1300 116 400Last week, the Full Federal Court of Australia in WorkPac Pty Ltd v Skene gave a judgement that has sent shockwaves through many businesses and potentially opened the floodgates of claims from casual employees. Businesses that engage casual employees could now face claims from their casual employees for entitlements such as annual leave and personal leave. (more…)
Family and Domestic Violence leave to be included in Modern Awards
A Full Bench of the Fair Work Commission has recently released the model term providing for unpaid family and domestic violence leave (more…)
Employee to pay Employer’s cost for vexatious claim
In a recent decision of Charles Parletta Real Estate Pty Ltd v Ms Maria D’Ortenzio [2018] FWC 3286, the Fair Work Commission has awarded indemnity costs in favour of an employer.
Commissioner Platt found that the employee’s ‘claim was vexatious and without proper cause and had little prospect of success from the outset…and was doomed to fail’. (more…)
Annual Wage Review decision by Fair Work Commission has resulted in a 3.5% increase.
Today, the Annual Wage Review panel handed down its decision to increase the national minimum wage.
Effective 1 July 2018, the national minimum wage will increase by 3.5%, lifting it to $719.20 per week or $18.93 per hour. Modern award minimum weekly wages will also increase by 3.5%.
The Modern Award rates are yet to be published by the Fair Work Commission but rest assured as soon as they are made available we will notify all current Members.
We urge all employers to check their payroll obligations to ensure that you are meeting the minimum wage obligations under the Fair Work Act 2009 and Modern Awards.
Members will be provided with updated wage schedules shortly – if you are not a member and would like a copy of the wage schedule (fee applies) please send us an email.
For more information contact Workplace Partners on 1300 116 400.
Changeover Time – Identifying and reducing the length of changeovers in business
There are lots of excellent examples where organisations have adopted principles to reduce changeover times. A race car team is probably the most visual and clearly understood. Its where fractions of a second can actually be the difference between losing and winning the race. Teams practice changing tyres, simplifying the process, e.g. having one large nut holding on the wheel instead of 4 or 5 small nuts spread around the wheel. Have the driver stop exactly where he needs to so the Pit Crew don’t have to move.
Work Place Organisation – 5S
One of the most poorly understood and ineffectively used tools in the Lean arsenal is 5S. It is a common misbelief that 5S is just housekeeping.
5S is a tool comprising 5 steps where the descriptor for each step starts with a letter S. Originally, they were Japanese words which have subsequently been translated into English, again all starting with a letter S hence its name 5S.
Why problems occur – An introduction to Root Cause Analysis.
In last month’s article I put forward that “Respect for People,” one of the key pillars in any Lean organisation, was more than being polite and courteous. It was in fact involving your team in the business by giving them an opportunity or even actively encouraging them to solve their problems. In this newsletter, I will briefly describe some of the different problem solving techniques you can use to more effectively coach your people and build trust and enhance how you display “Respect for People”.
R.E.S.P.E.C.T…find out what it means…
RESPECT FOR PEOPLE
Improve your business (Part 4)
Over the past few months we have provided a series of newsletters introducing the business philosophy called Lean Thinking. We have discussed “Value” as a concept from a customer or consumer perspective and concluded the most simplistic way to create Value for our organisations was to eliminate waste.
Improve Your Business (Part 3) – Value of Waste
Waste Elimination – Understanding what TIM WOODS is Costing YOU
In our last Newsletter, we introduced the concept of waste and that this exists in every business. If you are to be competitive by delivering a product or service which the consumer or customers are prepared to pay for while ensuring the organisation makes money, you have to focus on the cost of production or service. We used the acronym TIM WOODS to facilitate the easy remembering of the many different forms of waste.
In this newsletter I will use examples to try and illustrate how much TIM WOODS is costing your business. The examples have been made up, but hopefully they are close enough to reality that it gives you impetus to calculate the cost of some of your waste and provide the stimulus to drive TIM WOODS out of your business so he can take up residence somewhere else. (more…)
Up to 80% of everything we do to make a product or provide a service doesn’t add any value to the customer!
Improve Your Business with Lean Thinking – Waste
In last month’s newsletter we introduced the concept of Lean Thinking as a way of improving your business and stated over coming months we would be developing and sharing some of the concepts and tools used in this philosophy.
Typically an organisation calculates the price of a product or service using the following formula:
Selling Price = Cost of Product or Service + Profit
