Two decades ago as an employment lawyer, I witnessed first-hand the challenges SMEs face in staying compliant with Australian employment laws.
Challenges cause an unavoidable flow-on effect to the employment experience, as employees need a business environment that is stable and legally compliant to feel safe.
As the struggle to stay compliant presents a lose-lose situation for all concerned, for years I helped SMEs with their questions and uncertainties, and helped them get to a position where they could offer more quality employment opportunities to their staff. Quality employment is one of the most important things any business can do. It provides employees with purpose, opportunity and financial freedom.
These many years as an employment lawyer served as the catalyst for the creation of my company – a tech platform that automates HR and payroll compliance for SMEs – and more recently to WorkLife, a suite of services designed to enhance the financial wellness, mental wellness and physical wellness of all Australian employees.
Because up until now, while large employers have the buying power and resources to offer employee benefits, discounts and support, individual SMEs could not muster these sorts of resources and expenses, meaning their employees went without. Or otherwise put, Australian employment was not easy and rewarding for everyone – only a select few.
As part of our WorkLife suite, InstaPay, a tool that allows employees to access a portion of their earned wages before their official payday, provides employees with an advantageous option that addresses yet another issue that has negatively affected Australians since employment began. As most employees are paid up in arrears, between the time an employee starts work to when they get paid, they need to fund their lifestyle. To make ends meet, this often forces many workers to obtain credit or loans, and along the way, to incur financial stress.
One of the best indicators of a person’s financial stress is how frequently they are paid – employees paid weekly are much more capable of meeting unexpected financial obligations than employees paid monthly. InstaPay was not designed so that employees could put financial difficulties off to another day. In fact, that is essentially the antithesis of what we created InstaPay – within the holistic WorkLife suite – to do, and to date, we have saved employees hundreds of thousands of dollars in payday loan fees.
Ultimately, Australian SMEs today are being called to put wealth creation, wealth management and wealth building on the top of their priority lists for employees – because as an employer, they have a stake in making sure their employees are well looked after both at work, and in life.
Here are six ways SMEs can create quality employment for employees today:
- Benefits and perks: Added benefits and perks are becoming an increasingly important part of recruitment and retention. These need to make employees’ salaries go further, create strong workplace cultures and demonstrate a commitment to staff.
- Workplace culture: No matter how great a role or a business’ image of perks, a toxic work environment will drive employees away by the hundreds. Healthy workplace cultures are front of mind for employees, and a loyal team is cultivated through a top-down approach.
- Purpose: Does your business have a solid mission? Do your employees have meaningful work?
- Recognition: As children in primary school, teachers come up with elaborate and creative ways to reward and recognise their students. This keeps them engaged in learning and encourages them to continue to strive for more. It’s the same in the workplace. Employees’ needs for recognition do not disappear into adulthood.
- Challenge: Humans need to feel challenged. It keeps us engaged and progressing forward. Human nature does not allow us to be satisfied with stagnant for too long.
- Autonomy: Employees need to be trusted and put in charge of themselves. With autonomy and trust stems productivity.
Ben Thompson, Co-Founder and CEO, Employment Hero
