Ask AHRI:ASSIST
AHRI members can post their COVID-19 related questions on Ask AHRI:ASSIST to get advice and support from an experienced HR professional.
Information to help you plan and support your organisation through a global health emergency.
Quick links
Last reviewed: 14 May 2020
2. Working through COVID-19: AHRI Webinar Toolkit
3. Special COVID-19 Q&A recording plus Infosheet
4. Working from home with children: tips and tricks infosheet
5. Employee wellbeing during COVID-19: A survey template
6. HR Employment Law - key instruments governing employment arrangements
7. Connectedness and Survivor Syndrome Infosheet
8. Return-to-Work Series - Guide #1: Returning to a physical workplace Infosheet
9. Recommendations for Australian employers and HR professionals
10. Information on COVID-19 checklist and key websites guide
11. AHRI update on events and training
12. 3 tips for HR practitioners to help them respond to a global health emergency
13. Resources
Working through COVID-19: AHRI Webinar Series
A series of webinars to inform you on how to respond to COVID-19.
Complimentary for AHRI members, $50 for non-members. All times AEST.
Tuesday 9 June - 12:30pm Better meetings? It's not that hard
Tuesday 23 June - 12:30pm Leading change in a crisis
Tuesday 30 June - 12:30pm Reimagining the workplace
View past webinars below
Available only to AHRI members.
Special COVID-19 Q&A with the HR community
We had a huge response to our Live Facebook Q&A about successfully working through COVID-19. Watch the video as we take questions from our community around working from home legal requirements, leave provisions, how to manage anxiety and more related topics.
Below is a handy Infosheet with the questions and answers provided.
Employee wellbeing during COVID-19: A survey template
The wellbeing of your employees is critical during these times. Short pulse surveys like the template below can help you to gather feedback on their current state of wellbeing and data for you to action. Run these surveys on a regular basis to keep track of how your organisation is doing, and capture any drastic changes early.
The survey questions on employee motivation, ability and psychological safety are informed by our recent research with the Wellbeing Lab.
HR laws – key instruments governing employment arrangements infographic
This infographic can help you figure out the different 'tiers' relating to the Fair Work Act 2009 and amendments, and the way they relate to each other.
This was originally a request made on the AHRI Members Lounge - join today to access more information like this, and ask your own questions to the group.
Connectedness and Survivor Syndrome
With many organisations having to make difficult staffing decisions in recent months, the issues of maintaining employee connectedness to the business and avoiding survivor syndrome for 'those that remain' need to be acknowledged. This guide can help start the conversation.
Reinventing Work Playbook - Guide #1: Planning the return to a physical workplace infosheet
As the easing of restrictions is underway, creating and implementing a return to a physical workplace plan is an immediate priority for organisations. This checklist will help to define key steps supported by factsheets from Safe Work Australia.
Recommendations for Australian employers and HR professionals
Build a contingency team: Identify a person, or small group of people, to take responsibility for operating the contingency plan and allocate clear responsibilities for its implementation
Develop a contingency plan: Every organisation will need to assess its own level of exposure to business disruption caused by the virus. If it has a site, conducts business or has supply chains in an affected country or region, there will be a direct impact to the company’s day-to-day operations. The plan will need to take account of current and potential impacts and manage the specific business risks associated with the disruption, including service delivery and workforce issues. Communicate the plan to key teams and individuals across the business.
As the situation develops: Those responsible for the contingency plan should meet regularly to review the preparations and ensure they are still fit for purpose. It’s important to act early, even if planned contingencies are not then needed.
Test capacity to work remotely: Your IT team should be determining the organisation’s capacity to work remotely (and stress testing this), with staff being able to access all applications and systems required to operate the business.
International travel: If you have any staff who have been living or travelling abroad or who have had close contact with people returning from overseas - they should be implementing self-isolation for 14 days.
Leave provisions: There are currently no special leave provisions within the Fair Work Act - FWO’s website states that full-time and part-time permanent workers who can’t come to work because they are sick with COVID-19 can take paid sick leave, or if they need to look after a sick family member or housemate they can take paid carer’s leave. They can also take unpaid carer’s leave if they run out of paid sick or carer’s leave.
See the Fair Work Australia website for further information.
Annual leave and return to work process: Organisations should update their leave process to seek specific information from employees with authorised leave, or seeking leave, to include country destination(s) or any transit through a country. On return to work, employees who have actively, and intentionally, visited those areas identified by the AGDofHS as high risk should be required to self-isolate for 14 days. In addition, if they have been in contact with, or have symptoms of, COVID-19 they should not physically come to work but contact the workplace for an assessment of risk and identified strategies to manage an isolation period – i.e. work from home opportunities.
Staff intending to return to work following illness should have a medical certificate indicating they are fit for work. Make sure anybody's return to work process is a positive one – remembering they have been isolated from the workplace for some time and should be ‘welcomed’ back.
COVID-19 checklist and key references
While it is critical to understand the legal requirements in place when working with employees, it is also important to consider what you can do as an HR practitioner to have an impact on the broader issues facing staff. We have compiled a list of key issues to consider relating to your business continuity, ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of employees and their families.
- Information from the Dept of Health and Human Services
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- The situation is unprecedented and changing on an almost hourly basis. Ensure you are up to date with the most accurate information to make an informed decision for your workplace
- Review your Business Continuity Plan and internal policies to ensure they’re equipped and appropriate for the changing circumstances.
- Employee and workplace hygiene
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Are all staff aware of handwashing techniques, coughing etiquette and distancing from others, and is the workplace safe?
Consider:
- Putting notices up in your offices reminding employees of good workplace hygiene
- Providing regular updates about good hygiene
- Providing hand sanitiser at entry points and around the office
- Ensuring meeting rooms have tissues and rubbish bins
- Checking your building is being cleaned properly and frequently
- Providing employees with cleaning materials to clean their desks more frequently should they wish
- Having a deep cleaning plan in place should an employee or visitor later find that they are infected with COVID-19 and has been in the office
- Ensuring that contractors receive communications on workplace hygiene.
Websites:
- General leave provisions
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The legal leave requirements are outlined on the AHRI coronavirus webpage.
Consider:
- Hourly or casual employees
- Whether you want to change your working from home policy to include working when children are at home
- What, if any, provisions you want to put in place if employees run out of personal or sick leave
- Stress and anxiety during times of crisis can impact employees' mental health. Review whether your current policies and processes cater for this.
- Flexible work practices
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Review your flexible working arrangements policy.
Consider:
- Which roles / staff can work from home and which roles cannot?
- Whether your IT systems have the capacity for all staff to be working from home
- Whether staff have internet access or required equipment at home
- Whether you need to purchase additional IT equipment
- Stress testing the organisation’s capacity to work from home
- How you might communicate with all staff should there be a need to work from home at very short notice
- Whether or when you might wish to move to a partial or full working from home situation
- Splitting your organisation into two groups and staggering their working from home to avoid cross-infection
Updating your working from home policy or procedure to ensure that it meets your needs if employees are subject to quarantine.
- Workforce planning
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Plan for a range of scenarios.
Consider:
- Which roles are essential
- Which essential roles can only be done by one or two specialists
- What your back-up plans are if all the employees undertaking these roles fall ill
- If certain tasks cannot be done from home, whether staff can be redeployed into other necessary roles.
- Supporting staff during this period
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Ensure that you support your staff during this difficult period.
Consider:
- Having the CEO or another senior staff member provide regular updates to staff about the situation
- Discussing the situation with your Employee Assistance Program (EAP)
- Informing staff how they can access their EAP
- Providing staff with links to other support services
- Ensuring managers check in regularly with their staff to see how they are faring
- Recommending employees who have low immunity or underlying health conditions, or direct family members with the same, work from home
- Recommending employees who have high levels of anxiety work from home.
Websites:
Psychology.org - Travel policy
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Review the organisation’s travel policy to ensure it aligns with government requirements and recommendations:
Consider:
- Review the Smart Traveller website to check which countries have been deemed at risk
- Whether overseas travel for business should be cancelled
- Whether other travel for business should be cancelled or restricted to essential travel only
- If travel is continuing whether staff members can travel on the same aircraft
- What steps employees returning from overseas should take before returning to work
- What your duty of care to contractors is and whether you should align their travel to the organisation’s travel policy.
Smart Traveller website - news
- Meetings, events and conferences
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Develop a strategy for meetings and events, including ensuring that government policy is adhered to:
Consider:
- Options for using technology solutions to remove the need for a face to face or group meeting
- Whether employees are permitted to attend external events and meetings, and in what circumstances
- Which of these events or meetings can be held remotely
- Whether you are going to cancel or postpone some or all of the events or meetings that you are holding.
- Business
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The crisis will affect your business. You should work with the organisation to identify these effects.
Consider:
- Businesses have a reasonable expectation that work will be carried out to the required standards.
- Freezing new hires
- Halting non-essential expenditure
- Future workforce planning
- Privacy and Discrimination
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- Employees should be reminded about the organisation's anti-discrimination policy
- Remember to maintain employee’s privacy should there be any diagnosed incidences.
- Communication plan
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- Develop ways to keep all staff informed of organisational decisions impacting work and any other changes that have been decided.
- Communicate to stakeholders and customers regularly.
- Events update
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It’s with our deepest regret that we announce the cancellation of the following AHRI face-to-face events in 2020.
- AHRI National Convention & Exhibition, 14 – 17 September 2020
- Diversity & Inclusion Conference, 5 May 2020
- State Conferences in Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory,
scheduled for June and November 2020 - Awards program and dinner, applications were due to close 15 May 2020
- Face-to-face AHRI Network Forums has been cancelled, instead you can network virtually with your peers
- We will continue to monitor the changing situation and undertake a risk assessment for planned events before deciding to proceed with, modify, postpone or cancel an event.
- For future events we will take all necessary health and safety precautions as advised by the Australian Government and World Health Organisation (WHO) at that point in time.
- Our refunds policy still applies to all events, and is available here.
- Training update
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- We are assessing current face-to-face training planned and we will be contacting all currently-enrolled students in the coming days to confirm how they will be impacted. We do ask that you be patient with us as we work through what is a complex scenario. We are assessing a number of alternative options to deliver our programs virtually or study online. Where this is not ideal, we are also offering a referral to a later date or intake, or a refund if required.
- At this stage, we are assessing the impact to training up until the end of April. However, we will make rolling-forward assessments on a weekly basis, and will contact affected students as the situation changes.
- Students who may be having difficulty with completing assessments on time should contact their academic coordinator.
- Customised training, delivered by Ignition Training, will continue to be delivered, however we will take all precautionary steps as advised by the Australian Government to ensure the health and safety of participants is prioritised.
- Members concerned with their CPD points being affected during this time can still receive CPD points from several AHRI offerings including formal education (via distance delivery), webinars, reading publications, and participation in AHRI's LinkedIn groups. For more information on how to obtain CPD points, refer to the CPD Guide.
AHRI CEO Sarah McCann-Bartlett was joined by Head of People and Culture Rosemary Guyatt to share the top tips for HR practitioners to help them respond to a global health crisis.
AHRI will be holding a special Q&A session on Monday 23 March, 10:30-10:45AM AEDT to answer some HR community questions around COVID-19, on Facebook Live.