Compliance Requirements for New Employees

Locating suitable staff during recruitment periods can be challenging. Once the hard work is done to find new staff, it’s then important to consider that they are correctly on boarded to ensure you meet your legal obligations under workplace laws.

 

This article examines the various compliance requirements that an employer must adhere to when they take on new employees during the recruitment period.

So, you have found a great candidate to work for your business, but what steps do you need to take to prepare for their arrival in your business? There are actions which you must take from a legal perspective and there are also a number of best practice measures that we recommend you implement from the start.

Pre-start date, the foundation for most offers of employment is a vacancy in the business. In order to place an advert for the vacancy it follows that a description of the position has been thought about and written out. It is recommended that these details be fleshed out into a job description. A job description is extremely useful for both the employer and the employee as it sets out the parameters of work that are expected of the employee. When it comes to recognising good performance or addressing poor performance, reference should made back to the content of the job description to ensure that an assessment of performance is fair and reasonable.

During recruitment, a candidate is unlikely to accept an offer of employment without being aware of the main terms and conditions. Much of the vital compliance focus relates to payment of wages or salary. When it comes to determining an hourly rate of pay or salary for an employee, you must first identify the status of the employee.

An employee can be engaged either as permanent full-time, permanent part-time or casual. There are distinct differences between a permanent employee and a casual employee, and it is vital that the correct status is allocated to the employee from the start.

A permanent employee is either a full-time or part-time employee. Full-time employees work 38 hours per week and accrue annual leave and sick & carer's leave (now known as personal leave). Part-time employees work less than 38 hours per week, have reasonably predictable hours of work, and also accrue annual leave and personal leave entitlements. A typical permanent part time employee would work say, 15 hours a week every week and generally on the same shift or day each week, such as 5 hours each on a Monday, Wednesday and Saturday every week. Permanent employees are entitled to receive notice of termination and redundancy payments, where applicable.

Casual employees, however, are effectively terminated at the end of each shift and can be rostered to work a variable and flexible shift pattern, varying for example, from 5 hours one week to 40 hours the next. The important difference between a casual employee and a permanent employee is that casual employees are not entitled to paid annual leave or personal leave. This means if they don’t turn up to their shift, they do not get paid. To compensate casual employees for their casual employment status, they are paid a casual loading, which generally means they get roughly 25% more than a permanent employee performing an equivalent role. Furthermore, a casual employee is not entitled to receive notice of termination of their employment.

It is important to get the classification of an employee correct during recruitment so that the appropriate rate of pay is allocated to the employee. This means for a casual employee that the appropriate loading is paid on their ordinary hourly rate and for a permanent employee that annual leave is calculated and accrued on all hours worked from the start of their employment.

The next step in determining your employee’s legal rate of pay is to establish whether the employee will fall within the company’s Collective Agreement, if it has one; whether they are covered by a Modern Award, or whether they are Award – free. Modern Awards are wide-ranging in their scope and they cover a vast number of occupations and industries. If you do not have a Collective Agreement, determining coverage can be a complicated process of evaluation. The instrument that covers the employee will determine the rate of pay that they are legally entitled to receive, and the consequences of getting this wrong can quickly result in a claim for underpayment of wages – a costly and time consuming exercise for any business.

Once the correct rate of pay or salary level has been ascertained this should be communicated to the employee together with the other terms and conditions relevant to the position. This can be communicated either verbally or in writing, however for the sake of clarity we would recommend that the details be conveyed in writing either during or just after the completion of the recruitment process.

Depending on the position that the employee is fulfilling a short letter of appointment may be sufficient to set out the main details of employment, or a more comprehensive contract of employment may be required.

The Sky Rocketing Outsourced Recruitment

The number of companies relying on outsourced recruitment expertise is sky rocketing. Recruitment services contributed $3 billion of total Australian revenue in the 2010-11 financial year and are forecast to steadily increase in the years to come (IBIS World 2012).

More and more businesses are turning to employment placement agencies to undertake part or all of their recruitment processes to avoid devoting internal resources to the task. Agencies of this type, not only provide outsourced recruitment, but can also provide value added human resource related services.  

Recruitment can be a particularly lengthy process; formulating job descriptions, attracting, screening, testing, investigating references and selecting the qualifying person for a job is not as simple as it sounds. You can outsource all or just part of these tasks depending on your experience and needs.

When considering outsourced recruitment you should expect a great deal of value including, excellent customer service, reduced cost per hire, increased quality of hire and an overall improvement in the recruitment process meaning you will be able to fill positions faster. 

Outsourcing also ensures job advertisements reach larger audiences so as to scrape in all possibility of hiring only the best candidates for your company. This is because specialist recruiters have large networks of people in search of new and exciting opportunities that you may not be able to reach otherwise.

The employment placement services industry is commonly comprised of four departments:

1. Employment agencies that tend to focus more on temporary roles in the trade industry. 

2. Job search engines; they are successful and cost effective when used to advertise a job to a large demographic and geographic region. However, they are limited because they create a huge influx of resumes making the reading and elimination process challenging and time-consuming. 

 

3. Head-hunters focus on searching for suitable candidates for higher positioned, professional roles such as executives and CEOs. Head hunters are networking specialists as their job relies on using these networking skills to recommend suitable contenders to opening job roles. 

4. Niche agencies focus on e-recruitment for just one or two particular industries.

The four services above all differ in that they each only cover a few sections of the recruitment process. However, outsourced recruitment with HR experts takes on a more holistic approach offering a complete HR solution. SMB’s without their own HR departments are advised to use experienced outsourced HR and recruitment companies such as EI. 

HR providers have a large focus on the hiring and recruitment process, they are familiar with on-going training that needs to be undertaken for the individual to progress their career within your business, long-term strategy and will take care of all the admin and paperwork that comes hand in hand with on boarding new staff.

The recruitment process is time-consuming and can be extremely challenging without the correct knowledge and expertise within your business. By passing these duties on to outsourced recruitment or a HR expert you will choose to increase the time you spend on the goals and innovations of your core business whilst being advised by a HR expert on what will work best for your business.

E-Recruitment and the Perfect Interview

Are you looking to recruit the next Employee of the Month? Not sure how to go about interviewing candidates? Our key pointers will assist you in e-recruitment and preparing for interviews:

Read the candidate’s resume before to the interview – This will ensure you don’t waste time re-learning the candidate’s background and provides you with a good sense of what the candidate is all about and what they may potentially bring to the position. Additionally, it will allow you to prepare in advance additional questions you may want to ask the candidate in order to delve deeper into their experience, skills and interests.  If you are using e-recruitment, ensure that your online forms request sufficient information for pre-screening, this will save you time.

Pre-interview questionnaires – In some cases it might be useful for potential candidates to complete questionnaires prior to conducting the interview. Questions can relate to technical experience, how they would deal in certain scenarios and even non-work related personal goals and interests to get a good feel of how the candidate would fit the culture of the business.

Do not discriminate - Under the Fair Work Act 2009, prospective employers are subject to adverse action laws where a prospective candidate believes they have been discriminated against. For this reason, you cannot ask the candidate questions about religion, age, height, weight, marital status, disability, national origin, etc., unless such questions specifically represent genuine qualifications required to perform the role, this applies to both in person and e-recruitment questioning.

1.       Start with an icebreaker – “Did you have trouble finding our office?”, “This weather is horrible, don’t you think?”, “Would you like a tea or coffee?” This will reduce any nervousness felt by the candidate and create a friendly atmosphere.

2.       Determine the candidate’s level of motivation – “Why have you applied for this position?”, “What do you know about our company?”, “Where does this position fit with your career path?”, “If you had to convince a friend to apply for this position, what would you tell them?”, “How important is the salary to you?”, “What are your long term career goals?”, “If we hired you what would be the number one priority on your to-do list for your first day?” People apply for positions for various reasons – by asking such questions you will be able to gauge their true motivation for applying and actual interest in the job and company. 

3.       Ascertain whether the applicant is qualified for the position. For example: If you’re looking for leadership: “Tell me about a time when you accomplished something significant that wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t been there to make it happen”, “How would you handle a situation where an employee is not performing to their full standard?” Other general questions include: “Tell me about some projects you were responsible for and how they went”, “Have you had a job where you did not achieve good enough results? If yes, explain why”, “Tell me about a time when you had to overcome a major obstacle and what your thought process was during this time”, “What would you do if you knew you could not meet the deadline for a project you were working on?”

4.       Throw in some wacky questions – “If you won $20 million in the lottery, what would you do with the money?”, “If you could trade places with any other person for a week, famous or not famous, who would it be and why?”, “If you were an animal what kind of animal would you be?”

These questions establish how creatively and quickly the candidate thinks on their feet as opposed to reciting well-rehearsed answers. It also allows you to find out more about how the candidate deals with surprises and how their mind works without asking overly personal questions. Pay attention to the candidate’s attitude, how they approaches these types of questions and the ease or difficulty they have in responding.

During both the e-recruitment and the interview you should also provide information on the company and the position. Keep it brief but detailed and allow the candidate to ask questions – this will also give you a chance to see how interested the candidate is about the role.

Outsourced Recruitment Rise

The number of companies relying on outsourced recruitment expertise is sky rocketing. Recruitment services contributed $3 billion of total Australian revenue in the 2010-11 financial year and are forecast to steadily increase in the years to come (IBIS World 2012).

More and more businesses are turning to employment placement agencies to undertake part or all of their recruitment processes to avoid devoting internal resources to the task. Agencies of this type, not only provide outsourced recruitment, but can also provide value added human resource related services.  

Recruitment can be a particularly lengthy process; formulating job descriptions, attracting, screening, testing, investigating references and selecting the qualifying person for a job is not as simple as it sounds. You can outsource all or just part of these tasks depending on your experience and needs on employment contract.

When considering outsourced recruitment you should expect a great deal of value including, excellent customer service, reduced cost per hire, increased quality of hire and an overall improvement in the recruitment process meaning you will be able to fill positions faster.

Outsourcing also ensures job advertisements reach larger audiences so as to scrape in all possibility of hiring only the best candidates for your company. This is because specialist recruiters have large networks of people in search of new and exciting opportunities that you may not be able to reach otherwise.

The employment placement services industry is commonly comprised of four departments:

1. Employment agencies that tend to focus more on temporary roles in the trade industry.

2. Job search engines; they are successful and cost effective when used to advertise a job to a large demographic and geographic region. However, they are limited because they create a huge influx of resumes making the reading and elimination process challenging and time-consuming.

3. Head-hunters focus on searching for suitable candidates for higher positioned, professional roles such as executives and CEOs. Head hunters are networking specialists as their job relies on using these networking skills to recommend suitable contenders to opening job roles. 

4. Niche agencies focus on recruitment for just one or two particular industries.

The four services above all differ in that they each only cover a few sections of the recruitment process. However, outsourced recruitment with HR experts takes on a more holistic approach offering a complete HR solution. SMB’s without their own HR departments are advised to use experienced outsourced HR and recruitment companies such as EI. 

HR providers have a large focus on the hiring and recruitment process, they are familiar with on-going training that needs to be undertaken for the individual to progress their career within your business, long-term strategy and will take care of all the admin and paperwork that comes hand in hand with on boarding new staff.

The recruitment process is time-consuming and can be extremely challenging without the correct knowledge and expertise within your business. By passing these duties on to outsourced recruitment or a HR expert you will choose to increase the time you spend on the goals and innovations of your core business whilst being advised by a HR expert on what will work best for your business.