Blog

  Big milestone – you have your first few permanent or casual employees and work is starting to get done. You’re no longer doing BD, programming, marketing, secretarial work, accounts and being the ‘chief bottle washer’ – phew! But hey… that also means that you’re the boss and with this role comes legal obligations– some with significant ramifications […]

It’s Friday afternoon and Christine, who has a series of documented performance failures, is about to be dismissed by you. You are by no means looking forward to this awkward conversation, but can be comforted by the knowledge that you have complied with your obligations thus far — and that Christine has decided to accept […]

Natasha Hawker has a simple message to start-ups on hiring – get it right the first time to save yourself a bundle of money in the long run. With skill shortages now biting in a number of industries including tech and IT, Hawker, who helps small businesses manage their HR, says firms are having to […]

You are finally there – you think you are ready to hire your first employee – this is an exciting and scary time. Can you afford it? Do you have enough work for them? What if they can’t do the job? You might be frightened that you don’t know how to interview. You are starting […]

Recently, a client shared with me something that was happening with one of her valued team members that just seemed so unfair and my client was at a loss as to how she could help. Her employee had recently lost her mother to a heart attack, after three weeks on life-support and she was commuting […]

You may have recently heard about the 7-Eleven debacle where a store owner was fined more than $400k (the largest penalty to date) for systematically exploiting his workers. He paid his workers as little as only $13 per hour and then falsified records in his payroll system. After being caught, he started to back-pay his […]

We recently had a new client approach us after an employee had alleged that there had been a breach of a general work protection, involving unfair dismissal, under the Fair Work Act 2009. Background The client was issued with an F8A response form by the Fair Work Commission which he was required to complete and […]

In this HerBusiness podcast interview with the Australian Businesswomen’s Network, Natasha Hawker discusses how businesses that build high performing teams have increased profit, increased customer satisfaction, increased customer loyalty and an increased ability to attract employees. Natasha emphasises the importance of employees: they are a lever for your business, with the potential to make your […]

Why do some people want to desperately work for some businesses and avoid others like the plague? Mostly it can be put down to culture or the managers’ reputation. But how do you make or create a culture? Why would you bother? My thinking is that if more businesses focused on their cultural strategy, many […]

They say, and I believe, that “giving is better than receiving”. I made one of my team members cry today which made me very happy!Today, I was able to do this. I was lucky enough to win a competition for a prize of flowers, thanks to #RubyConnection – the reason I won was because I […]