With the new Financial Year now upon us, it’s essential for HR practitioners and leaders to start planning for what the next 12 months will look like from the People Perspective. To help guide your efforts, here are Beyond the Curve’s Top 5 Focus Areas for businesses and HR teams.
With the CPI increase of 3.5% being announced and effective as of July 1 2025, it’s critical that you take a moment to review your rates and salaries. For businesses who have staff working various shifts which are likely to attract penalties, allowances and/or overtime, it is essential you undertake a Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) to ensure you are compliant. It’s not good enough to guess. With the new wage theft laws in place, businesses of any size will be at risk of huge penalties and potential criminal conviction if you get it wrong.
In light of Action 1, and with a greater level of accountability now on Boards and Executives will be taking more interest in the Wage theft laws which are now effective. Pre-empt their questions by having clear plans and risk mitigation protocols in place to protect the business from this. Recognising that human error is a huge risk in the payroll space so whilst it may be an additional cost, we strongly recommend an HRIS which automates pay schedules and penalty calculations.
More and more employees are applying for FWAs, especially with the Right to Disconnect legislation making an impact last year. What appears to be more impactful is the right for employees to request FWAs. Ensure your HR teams and leaders are fully across who is entitled to request FWAs, the factors that must be considered, and how/why a request can be lawfully denied.
This is a complex and daily issue for HR teams and leaders to consider and to minimise exposure, the employee experience needs to be thoroughly and regularly reviewed. Actions to take include: Regularly review policies, procedures and Risk Identification frameworks related to Psychosocial hazards. Provide ongoing training for managers on performance management, workplace investigations and disciplinary processes. Collaborate with Safety teams closely to align safety compliance with people management.
Determining whether your employees are truly casual as per the definition or not is crucial for managing conversion applications. Knowing when casuals can request conversion, what to consider, and how/why a request can be lawfully denied is essential. The same applies to Contractors. There are distinct differences between employees and contractors, and if you have contractors embedded into your business similar to employees, you need to understand how this may impact your decision making.
HR Teams should take planned and proactive actions now to ensure business, leaders, and employees have the right information to mitigate any risks or grievances. This could look like creating a HR calendar with planned training and education sessions, leadership training programs, and all-org sessions to ensure one consistent message is given. HR teams should also identify 5 or 6 key HR projects or deliverables to achieve each quarter (depending on complexity) and keep the focus on these until completion. Then, next quarter, do the same.
So often we see businesses running without any clear direction of where they want to be. Employees are hired and expected to perform, but they aren’t really sure what their priorities are or exactly what it is they need to deliver. Linking employee output to business direction is crucial for a million different reasons. Most importantly it shows a clear line of sight between employee work and business success. It also provides clarity around what is ‘core business’ and should be focused on, compared to what is ‘something new and shiny’ and likely to distract everyone from core business. Strategic (Business) Plans don’t have to be a $30k production that you never look at again. It just needs to be a clear description of your direction for the year and what you need to do or achieve to get there!
Nothing disengages a high performing employee faster than watching you (leaders) tolerate an underperforming one. Make sure you have clear performance evaluation systems and frameworks in place. Recognise, Reward, Acknowledge in a constructive and meaningful way. And take the next critical step of managing, addressing and resolving underperformance. This is not only from an output point of view, but from a behaviour and conduct side also. If you are a values led business, and we hope you are, businesses need to be evaluating not only what they do, but how they do it as well.
Clients we work with don’t believe us when we tell them this until they see the difference for themselves!! The recruitment process really is the first critical step in your business journey! Screening, interviewing, reference checking and onboarding lay the foundations to a successful working relationship. This is where expectations are set and made clear, employees feel supported and have clarity but most importantly, employees can see from the outset that your business is not one to take advantage of. Invest your time at the front and we promise, you will not need to invest so much at the pointy end!
As a business owner or leader, you can of course make whatever decision you think is best. What we see regularly however is despite the best of intentions, inconsistent decision making creates a perception of inequitable treatment. Once this perception is out amongst your workforce, it is incredibly hard to wind back and it will be the basis of all workplace culture and poor engagement issues. Create decision making frameworks or guidelines so that you can always talk openly about your decisions.
Beyond the Curve offers businesses and leaders clear and accurate advisory support on all of these issues. We can facilitate business planning sessions, leader coaching, and front-line leadership Training (The Leader Playbook) to ensure your leaders are equipped with the knowledge and skills to effectively lead your teams. For internal HR Teams, Beyond the Curve can provide technical supervision, HR Audits and gap analysis, policy and template suites, or simply accurate and helpful advice to get you out of a jam. If you are keen to learn more, reach out to the team at HR@beyondthecurve.com.au or call 0411662216.
