Handling Employment Relations: The Fair Work Act 2009 and Other Crucial Issues
Written on 2:06 AM by Kylie Milan
To manage employment relations,
also known as industrial relations
(IR), you need to keep in mind that there are three main parties involved. The
employee, and his or her representative, is one main party. The other two
parties are the government in the form of state, federal and local laws and the
tribunals that handle industrial relations suits and the company. The goals: balancing
the needs of the employees while practicing sound corporate management and gaining
the engagement, commitment and high levels of performance of the workforce so
that both employer and employees can benefit from the results of such commitment
and performance.
Being able to handling industrial
relations means being conscious of the dynamics among the three main parties:
the conflicts, interactions and, of course, the resolutions of the conflicts, particularly
regarding issues like maximum work hours, collective bargaining or enterprise agreement,
personal leaves, annual leaves, termination of
employment, carer’s
leave, redundancy and parental leaves.
You also need to have an understanding of employment laws and
other applicable legislation at the federal, state and local levels. One of the
key legislation's involved is the Fair Work Act 2009. The Fair Work Act is a group
of far reaching federal laws that profoundly affects the workplace. These workplace relations laws from the Australian
federal government affect the way businesses conduct their processes and
activities including employment relations
processes that affect union rights of entry, disputes and good faith
bargaining, among others.
Of course, the department or the team that’s handling processes
and issues covered by industrial relations should be knowledgeable of the
provisions specified by the Fair Work Act 2009. Aside from that, they should
have enough expertise to handle other similar far reaching laws.
Also among the other various requirements of industrial relations
is handling Enterprise Agreements or enterprise bargaining agreements.
The human resources team, whether in house or outsourced, should
not only be able to give sound legal advice but should be able to provide
representation before the tribunals if necessary.
For some in house teams, industrial relations or IR is only one among
other major issues and concerns that they manage. Some companies are organized
in such a way that risk management, compliance and
corporate management are under one team or department. That’s because the processes
under risk management, compliance and corporate management often converge
so for some businesses, it might be more efficient to have these processes –
such as hiring
and recruitment, particularly hiring employees from overseas, unfair dismissal
and other issues submitted before the tribunal called Fair Work Australia – under
one department.
The team that handles employment relations is either part of the human resources division or at the very
least works closely with HR. Having a service provider handle this particular
task – and even other human resources tasks – is also an option. Just make sure
you are hiring a reliable human resources service provider. Check out the
company’s track record and the experience and expertise of the team that will
be handling your HR tasks.
*Picture is from Google Image Search.
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