Month: March 2021

Sexual Harassment and The Workplace

Posted on by Adam_Admin

In 2021, businesses have seen greater visibility surrounding the issue of sexual harassment within the workplace, particularly within the media and the public sphere. The impact of sexual harassment within the workplace is one that can have long-lasting ramifications on employees and employers alike. Sexual harassment is prohibited in any employment situation and relationship, with both men and women often experiencing acts of it in the workplace.

The health and safety of employees (mental, physical, and emotional) is the responsibility of the employer and must be protected accordingly. New Zealand currently has the Employment Relations Act 2000 and the Human Rights Act 1993 in place to protect people from sexual harassment. 

As an employer, you may be held responsible for acts of sexual harassment committed by your employees, known as “vicarious liability”. The Employment Relations Act specifically makes the act unlawful within the workplace, but can also make you, the employer, liable in any instance involving employees. The Human Rights Act makes employers liable if one of their employees subjects anyone to sexual harassment in the workplace. 

Businesses should have in place a sexual harassment policy to ensure that employees are aware of their position, and what is and is not acceptable behaviour, and how to report it if it is not. When writing a sexual harassment policy, it is important that you make it clear that sexual harassment will not be tolerated under any circumstances, and what your organisation’s commitment is in dealing with sexual harassment. 

Employers can also take the following steps to prevent sexual harassment:

  • Get high-level management support to implement a strategy to address sexual assault in the workplace. 
  • Write and implement a sexual harassment policy.
  • Provide information and training about sexual assault and awareness of it.
  • Ensure that employees are aware that complaints will be taken seriously and employees will face disciplinary action if they engage in inappropriate behaviour.

If sexual harassment does occur, the employer must take appropriate remedial action, with appropriate procedures on dealing with grievances and complaints once they are made. 

To respond to employees who report sexual harassment, employers should: 

  • Take all reports of sexual harassment seriously.
  • Act promptly, with set timelines, and deal with reports as soon as they come in.
  • Protected all of the people involved in the report from victimisation
  • Support the people involved, and make them aware of what support and representation are available to them. 
  • Maintain confidentiality, and ensure that all details of the matter are only known to those directly concerned and those involved in investigating. 
  • Ensure all actions and decisions are documented. 
  • Treat everyone involved fairly, with unbiased investigators and decisions made based on facts and evidence. 

Employees may also decide to seek help outside of the organisation and are legally entitled to do so. These organisations could include

  • The Human Rights Commission
  • MBIE’s Employment Mediation Services
  • Employment Relations Authority

Managing Money With a Budget

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Every little bit of money counts in today’s economic climate, and for many, it’s about making what they have, work for what it is that they need.

Money management is an important skill to learn as it helps boost finances with very simple steps. Money management can ease the stress and financial worries of people as it allows for more transparency and control over where funds may be going and can erase unnecessary spending.

An easy way to self-manage money is by implementing a budget to use available funds on. There is no right or wrong way to budget, as it is up to personal preference and responsibility on how and where money needs to be spent. A budget should account for unexpected expenses, expected expenses, and saving money.

A budget might include or cover: 

  • Rent or mortgage payments
  • Food
  • Savings (a recommended amount that should be put aside is 15% of gross income)
  • Insurances (car, health, pet, etc.)
  • Unexpected expenses / an emergency fund]
  • Gifts (ie. birthdays, holidays, etc.)
  • Holidays

There should always be a reason to create a budget. This reason may be a goal, an approach, or to be able to pay off a debt – by knowing the why behind it, it can be easier to stick to a budget. It is also important to actually put the budget into action and implement it. 

An effective budgeting strategy is to set aside savings as soon as possible, which reduces the risk of spending that money. This strategy can also be used to help pay off debts or loans.

Splitting large expenses that arrive at certain times of the year over the course of several months can help minimise the amount required as a lump sum at the time that payment is due.

What Voluntary Administration Can Do For Your Business

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Events of the past year may have hit some businesses harder than others.

With Jobkeeper payments finishing up this month, some companies may have to reconsider their businesses, particularly if they are in distress or having financial difficulties.

 If a company is in financial difficulty or expects to be in it in the near future, it must act immediately to put insolvency procedures into place. Serious penalties can be incurred by businesses that fail to take into account their insolvency and continue to trade – directors of businesses that are insolvent can incur personal liability regarding trading while money is owed.

Insolvency procedures that can be adapted by businesses in Australia include voluntary administration, where an insolvent company is placed into the hands of an independent person known as a Voluntary Administrator. 

The role of the Voluntary Administrator is to be an independent individual who will investigate the company’s affairs, report to creditors, and recommend to creditors whether the company should enter into a Deed of Company Arrangement (‘DOCA’), Liquidation or be returned to the company’s directors. 

The primary benefits of voluntary administration for businesses include: 

  • Company creditor claims are frozen, allowing the company the ability to assess its future and financial position
  • Enables the company to continue to trade while it is being assessed as to its viability in the future
  • Is inexpensive to initiate
  • Provides creditors with an independent review of the company and its business viability
  • Provides a mechanism to compromise debts with creditors of the company

The voluntary administration process in Australia typically takes one month to complete and is designed to be a quick process.

A successful VA should result in the proposed DOCA being approved, jobs from the company that is saved as a result, and the debts of the company are compromised. 

Checking your Pay As You Go Instalments

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Checking that your pay as you go instalments (PAYG) still reflect your expected end of year tax liability is a good idea. 

PAYG instalments can be varied multiple times throughout the year, with the varied amount or rate applying to the remaining instalments for the income year, or until another variation is made.

PAYG instalments can also be varied if COVID-19 continues to affect you or your business. 

By making these regular payments throughout the year, you’ll avoid having to pay a large tax bill when you lodge the tax return and allow you to plan ahead for your income tax to maintain a healthy cash flow.

These voluntary PAYG payments are made based on your business and/or investment income, which is also known as instalment income. When the tax return is lodged, all the amounts that have been paid throughout the year will be offset against any tax owed from the year.

These payments are different from PAYG withholding, where tax is collected by employers from the payments that they make to employees and contractors, and sent to the ATO. 

Jobkeeper Repayments – Tax Deductible?

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The end of the month will see the end of the Jobkeeper payment scheme from the government. 

Eligible businesses who choose to voluntarily repay an amount from the Jobkeeper pay that they were given may be able to claim a tax deduction if they treated the payment correctly as assessable income.

A voluntary repayment of Jobkeeper may be deductible only in limited circumstances, and only if the voluntary payment is clearly appropriate to achieve or directed towards achieving the business objectives of the business. The circumstances for deduction are if the payment is made to: 

  • prevent reduction in business, or
  • publicise and promote your business in the short term.

Businesses must claim the voluntary repayment deduction in accordance with ATO guidelines and must contact the ATO prior to making a voluntary payment. 

Voluntary repayments:

  • are treated differently to other payment types made to the ATO
  • cannot be made through usual ATO payment channels
  • require a special Payment Reference Number (PRN).

SEO Strategy and YOUR business

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A tool that many businesses, organisations and individuals use when setting up their website is search engine optimisation (or SEO). This tool ensures that the website’s visibility on initial searches for something that their product or service matches is much higher than others. To do this, SEO’s often use keywords that allow search engines to rank the page according to how relevant they are.

What many businesses would benefit from, is an SEO strategy. This is a process of organising a website’s content by topic to improve its chances of appearing in search results, which results in an opportunity to increase traffic flow onto the website organically.

There are three types of SEO that can be focused on to improve the effectiveness of a website.

  • On-page SEO – content that is actually on site pages, and optimising it to boost the website’s ranking for certain keywords.
  • Off-page SEO – focuses on links directed to the website from a different site on the web. This helps to build trust with search engine algorithms.
  • Technical SEO – the website’s code, the technical set up of the website.

Here are a few easy ways to strategise the content of a website for SEO:

  • Make a list of topics that the content should address
    • research 10 words and terms associated with the product or service of the website, and come up with variations that make sense for the business
  • Make a list of long-tail keywords (search phrases with longer word counts) that apply to the content of your website.
  • Build pages for each topic, ie. business products, offerings. This makes it easier for customers to find the site in search engines, no matter what key words they use.
  • Set up a blog, and write blog posts. Linking back to the website with each post will tell Google that there’s a relationship between the content of both and specific keywords.
  • Create a consistent blogging schedule (at least once a week).
  • Create a link-building plan – link-building is the primary objective of off-page SEO, which is the process of attracting inbound links to your website from other sources on the internet.
  • Compress media files before uploading them to your site – page speed is a crucial ranking factor for SEO, and media files can slow down pages extremely quickly.
  • Stay up to date on SEO news and best practices
  • Measure and track your content’s success with analytics tools, to make sure your strategy is working.

Always remember when developing an SEO strategy that the business’ needs should be the primary focus – whether it’s for increasing customers or better marketing for instance, the need should always drive the strategy.

 

Underperforming employees in your workplace

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Employees are the key ingredient to the success of any business or organisation – but what should employers do if they aren’t performing as well as they should?

Underperformance can occur when an employee is failing to do their job properly, or is being disruptive within the workplace and impacting those around them. It may be a result of:

  • Goals and standards are unclear to the employee, so they are unaware of what’s expected of them
  • Lack of knowledge or skills for the job
  • The employee is unsure if they are meeting the requirements
  • Personal motivation or confidence are low
  • Personal issues (family stress, physical and/or mental health problems or drug/alcohol issues)
  • Low workplace morale/a poor work environment
  • Interpersonal differences or cultural misunderstandings
  • Workplace bullying

Underperforming by employees or poor performance at work can include:

  • Not performing duties, or not performing duties to the required standard
  • Displaying negative or disruptive behaviour in the workplace
  • Failing to comply with workplace policies, rules or procedures

The best way to address an issue like this and to ensure that all are performing to their best is to have regular meetings and discussions about performance and goals. Providing feedback and support can also assist people in meeting their responsibilities and performance expectations while working.

Benefits of addressing performance issues by taking a best practice approach to your business or organisation can include:

  • More harmonious and higher performing workplace
  • Maximising an employee’s individual performance
  • Building a culture in the workplace of continuous improvement of skills and further developing them
  • Higher levels of employee engagement and
  • Avoidance of legal disputes, such as unfair dismissal or bullying claims

Here’s a simple 5 step approach to handling underperformance:

  1. Identify the problem – note down behaviors, issues and occurrences in the workplace by the employee and why it is an issue that needs to be addressed.
  2. Assess and analyse – consider how serious the issue is, how long the problem has been in the workplace, and what the gap is between what’s expected and what’s being delivered.
  3. Meet with the employee – Inform the employee of what the meeting will be about beforehand so that they can prepare for it. Make sure that the meeting is held confidentially and in private.
  4. Agree on a solution – Work together with the employee to come up with solutions; employees and employers should also agree to a performance plan that records these solutions for employees to work towards.
  5. Monitor and Review – Once a plan is in place, make sure that the employee follows through. Ensure any training or support is provided that was promised, continue giving feedback and encouragement and plan a follow up meeting to see how they are travelling.

Easy ways to start your investing journey

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There are a lot of options when it comes to investing, but often people are daunted by the prospect. A lack of accessible information, misconceptions about investment opportunities and fear of losing money are often reasons people opt out of investing.

Investing can be as easy as a savings account separate from the account that is used for spending, in which a percentage of monthly income can go into. If there are adequate funds, consider investing in real estate for passive income. With real estate values growing over time, on top of earning rental income during ownership, there will be an opportunity to sell later on at a higher price.

Diversifying investment portfolios can seem overwhelming, but all that it takes is putting money into multiple investment avenues. This can be in shares or managed funds with a financial advisor, investments with different rates of return, or in startups or cryptocurrency.

These avenues of investment can still be a lot to take in for individuals, so financial advisors are always a good option for those looking for a little more of an expert opinion on the issue.

Your Business and Ethics

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Business ethics are the system of moral and ethical beliefs that guides the values, behaviours and decisions of a business organisation and the individuals involved within that business. These ethics are important to business as many of them are tied directly into the law, and breaches of these can be punishable as an offence

Though this varies by industry, a business’ ethics can have a significant impact on how a business may operate on a day to day business.

Business ethics can often be seen in the code of conduct that businesses and their employees follow.

Here are some of the benefits of a business taking ethics into consideration

  • Consistent ethical behaviour leads to a positive public image
  • Building a business’ foundation of ethical behavior helps create long-lasting effects for the business
  • Employee ethics are influenced by business ethics, leading to better perceived employees.
  • Ethical practice leads to profitability

In essence, profitability and business ethics are linked. Companies that are perceived to have better ethical responsibility and operate in such a way may have a better reputation overall. With investors leaning more towards socially responsible and ethically responsible companies to invest, companies need to align themselves with appropriate ethics moving forward.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/040815/why-are-business-ethics-important.asp

Why you should consolidate your “lost super”

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After COVID 19’s impact on the world, an influx of employees who had lost their jobs fell into the job market. Many of these came from companies that couldn’t afford to continue their employment. As a result, many individuals had to seek alternative employment, or draw from their super. Some individuals took on multiple jobs to pay bills, and others drew from the super that they had accumulated in the government’s early release scheme specifically for coronavirus related income loss.

Super is held by superannuation funds, and accumulates as a result of how much super an employer pays to the employees’ funds. Many Australians may find that they actually possess multiple super accounts as a result of having “lost” their super accounts during changeovers. It can also happen as a result of changing names, moving addresses, living overseas or changing jobs.

Australians can use the ATO’s online tools to:

  • View details of all of their super accounts, including lost or unclaimed amounts
  • Consolidate eligible multiple accounts (including any super held by the ATO)
  • Withdraw your super held by the ATO when certain conditions are met.

As superannuation funds often have fees associated with their upkeep, as well as insurances that may be tied into it (such as life, total and permanent disability and income protection), it’s important to consult with providers before accounts are consolidated.

https://www.ato.gov.au/Individuals/Super/Growing-your-super/Keeping-track-of-your-super/#Lostsuper