HR Issues and Working at Level 3 live on Facebook

Our Senior HR Advisor, Lisa Sintmaartensdyk, will be live on Facebook on Thursday 2 September at 2:00pm to discuss HR Issues and working at Level 3. If you have a question or topic you would like Lisa to cover please email her at hr@ph.co.nz.

HR and Your Team at Level 3

As a business owner your key responsibility is to ensure that you are providing a safe environment for your employees to work in and interact with your customers. For most businesses that means providing hand sanitizer, social distancing, mask wearing, contactless business.

This may mean, in practical terms, that you have to change how you operate. For example, you could have to change someone’s rostered break time (so there is less staff in the tearoom) or the shifts that they work.

This all becomes more difficult when those changes result in what are effectively changes to the employment agreement. Covid does not provide a blanket excuse to change employee agreements. Before you can make any changes that would affect the terms of the employment agreement, you will need to undertake a consultation process with your employee:

1. Discuss it with your employee and get their agreement
2. The length of time of the change must be stated in writing and keep a record of this
3. The employee must have a fair opportunity to consider and respond to the changes

The key is to be open and honest about why you are making those changes. Most employees, especially in the current environment will understand and accept a pragmatic response to working at Level 3.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact our HR team.

Back to Work?

The most noticeable change at Level 3 is the ability to purchase takeaways or as argued by the writer’s teenage son – it is an “act of economic patriotism” to get fish n chips for tea.

The key points are:

• Work from home if you can
• Businesses that require close physical contact cannot open. Your customers need to be 2 metres apart and staff 1 metre apart.
• All other businesses can operate, but with restrictions. This includes physical distancing, having extra hygiene measures and contactless options for ordering, pick-up, delivery, and payment.
• Customers cannot eat or drink on your premises.
• Display your NZ COVID Tracer QR code poster
• If your business does not have measures in place to operate safely, then you should stay closed.

Still Safe in Our Bubbles

Under Level 3 you should work from home if you can. The Team at Polson Higgs are now old hands at working from home, so we will not be returning to the office until Level 2. Rest assured we are keeping track of any “missed” morning tea shouts from the Partners. During last Lockdown the Partners produced a video about working at Level 3 which is still relevant

Second round of the Wage Subsidy

The Wage Subsidy will be available until we are at Level 2. It is available for all employers, including self-employed.

Applications for the August 2021 COVID-19 Wage Subsidy close at 11.59pm on Thursday 2 September. Another round of Wage Subsidy will be available for a further two-week period opening on Friday 3 September.

If you have any questions around your eligibility for the subsidy or haven’t applied for the wage subsidy as of yet, you should contact your Partner or Manager urgently.

IRD – not so bad after all

Any news from the IRD is always received with some trepidation, but their recent announcement that “Inland Revenue is reassuring customers they won’t be penalised if they can’t pay their tax on time during the current high Covid alert levels.” Is good news for business owners in the current environment. However, it is important that the correct planning is put in place around any decision to defer payments to the IRD. This ensures that when the IRD returns to “business as normal” you are in a position to respond. If you are considering deferring any payments to the IRD you should contact your Manager or Partner before doing so.

Bit of a Laugh

As it is the first day of Spring, we have Stephan Fry talking about Spring on QI.

Stay safe and keep in touch.

Kind regards

Polson Higgs Team

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