world of ever changing business can and cannot it is necessary to be aware of you liabilities and obligations under the Workplace Health and Safety Act.
Each state is different and therefore it is usually a wise business decision to ask for professional advice on just what you are required to do or have in place in your business.
For example, every business in Queensland that has 30 or more employees employed (including casuals, and other sites under the same business name) is required by law to have an accredited Workplace Health and Safety Officer on their premises.
When you are in business day in and day out there is the extreme difficulty of keeping everything in prospective.
There needs to be a mix of the following.
Do you really know how much your staff are worth to you in real dollars?
Every time there is a change of staff in the work place there is a cost involved. This has been researched to be as high as $48,000 per employee.
So how do we come to this amount?
Look at the time spent replacing the employee.
Let’s go through the steps.
