The number of people who wanted to attend our employee relations workshop on Thursday 1 August shows that our members welcomed the opportunity to get advice about employment laws. We will be adding a video of the workshop to our members-only resources.
In the meantime, here's a quick report.
After announcing the workshop in early July in a news item and on social media, we also sent an email to all members and made some phone calls.
Very quickly, we realised the event would be over-booked. The level of interest was extremely high due to the complexity of workplace laws, which has increased this year because of a raft of new legislation. This is an area in which employers easily get something wrong and find themselves facing serious consequences for non-compliance.
The 18 people who attended were all members or employees of members, so there was a mix of business owners and administrators.
The workshop had interactive discussion sessions, generated many questions and covered a broad range of topics, such as
- why some WA businesses come under the state industrial relations system, while others come under the national fair work system
- the differences between the state and national systems
- legal risks throughout the employment lifecycle
- legal considerations with employment contracts
- the new definitions of employee and employer in the Fair Work Act
Future workshops will focus on specific parts of the Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award.
When the video is available for members, we will announce it in a separate news story.
