Business Point

From hiring to terminating employment and all the matters of training, incentives, staff development, delegation, and teamwork in between, the management of staff can dominate your daily functions in the running of your business.

Good employees can be your greatest assets, so recruiting and retaining the right people is important.

Before you hire new staff you need to make sure you understand your legal obligations to them:

• Find out what wages and employment conditions apply to your staff
• Register with the Tax Office to deduct tax from their wages
• Set up employment records
• Pay superannuation
• Comply with occupational health and safety laws.

As an employer, you have obligations under the Fair Work Act 2009, state and territory laws, industrial awards and agreements, tribunal decisions and contracts of employment. You need to ensure you maintain a minimum standard of pay, conditions and entitlements for your employees. More information can be found on the websites of Fairwork Ombudsman and Fairwork Australia.

An easy way to check pay rates under modern awards is through the online tool PayCheck Plus at www.fairwork.gov.au.

PayCheck Plus is an online web based application which helps you automatically calculate pay rates under modern awards. The tool enables you to calculate base pay rates, allowances, overtime, and penalty rates of pay per hour. You can also calculate pay rates for entire shifts worked over a seven day period.

The business.gov.au website also provides useful information in the following areas:

• Recruitment, covering general recruitment categories, hiring apprentices and trainees, overseas workers, equal opportunity and anti-discrimination
• Your employer obligations such as legalities, paperwork, taxation, superannuation, insurance, and staff health and safety
• Employee issues including wages, awards, and leave entitlements, training and incentives, complaints, conflict resolution and ending employment.

Getting the right staff for your business may be a process that evolves over time rather than unrelated hiring events. Individual staff can add value to your business team, or divide and destroy what you are building.

Therefore it is wise to consider all your employment options before rushing into staff expansion, and take advantage of the counsel of your business advisors and professional experts in the employment field.

For more information see the Staffing Your Business guide.