How Does Your Organisation’s HR Management Profile Rate?

How does your organisation’s HR management profile measure up to good practice? Take BNG Online’s HR Management Quiz to find out.

Register and take the quiz here.

• Does your organisation have all its bases covered in terms of good HR practice?
• Are you aware of your obligations as an employer, and your employees’ rights and entitlements under the Fair Work system?
• What systems are in place to ensure you get the best out of your recruitment and performance management processes?

People are the heart and soul of an organisation, and excellent HR management is the key to a healthy, successful, and sustainable organisation.

BNG Online has added a short, online HR Management Quiz to its Standards & Performance Pathways (SPP) service. Through a series of easy-to-follow self-assessments, the quiz identifies gaps in your organisation’s HR management, offering complementary information guides and policy templates to help you achieve good practice.

The quiz and associated resources are free as part of a two-week trial of SPP.

BNG has also pulled together four key areas of resources to assist you in developing and reviewing your organisation’s HR management practices.

1. Fair Work laws: understand your employer obligations and employee entitlements

It’s important that all staff and management have a clear understanding of employer obligations and employee entitlements under the Fair Work System. This includes the ten National Employment Standards (NES) that uniformly work alongside all industrial awards and enterprise agreements. All employees in the national workplace relations system are covered by the NES regardless of the award, registered agreement or employment contract that applies (however only certain entitlements apply to casual employees).

As well as those under the Fair Work system, there are other important legislative requirements, including anti-discrimination, workplace health and safety, and unfair dismissal laws. We’ve put together a short summary of the key factors for you to consider.

2. Establish and document effective recruitment processes

Recruitment is the first step in building a skilled, committed, and happy team.

Getting things right here can go a long way to helping avoid performance management headaches down the track.

Employment procedures should aim to attract and match the right person to the job, with an accurate assessment of their capacity to do the job being the primary consideration.

Here are some things to consider for an effective recruitment process.

• Determine whether the position requires screening or background checks.

• Make sure your selection criteria and recruitment material comply with legislation, particularly anti-discrimination laws. Generally, selection criteria should not specify or exclude applicants based on gender, family arrangement (marital status, pregnancy or children), race or ethnicity, religion, age, sexual orientation or disability.
• Brief candidates well from start to finish, ensuring you provide an information pack to potential applications and a thorough induction for the successful applicant.

• Use an interview assessment template across the organisation. Apart from ensuring consistency across candidate interviews, it’s a great way of jotting down thoughts and candidate responses for discussion when the panel meets after interviewing all the candidates.

3. Document your employment relationship, including your expectations and policies for staff conduct

Does your organisation have a compliant employment agreement with all staff? And a staff Code of Conduct and Code of Ethics?

An employment agreement should meet all legislative requirements and set out the key entitlements and obligations of the staff member, including a summary of their role, their leave entitlements, and notice provisions for either party to terminate.

A Code of Ethics expresses the overarching principles or ideals that guide an organisation’s decisions and actions when conducting operations and delivering services. It provides a general understanding of the ethical or moral responsibilities that the governing body, employees and volunteers are expected to meet while working for the organisation.

A Code of Conduct, on the other hand, focuses on how people are expected to behave, and how the organisation will respond, under particular circumstances.

Both documents are critical to induction because they communicate the values and behaviours expected of everyone in the organisation, whether staff, the governing body, or volunteers. It’s all about establishing expectations from the get-go.

They should be aligned with the organisation’s mission and strategic intent. When significant changes are made to the organisation’s services or direction, these documents should be reviewed. The codes may also need to be revised following any significant ethical incident or code breach.

4. Performance Management

One of the core responsibilities of an organisation is to ensure that staff are supported and are accountable for the performance of their duties. The organisation is responsible for ensuring that all staff receive effective supervision and management support, that staff are assisted to identify any problems in the performance of their duties, and that any problems are dealt with in a fair and supportive manner.

Managing an under-performing or troublesome employee can be particularly challenging. It is important that the organisation has thought through its approach to this in advance, and has a clear process to follow.

Performance management processes are also key mechanisms for determining opportunities and tracking succession development for individual staff.

It’s worth keeping in mind that there are several methods of performance appraisal (such as appraisal by supervisor/manager, peer review, and self-appraisal). There’s no one-size-fits-all. Choose the mix that best suits your organisation’s size, structure, and culture.

Performance management processes might sound like a trip to the dentist, but they can be extremely rewarding opportunities for both parties.

5. Plan ahead!

It’s always important to look ahead and have a “Plan B” in the case of an unexpected staff vacancy. Each key position should have at least one suitable alternative should the current staff member be unable to continue in their role. Succession planning targets and prepares replacements for rapid succession so that the impact on the organisation and its programs are minimised.

More broadly, it’s also important to have a well-documented Workforce Plan to help identify the current workforce, forecast future workforce requirements, and identify any gaps or issues. Workforce planning requires implementing strategies to address gaps and issues in order to maintain a productive and sustainable organisation.

BNG Online operates Standards & Performance Pathways (SPP), Australia’s leading online solution for accreditation, standards compliance, and quality management, as well as for managing risk and performance. Visit https://spp.ngoservicesonline.com.au.