People Dynamics Newsletter - People Matters
Issue 56, October 2009 | Back to Newsletters Index
PD News
As mentioned in our previous newsletter, People Dynamics has recently moved offices. We are now located at Suite 5,08, 434 St. Kilda Road Melbourne 3004.
Our new phone number is (03) 9077 4870, and fax (03) 9078 7926. Please
update your records accordingly.
“But they’re good with customers!”
Do you have staff who are great with your clients but are negatively impacting your culture internally? We hear the cry “but they are good with customers!” a lot. What is missing from this sentence is that these guys are also the cultural ‘saboteurs’ of your business. The people others feel they need to tip toe around and be cautious of what they say and how they say it or try and avoid them all together. Highly prevalent in the health and education sectors, these people are often highly skilled and can be very ‘political’ in their approach.
A lot of our work is in this area. In some cases, performance management can alleviate some of the issues. Coaching for example can be beneficial if the employee is open to receiving feedback. Performance tends to lift for a short while, but for many, the behaviours are innate. It is almost impossible to coach or train any individual (regardless of the feedback or the way you give it to them) if they are not coachable themselves.
What to do? Firstly it is important to address (and document) the issues as soon as possible. Leaving them to fester or pretending they don’t exist can make the situation much worse. This is also important to protect your other employees from any bullying behaviour that may be appearing.
Unfortunately, most of the time it results in needing to let that person
go and reviewing your recruitment procedures so it doesn’t happen again.
If you are a small business with less than 15 full time equivalent people
(this will be changing on 1st Jan 2011 to 15 by headcount) then make sure
you are following the Fair Dismissal Code for Small Business. For larger
businesses, be aware unfair dismissal laws have come back into effect
for business with fewer than 100 employees as well.
Legal Update
A new system of modern awards will be introduced in January 2010. These new awards will replace any and all existing awards, except for those that apply to a single enterprise. The idea is to simplify the current award system which is overly complex and confusing. Current awards will be streamlined down into a smaller number of awards, and it will be more obvious which awards different employees sit under.
Employers should check whether any terms and conditions of employment will change, and if there are any transitional arrangements which may affect these changes.
Some of the new award wages will start on 1 January 2010 (in other awards,
these will start on 1 July 2010 and may be phased in over five years to
help businesses with the transition). If you have staff on an award, you
will need to make yourself aware of any changes before the new 2010 awards
come into effect. If you would like assistance in this, please give People
Dynamics a call and we would be happy to help.