HR UPDATE | New Legislation – What impacts me?
You have probably heard that a range of new employment legislation has been passed in parliament, known as the ‘Closing the Loopholes Bill #2’.
Whilst there are over 20 key changes that come into effect at various times between now and 2025, we are here to help you sort through the weeds by identifying which of these changes affect your day-to-day operations and require you to take action – summarised for you below!
We recommend paying particular attention to the Right to Disconnect and Casual employment changes which are likely to affect most businesses.
Effective Date | What is the Change? | Who does this apply to? | Recommended Action |
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1 st July 2024 | Union right of entry without notice A union representative is able to apply to the Fair Work Commission to get an exemption certificate which waives the 24 hours’ notice requirement for entry to a business to investigate suspected underpayments. Previously Union representatives had to provide advance notice of entry. | Any workplace with Union representation. |
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26th August 2024 (non-small business) and 26th August 2025 (small business employers) | New Employee Right to Disconnect
Employees will have a new workplace right to protect themselves from being unreasonably contacted outside their ordinary working hours. The Reasonable test will apply when assessing out-ofhours contact. If an employee feels this right has been breached, they have access to lodge a General Protections claim. This right will apply to all employees, whether award-covered or not. |
All employers, with varying effective dates. |
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26th August 2024 | New Definition of Casual Employee
A revised definition of a Casual Employee will be added to the Fair Work Act, which influences the test that is applied in assessing whether a Casual employee is a ‘true casual’. The test will now look at the total nature of the relationship, whereas previously the test only looked at the terms of the written agreement when the engagement commenced. |
All employers who engage casual employees. |
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26th August 2024 | Changes to Casual Conversion Process The Employer will no longer be obligated to proactively offer casual conversion. The onus will be on the employee to request conversion to permanency, and if they don’t exercise that right, they will remain as casual employee. However, the employee is now able to request this after 6 months of working a regular pattern of hours, which was previously 12 months (for small business employers, the right for the employee to request conversion remains at 12 months). |
All employers who engage casual employees. |
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26th August 2024 | Frequency of Issuing Employees with the Casual Information Statement To help in communicating an employee’s entitlement to request conversion to permanency, Employers are now required to provide casual employees with the Fair Work Casual Employment Information Statement at the following milestones:
*Remember, this must be provided in addition to the standard Fair Work Information Statement. |
All employers who engage casual employees. |
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26th August 2024 (or earlier) | New Employee vs Contractor definitions & test New definitions of Employee and Employer will be added to the Fair Work Act, which influences the test that is applied in assessing whether an independent contractor may actually be an employee. The test will now look at the total nature of the relationship between the parties, whereas previously the test only looked at the terms of the written agreement when the engagement commenced. |
Any Employer who engages Independent Contractors |
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NEXT STEPS?
It’s never too early to start working through these changes. If you would like some guidance on where to start to ensure you are prepared to be compliant with these new laws, we encourage you to reach out to our experienced HR Team at Purple Playground HR & Recruitment