Fair Work Act Changes and Higher Wages: are you Change Ready?
The Fairwork Act changes, approved in December are the most extensive suite of Fairwork Act changes since the Act commenced. The Secure Jobs, Better Pay: changes to Australian workplace laws have multiple potential impact points for NFP organisations across Australia. The changes cut across a wide range of workplace laws which are likely to impact not-for-profit’s directly,and include:
+ Changes to how and when organisations can provide Fixed Term Contracts
+ Small business exemptions and definitions
+ Job advertisements
+ Flexible work requests
+ Enterprise agreements and multi-site enterprise bargaining
+ Small claims process
+ Job security
- new workplace rights on disclosing pay and workplace conditions
- prohibiting pay secrecy
- unlawful job ads
+Gender equality measures
- breastfeeding
- gender identity
- intersex status
- new objects of the Fair Work Act, modern awards and minimum wages
- equal remuneration principles and orders
- functions we perform, including around guidelines and community outreach in multiple languages
Many of these laws have been implemented with a few scheduled for implementation later. Combined with predicted higher wages across the sector these changes will have a tremendous impact on the way not-for-profits employ people and manage workplace relations. Our surveying of sector leaders has indicated that many not-for-profits are not clear on how they will address these changes, chiefly the higher wages that employees will shortly need to be paid, with 14% saying they may need to reduce staff numbers; 39% stating that they have not taken any of actions listed and 39% stating that they will need to pursue new growth strategies to meet these challenges.
An example of where not-for-profits will likely need to fix their attention quickly is fixed term employment contracts. With the widespread reliance on contingent funding arrangements, many not-for-profits make use of these arrangements (43% of our sample) and will need to understand how these changes may affect the legality of those arrangements.
Enterprise agreement related changes are also likely to have an instant and dramatic impact on organisations. Over 50% of our sample indicated that they are covered by an enterprise agreement and many could see nothing positive for the organisation from these arrangements.
Multi-site enterprise agreements are prominent in the changes, meaning an organisation may be drawn into providing unplanned and unbudgeted terms and conditions of employment for their employees. Small organisations of less than 20 people and larger organisations who have their own enterprise agreements could be exempt from having a multi-site enterprise agreement applied to their organisation. Pro-active planning now and developing your own “in or out” strategy is paramount.
With a highly diverse workforce the sector is also likely to be impacted by the range of gender equality measures and other HR related changes. NFP Success has anticipated the weightiness of these changes to not-for-profits and has initiated a series of nationwide NFP specific, Change Readiness Workshops.
Facilitated by some of Australia’s thought leading HR/IR professionals, our calendar of events is available via our partner Alliancing Forums website (Alliancing Forums). For bookings or more information please visit our contact page Not for Profit Consultants-Brisbane-Sydney-Melbourne-Adelaide-Perth- Hobart (nfpsuccess.com.au) or call Helen on (02) 9659 2602.
