Managing ill and injured employees is one of the highest-risk tasks any Australian employer faces. When a worker is injured or falls ill, several legal regimes switch on at once — and they don’t always agree. Get it right and you protect your people and your organisation. Get it wrong and one termination can trigger multiple claims. Here’s how to do it —
When a worker is killed or seriously injured at work, the first 48 hours shape everything that follows — your legal exposure, your standing with the WHS regulator, the wellbeing of your people, and your ability to defend any future prosecution. The best predictor of a good response is having an incident-response plan ready before anything happens.
The First 48 Hours After a Serious Workplace Incident: An Employer’s Response Plan Read More »
The biggest shift in Australian sexual harassment law is not a new penalty or complaint form. It is a change in who must act, and when. Under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), employers now carry a positive duty — a proactive, ongoing obligation to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sexual harassment, sex discrimination, sex-based harassment, hostile work environments and victimisation, so far as possible.
The Positive Duty Explained: How Australian Employers Prevent Sexual Harassment at Work Read More »
Performance-manage an underperformer, restructure a team or investigate a bullying complaint, and you are no longer working within employment law alone. That decision now sits inside your work health and safety duty — and a process that is perfectly lawful under the Fair Work Act can still expose you under WHS legislation. The answer is not to
I want to start with a number. 28.5%. That is the proportion of Australians who have experienced child sexual abuse, according to the 2023 Australian Child Maltreatment Study. Of those, approximately 75% experienced it more than once. These are not rare events. This is not a problem confined to certain families or certain communities. This
Queensland’s Child Safe Laws: Everything Employers Need to Know Read More »
I’ve had the same conversation twice this week. Once with a childcare client — a capable, committed team doing genuinely good work with children every day. And again at the Local Government People & Safety Conference, standing in a room full of HR professionals and people managers from councils across Queensland. In both conversations, the
Is Your Organisation Child Safe? Read More »
Mental health in the workplace is no longer a “nice to have” conversation — it is a business-critical priority. In a recent HR Bites webinar, I explored the role of Mental Health First Aid at Work within a broader workplace mental health strategy, and the practical steps employers can take to manage psychological risk, meet
Mental Health First Aid at Work: A Practical Guide for Employers Read More »