Minimum wage from 1/7/23

$882.80 per week (8.6% increase)

$23.23 per hour ($29.04 casual)

$45,905.60 pa ($57,382.00 pa – casual)

Modern Awards increased by 5.75%

Unfair dismissal threshold from 1/7/23

$167,500 (max payout is $83,750) – does not include Super, commissions or bonuses (doesn’t apply to people covered by a Modern Award. No cap for a general protections claim)

$83.30 to lodge a claim with FWC – bullying, unfair dismissal & general protection

Tax-free threshold on ETP from 1/7/23

$11,985 tax-free plus $5,994 for each completed year of service Lump Sum D

Super maximum for employers from 1/7/23

$249,080 pa ($62,270 per quarter)

Super

11% from 1/7/23 then .5% each year until 12% on 1/7/25

Payroll tax NSW FY24

5.45% ($1,200,000 threshold) – no change from FY23

ATO mileage rate FY24 – 85c (was 78c in FY23)

The annual work party

Yes, December is nearly upon us again. You’ve probably already booked your venue for the annual celebration of your business’ stellar performance throughout the year. You want to thank your employees for their massive contribution and you probably feel like letting your hair down a bit too.

That’s great, but it’s prudent to have a few checks in place before the big event:

• You no doubt already have strong policies on bullying and sexual harassment. Now is a good time to remind your people of these policies and to review what is expected of people generally when they attend a work-related function
• Your people will need to be double-vaxxed and be able to prove that they are, at least up until December 15 2021. After that date, as things currently stand, unvaxxed people may be able to access public venues such as bars, pubs and restaurants*
• Make sure everyone has a mask with them on the day of the function – they will almost certainly need one if they are using public transport to get home
• You should remind people a few days before the party of how you expect them to behave on the day itself
• Make sure the venue you choose has a responsible serving of alcohol (RSA) policy that they strictly adhere to
• On the day of the function ensure that at least one senior manager is present at all times during the function. It’s preferable if that person doesn’t drink at all. You might even solicit the help of any other non-drinkers, if they’re willing to keep an eye on things
• Make sure you serve non-alcoholic drinks and plenty of food and water, keeping in mind any special dietary requirements
• If anyone seems drunk they should be immediately cut off from the bar and sent home in a cab
• Have a definite start and end time for your function and make sure people leave the venue when the time arrives. Don’t let people linger at the same venue. If they want to kick on they should go somewhere else
• Do not let anyone use their corporate credit card at a different venue. This also applies to you as the business owner, if you decide to kick on somewhere else. The idea is to separate your business from the social gathering, once the official party is over
• Make sure people can get home easily after the event. You could set up a work Uber account and have a designated person available to book people’s trips home. Cab charges are a good alternative
• Be sure to promptly and thoroughly investigate any complaints you receive about harassment, bullying or physical violence, as you would normally at any other time
• Don’t forget, if you do close down over the December break, give employees at least a month’s notice and be prepared to answer questions about paid and unpaid leave, especially from your recently-hired employees who may not have enough accrued paid leave to see them through the annual shutdown.

* Make sure you stay up to date with the current Covid rules. They are changing almost daily so by the time your work party comes around the rules may well have changed. Some employers are already insisting that all employees be double-vaxxed and some venues will only allow double-vaxxed people into their premises.

From July 1, as is the case every year, the minimum wage has been increased – this time by a modest 1.75%.

Traditionally, Modern Award rates have also been increased by the same percentage on the same day.

This year though, due to Covid, the Fair Work Commission has decided to introduce the increases over a 3-tier staggered basis.

Please click on this link for the full story on how your employees (if you have employees paid by a Modern Award) will be affected:

https://www.fairwork.gov.au/about-us/news-and-media-releases/website-news/the-commission-has-announced-a-1-75-increase-to-minimum-wages#when-will-my-award-increase

Some examples:

• The Health Professionals and Support Services Award increases 1/7/20.
• The Clerks – Private Sector Award, the Building and Construction General On-Site Award and the Storage Services and Wholesale Award all increase 1/11/20.
• The General Retail Industry Award increases 1/2/21.

Here are some useful numbers for you and your HR team, effective 1/7/20:

1. Minimum wage up 1.75% – $753.80 per week ($942.25 casual rate) – $19.84 per hour ($24.80 casual rate); $39,203.84 pa ($49,004.80 casual rate)
2. Modern Award pay rates –  all increased by 1.75% but this year on a staggered basis (see above)
3. Unfair dismissal threshold – $153,600 (maximum payout is $76,800) – does not include super
4. Maximum salary employers have to pay super on – $228,360 ($57,090 per quarter)
5. Tax-free component for eligible termination payments – $10,989 plus $5,496 for each year of completed service
6. Super guarantee – still 9.5%, no change scheduled until 1/7/21 (then .5% yearly increase to 12% from 1/7/2025)
7. ATO rate for use of own vehicle – 72c per kilometre
8. Payroll Tax NSW – 5.45% tax kicks in on amounts above $1,000,000 pa

People say there is no such thing as a free lunch. Well, at Wurth HR, we’ve stopped taking our clients out to lunch for obvious reasons.

What we’re offering instead is a totally free 30 minute ‘phone consultation for any business looking for some HR guidance in these troubled times. We don’t promise to have all the answers but we know we’ll be able to point you in the right direction at least.

We won’t even ask who you are so don’t think that by ‘phoning us we’re going to hound you for the next 2 years by trying to sell you something.

So, if you’re looking for some help with the WHS implications of having staff work from home, stand-down provisions, using personal/carer’s leave to look after kids at home and the like then give us a call:

1300 900 741 or email: info@wurthhr.com.au

 

 

I’ve been using this icebreaker in my TAE workshops for years. It’s simple to run and people respond really well to it.

1. Break people into pairs – if you have an uneven number of learners you pair up with someone
2. People are instructed to interview their partner for 5 minutes. They have to get answers to the 3 questions outlined below as a minimum (they are told to take notes as they will need the information later but you don’t tell them why):
   • What job the person has or intends to pursue
   • How that links in with them doing TAE (or whatever workshop you’re running)
   • What their expectations of the course are
3. People are encouraged to solicit some personal information as well. I always joke that people have the right, under the 5^th amendment, not to answer any personal questions, if they choose not to
4. After 5 minutes people swap roles, with the interviewer becoming the interviewee and vice versa
5. If the trainer has to make up a pair you tell your interviewer to ask you about yourself, your training business (trainer credibility) and any other personal details they’d like to know. The 3 questions listed above are not really relevant
6. After the 2^nd 5 minutes everyone stops
7. People then have to introduce their partner to the group, answering the 3 Qs listed above and adding any personal intel they’ve been able to unearth. They can use their notes for this
8. I ask them to stand as they introduce their partner

I run this icebreaker within 20 minutes of starting day 1. It works particularly well in TAE workshops as participants get to do a mini-presentation right from the get-go in preparation for when they have to do their TAEDEL401 presentations later in the course.

 

 

David Wurth

There’s been a lot written recently about the above topic. It’s pretty confusing so let’s try to make some sense out of it.

• Firstly, the change is happening from 1st March this year so there’s less than a week to go. What is changing exactly?
  • Annualising an employee’s salary means that you calculate how much overtime and shift penalties etc would normally apply to each pay and make an assumption that your employee will normally receive this amount every payday. It saves you the trouble of manually calculating overtime and shift penalties each payday. You annualise the salary then divide that number by the number of paydays in a year to work out how much your employee earns each payday
  • From 1st March 2020 more Awards will allow this form of paying employees
  • You may already be doing this and that’s fine – see below for more information
• As an employer you will need to ask yourself a number of questions. Your answers to these questions will determine how much this legislative change is going to affect your business:
  • Do you have any employees covered by a Modern Award? Chances are you do but you mightn’t know it. Get advice if you don’t know the answer to this question
  • If the answer is yes, do you know which of the 122 Modern Awards cover your staff? Refer to the list of 22 Awards which have had annualised salary clauses recently added. Again, you may need to get advice on this one
  • If any of the Modern Awards that cover your employees are on the list of 22 you will need to make a decision as to whether you want to annualise your employees’ salaries or simply pay them as per the Award with all the penalty rates, overtime and other loadings that may apply.
• Why would you want to annualise? A lot of employers do this to ease the administrative burden of having to work out each pay as it arises. With annualised salaries, the pay is the same every payday because the variables like overtime and penalty rates have all been pre-calculated and taken into account, to a certain extent
• What if I’m already doing this? That’s fine and you can continue to do so but there are a lot of extra safeguards you’ll need to consider to meet the new legislative requirements. These are mainly concerned with time-keeping and regular salary reconciliations to ensure that your employees are better off being paid an annual salary than being paid via the Award.

Feel free to drop me an email or call to discuss further. It’s a bit of a minefield and each case will be different.

They say that public speaking is most people’s number one fear. I don’t buy it. Although public speaking always makes me feel anxious I have my own list of what scares me the most:

• Flying
• Spiders
• Being a passenger in a car
• People stopping me in the street to ask for money

If you’d like to feel better about making presentations or speeches here are a few tips I’ve picked up over my years of teaching presentation skills (in no particular order):

1. There is no such thing as over-practising. The more you run through your speech or presentation the better it will be on the big day
2. Use Powerpoint (PPT) sparingly. Choose visual content rather than words. Turn off your PPT by using the “b” or “w” keys (try it – it actually works!) during your presentation so your audience concentrates just on you and your message
3. Work out where and how you want to finish your presentation and work backwards from there. That way your whole presentation will have a simple, logical flow that people will easily follow
4. Use silence to give your audience (and yourself) a rest. They will appreciate that you’ve given them time to catch up with what you’ve been saying
5. Work on removing “um” from your vocabulary and any other filler word that has no meaning (ah, you know, so, etc). The best way to do this is to be aware of when you say it – get your partner or work colleague to pick you up on it each time. It won’t take long before it disappears entirely
6. Don’t forget to breathe. You may need to stop talking to do this but that’s good for you and your audience (see point 4 above)
7. Never, ever introduce yourself with “For those of you who don’t know me…” I know, most people see you as a famous rockstar – how could anyone not know you?
8. Try to have a few STAR (something they’ll always remember) moments in your presentation. This could be a shocking statistic, a poignant visual or a personal anecdote
9. Never forget that your audience wants you to succeed. They want you to entertain them, teach them something and give them food for thought later

A recent court finding has meant that personal/carer’s leave for part-time employees needs to be treated differently from now on.

The court found that part-time employees are entitled to 10 days of personal/carer’s leave, regardless of the number of days they work per week. As most of you probably already know, we used to prorata their entitlement based on their weekly hours.

Not anymore! Part-time employees get the same entitlement as full-time employees.

There is more to this story so if you want more detail please get in touch (see below).

The Federal government has sought leave to appeal this rather baffling decision so stay tuned.

Thankfully, annual leave entitlement is still prorated for part-timers. Apparently, this is because the Fair Work Act talks about 4 weeks annual leave whereas for personal/carer’s leave it mentions 10 days. Go figure!

Meanwhile, you’ll need to discuss with your payroll provider the best way to manage this.

I will keep you posted if anything changes.

Meanwhile, feel free to contact me on 1300 900 741 or email:

david@wurthhr.com.au

if you’d like to discuss your particular situation.

Annual leave is an often overlooked employee benefit, the careful management of which can save your business significant sums of money.

Cashing out annual leave

Most employees now can cash out some of their annual leave provided the following conditions are met:

1. Each cash out must be covered by a written agreement between employer and employee
2. Employers can’t force employees to cash out
3. After cash out their remaining leave balance cannot be less than 4 weeks
4. No more than 2 weeks every 12 months can be cashed out
5. Payment must be equivalent to what they would have received if they had taken the leave

Forcing an employee to take leave

1. If an employee has more than 8 weeks’ accrued leave and there is provision for it in the relevant Modern Award or Enterprise Agreement then an employer can “force” an employee to take leave
2. One week minimum per occasion
3. Your request for them to take leave must be reasonable
4. Minimum 2 months’ notice and no more than 12 months’ notice
5. After leave is taken employee’s leave balance cannot be less than 6 weeks

How does this save you money as a business owner? When an employee takes annual leave they are paid whatever salary they are on when they use their annual leave. What you don’t want is an employee accruing leave when they’re earning say, $75,000pa, and then using it 2 years later when they’re earning $95,000. So, the sooner you get employees to either cash out their annual leave or use it (a mandatory Christmas shutdown is also a good idea, but make sure it’s in your employment contract) the lower your annual leave liability will be.

Well, it’s that time of year again (less than 9 weeks until Christmas!) and business owners turn our minds to the year ahead while quietly reviewing the year that has been. How was your year? Better than you had expected? Worse? Or pretty close to what you thought it would be?

Regardless of the sort of year you’ve been having there are some HR challenges you should be thinking about for 2018 and beyond. Think of them as new year resolutions for your business:

• Make sure you and your managers are having regular catch-ups with staff. By regular I mean at least once a month but preferably even more often than that. The catch-up doesn’t need to be terribly formal or documented. It’s absolutely vital that you don’t just rely on an annual performance appraisal process as your only means of discussing performance. Employees’ strengths and a strong focus on improvement should always be on your management team’s agenda. You and your managers should make it the number one priority for 2018 and every year after that
• Get your managers and staff trained in workplace harassment awareness, no matter how big or small your company is. You don’t want the Fair Work Commission knocking on your door when one of your employees lodges a formal complaint. Avoid the on-line versions of this type of training. They are purely a tick-the-box response and deliver very little learning. A better way is to use a skilled facilitator to conduct short workshops (around 1-2 hours) for managers and employees. Managers will learn how to handle a complaint and your staff will know you’re serious about eliminating harassment in the workplace
• Don’t forget to allow staff to have a support person with them if you’re having one of those meetings where you’re discussing someone’s future with your company. If you refuse to allow a support person that alone could be grounds for unfair dismissal, regardless of how well documented your termination process is.

Oh, and don’t forget to have a documented “Christmas party” policy in place for your end of year bash. Make sure everyone understands what is expected of them and what types of behaviour will not be tolerated.