In short, yes!

An employment agreement gives you certainty, and lets you tell your employees what you expect of them in the workplace, and what their responsibilities to you are.

It depends. A couple of considerations are the type of role you are filling, how senior the employee is, and whether the employment agreement will be for an individual or a group of people.

The old rule of thumb was ‘three strikes and you are out’. Now an Employer can sack someone if they have been given a fair go all round.

If you are an employer of less than 15 employees (by head count) then probation can be up to 6 months. This can be a double edged sword, because it will be hard for you to grow employee loyalty if they have uncertainty about their employment future.

An unfair dismissal claim is claim brought by an employee against employer in the Fair Work Commission because the employee believes that the termination of their employment was harsh, unjust or unreasonable.

An employee is prevented from pursuing an unfair dismissal claim where they are earning more then the statutory cap, or they have not been employed for more than 12 months in a small business (an employer of less than 15 employees) or no more than 6 months for an employer with more than 15 employees.

If you receive an unfair dismissal claim, you should ensure that you complete the Form 3 and send it back to the Fair Work Commission.

If you need assistance with completing the Form, please contact us.

An adverse action claim is a claim brought by an employee against an employer in the Fair Work Commission because the employee believes that the employer has taken action against him or her that has adversely affected their position. This ordinarily takes the form of termination or workplace discrimination. It can extend to an employee being penalised for taking sick leave or participating in union activity.

If you receive an adverse action claim, you should ensure that you complete the Form 8 and send it back to the Fair Work Commission.

If you need assistance with completing the Form, please contact us.

The best way to stop an employee from stealing company information is to have a clause in your contract that protects the employers intellectual property, and prevents an employee from soliciting current or former clients or fellow employees.

The best way to try and prevent an employee from leaving your employment and working for a competitor is to ensure that your employment contract with the employee has a restraint of trade provision. It needs to be drafted in such a way, that if the Court deems part of the restraint provision too onerous to “protect the legitimate interests of the employer”, you will still have some protection.

The critical thing to consider is that in Victoria an employer must demonstrate that the restraint is necessary to protect its business, and this is easier to demonstrate the more senior a member of staff is in your organisation.

You should take the complaint seriously and investigate it.

If you need assistance investigating a complaint in your workplace, contact us, and we can provide you with assistance.

Often employers are confronted with a serious dilemma with people who take maternity leave. At the time that they take maternity leave, there is often an expectation from both the employer and employee that the employee will come back part time, or possibly even full time.

But what do you do as an employer, when the employee’s role is broken up while they are on leave and you find that the returning employee’s role, ostensibly, no longer exists.

Under the Fair Work Act, you are required to keep open for the employee the same position as the one they left. But if the role no longer exists, then employee must ensure that a role is available that similar in status and pay as the prior role.

In this case, where you are making a significant change to the status of the role, you are required to consult with the employee so that they are aware of the potential changes.

If you fail to do this, then the employee may have an adverse action claim for breach of the general protections provisions of the Fair Work Act, and they may seek penalties against both the employer and the ultimate decision make.

The Fair Work Commission and Fair Work Ombudsman has a lot of useful resources to assist you with unfair dismissal or adverse action claims

Unfair Dismissal

https://www.fwc.gov.au/termination-of-employment/unfair-dismissal

Adverse Action

https://www.fwc.gov.au/termination-of-employment/general-protections/am-i-eligible

Award finder

http://awardfinder.fwo.gov.au/