… and they are surprised small business makes wages mistakes!
September 2nd, 2008 by Ingrid Cliff
The Courier Mail on the weekend talked about the results of a blitz of workplaces employing restaurant and cafe staff in central and north Queensland. More than 50% of the 151 small businesses were not complying with workplace laws.
The sort of mistakes that were found were incorrect details on payslips; inadequate time and wages records (e.g: timesheets); incorrect wages rates, loadings and penalty rates.They face penalties of up to $33,000 as well as back-pay to the workers.
The thing that amazes me is that the Industrial Inspectors were surprised at the result! From my experience small businesses have been really struggling getting their heads around Workchoices and the implications for their business. It is not made any easier by the government announcing it had made sweeping reforms to Workchoices (which in real terms meant two bits of bugger all to the vast majority of small businesses).
No big changes have been made! We are still stuck with the crappiest piece of legislation ever drafted in Workchoices, and small businesses trying to work out which bits of the State legislation (if any) should they be following and which bits of the thousands of pages in the federal.
That’s why we put together our Instant HR Policies and Procedures Manual to try and simplify what is an absolute nightmare through the state and federal jurisdictions. We keep watching Federal Parliament hoping that real reform to the legislation and clarity will come back to small businesses in the very near future.
We look forward to sharing our next edition of the Manual with all current owners when that day finally arrives. Until then - keep your Manual handy and avoid being one of the statistics!
Until next time
Ingrid Cliff
We put your business into words
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008 at 7:40 am and is filed under HR Manual. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
September 2nd, 2008 at 9:45 am
Let me endorse your work in this area Ingrid. The manual is fantastic and has saved hours of my time. When I presented the first draft of the employment contract for discussion with my soon to be employee, her response was “where contracts like this have been during the last 29 years of my working life?”
Keep up the good work. It is comforting to know that you are keeping an eye on it on our behalf.