Benefits of Australian Apprenticeships

Business owners can transform their business by employing an apprentice or trainee – as skilled staff are key to performance and success. It is also an investment in your business, your community and your industry to ensure you are ready to take advantage of whatever the future marketplace has to offer.

It is important for businesses to learn from the past and ensure they don’t suffer future skills shortages.

The Australian Government encourages employers by helping make it an affordable option to invest in training and development of skills for the future of your industry and business through employment of Australian Apprentices and for up skilling existing staff.

The Australian Government offers a variety of financial incentives for business owners wishing to employee Apprentices and Trainees. With the support of a good Australian Apprenticeship Centre (AAC) national employers can stay abreast of differing education requirements in each state.

The AAC National Business Development team will help you (at no cost) to navigate the complexities of the different state jurisdictions. Paperwork and processes for national clients is streamlined and user friendly to make it easy for businesses with offices in different parts of Australia to manage their employment of Australian Apprentices.

The online web portals service most provide allows employers to keep track of the status of each Apprentice, provides incentive claim forms for downloading and information on when incentives are due to be paid.

Financial incentives for training staff and for employing apprentices or trainees

The Australian Government provides a variety of financial incentives for eligible employers and Australian Apprentices. These incentives can change from time to time and eligibility criteria applies in order to receive them. AAC’s are able to advise which incentives are relevant to your industry and business and for which you may be eligible.

State and Federal governments also provide other financial incentives as an encouragement to employ Australian Apprentices. This funding varies depending on market needs to stimulate the economy.

Incentives for training new staff (employed less than 3 months on a full time or 12 months on a part time basis): if you directly employ an Australian Apprentice, your business may be eligible for government financial incentives of up to $4,000 and a range of additional incentives for eligible employers.

Incentives for training existing staff (outside the above criteria): employees can access training and financial incentives in certain circumstances only.

Additional incentives included:

• payroll tax rebates in selected states/territories
• workers compensation insurance premium exemptions
• support for Adult Apprentices up to $7800 payable for 1st year fulltime apprentices and up to $5200 payable for 2nd year full rime apprentices (payable as a wage subsidy where the apprentice is over 25 years old at the commencement of their apprenticeship)
• up to $5500 Tools for Trade payments to the apprentice (at 3, 12, 24 & 36 month milestones and on completion)

There are many other State Government financial incentives that may be payable to your business. AAC’s assists you with all the processes required in employing an apprentice or trainee, providing advice on training options and assisting with Training Contract sign up and incentive lodgements.

Recruitment Process and Roster Management

Creating the weekly or fortnightly roster is a challenging responsibility. Roster management involves communication between the employer, manager and employees on a regular basis. Rostering in the retail industry is particularly complicated as shifts are generally short and staff turnover is high. 

The retail industry is comprised of employees who are considered casual, part-time or full-time. Each employment condition is paid either a yearly salary or on an hourly basis. Usually, casual staff get paid more in comparison to regular part-time or full-time staff and a required to be flexible. This is a result of the irregular nature of their employment. They are not always guaranteed a particular shift so the hours they work in one week will vary on a regular basis. According the Fair Work Ombudsman, casual and part-time worker are required to be paid a minimum of 3 hours work per week and this goes down to 1.5 hours per week for casual high school workers. This makes earnings relatively unpredictable for these workers and therefore they are compensated with a higher hourly wage to make up for this irregularity. 

These different employee payment methods contribute to the difficult nature of roster management. For example, hiring casual staff is also more expensive on Sundays and public holidays so this is generally avoided by employers. In the retail industry there are legal implications when it comes to employees taking lunch breaks, depending on the number of hours they are working in one shift breaks are compulsory. “No employee can work more than 5 hours without a meal break” (Fair Work Ombudsman 2012). This means that all breaks need to be organised and rostered into the daily timetable in order to avoid clashing break times which potentially reduce the number of staff on the ground at any one time and could impact profits. 

Additionally, “employers must give their retail employees a 12-hour rest period between finishing work on one day and starting work on the next day. The break between shifts can be reduced to no less than 10 hours by agreement between the employer and the employee or a group of employees” (Fair Work Ombudsman 2012). These agreements must be made in writing and all parties must obtain a copy for their records.

As you can see there are many small rules and regulations behind the roster management and recruitment process procedures throughout the retail industry, not only the ones mentioned above but many more. In order to successfully create your rosters often a great HR manager with great organisational and time management skills is required as well as a live web based rostering program such as RosterLive.  

Web based rostering solutions allow you to build rosters which can be changed at any time and can instantly notify employees of these changes. It determines your labour costs in order to help you keep within your budget. It will allow you to create rosters for many sites and stores useful for franchisors and can be accessible at any time and place. 

Make sure you find your roster management solution before your next rostering period arrives. There are many options and alternatives and ensure you are organised, plan ahead and practice your managerial skills well.

Human Resources Services and the Recruitment Process

A growing number of companies turn to human resources services firms to manage a number of, if not all, human resources tasks, not a few of which can be time consuming, complicated and in need of expertise in a number of applicable laws.

Not surprisingly, not a few companies want a human resources services provider that can expertly handle talent acquisition. In this tougher business environment, companies are looking for the best people to be able to consistently deliver the best products and services.

Here are some key areas to think about when looking for a service provider:

                                              

1. The service provider should be able to give you a comprehensive recruitment plan. 

2. Keep innovation in mind. Maintaining a culture of innovation in the company should be one of the guides in almost every HR process or task.   

3. Make sure the service provider finds employees that are not only talented but are also emotionally engaged. Engagement is both the intellectual and the emotional commitment of an employee to his or her job.

4. Look for an HR service provider that can give you a plan for retention and for reducing employee turnover.

5. The service provider should be able to present specific actions to take in order to attract, develop and retain employees.

6. The plan should be sensible. And it should have a sensible and realistic budget. If possible, the service provider should come up with ways to reduce or control expenditure.

7. Think also in terms of leadership development, which would measured based on the candidates that are ready to assume executive or leadership positions.

8. The HR service provider should have a plan to make sure that the workforce is diverse, with a number of ethnic minorities and women becoming part of the company, so HR Consulting is the best thing to do for this process to be effective.

9. There should be a real effort to attract quality candidates. The HR team should not just offer solutions to make sure this task is accomplished but also provide long term solutions like recommendations on company policies and procedures to make sure that the company finds and attracts top talents.  

10. Ask the HR service provider to present a long term plan that focuses on the needs of the organization and its workforce as well a way to continuously monitor if the plan is effective.

General Tips

Aside from taking care of your organization’s recruitment concerns, an HR service provider should be able to offer your company utmost flexibility. This means that you can get services that best suit the needs and requirements of your business. You don’t adjust to what the service provider has to offer; the service provider should also be able to find a way to work with the existing structure in your company.    

Make sure you are getting a good human resources services team. Check the credentials, certifications, qualifications, training and experience of the team that will be handling your HR tasks. Keep in mind that you need to have experts in the core HR fields so that you have a good number of critical human resources tasks covered.