GETTING IT RIGHT
WITH YOUR EMPLOYEES (PART 1)
Your employees can make or break your business – so how can you
get the hiring process right?
WORDS: LEON PONTE
lthough many fitness business
owners have a ‘go hard’ approach
to training, they don’t always take
a similar approach to managing one of their
potentially greatest assets: their employees.
In his management training programs,
Justin Tamsett of Active Management says
‘Hire easy, manage hard. Hire hard, manage
easy’. Other management consultants have
similar mantras about getting the right
people for your business.
Sometimes, however, despite the use of
best practices (including for hiring, training and
performance managing employees), fitness
businesses do not get the hiring process right,
or an employee may simply not be the right fit.
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In such cases, a further mantra should
(unfortunately) be added: ‘Hire hard, fire
hard and fast’ (where there are appropriate
grounds to do so).
While this approach may not always be
the best way to manage your business and
employees, if a team member’s employment
is just not working out for the employer or
the employee, it generally does neither party
any favours to continue it.
In this instalment in the ‘Legally Fit’ series
of articles, we therefore look at some of
the legal issues that should be considered
when hiring an employee. To read previous
articles in this series search ‘Legally Fit’ at
fitnessnetwork.com.au/resource-library.
Rights of applicants
Job applicants have rights with fitness
businesses to which they have applied, even
if they are never offered employment by, or
accept employment with, that business.
State and Federal legislation prohibit
employers from discriminating against an
applicant (and employees) on the basis
of a range of attributes: race, colour, sex,
sexual preference, age, physical or mental
disability, marital status, family or carer’s
responsibilities, pregnancy, religion, political
opinion, national extraction or social origin.
Thus, evaluation of applicants and hiring
(and other employment) decisions should be
undertaken on (preferably consistent) nondiscriminatory selection criteria.
Employers must also not breach the
(other) ‘general protection’ provisions of the
Fair Work Act 2009 (FWA) or take (other)
‘adverse action’ against an employee or
prospective employee because a person
has or exercises a ‘workplace right’.
For instance, as discussed in the last
article in this series, offering employment
on an independent contractor basis, for
an arrangement which actually constitutes
an employee relationship, could be a
breach of the general protection provisions
(potentially resulting in significant penalties
being imposed on not only the employer, but
also others involved in the hiring process)
even though the offer occurred prior to the
employee actually being engaged.
Thus,
employers
(and
their
employees involved in the hiring
process and other human resource
functions)
should
familiarise
themselves with those requirements.
(Some of the ‘general protection’
and ‘adverse action’ provisions will
be further discussed in subsequent
‘Legally Fit’ articles.)