Tony skinner
Hey, welcome to the podcast channel at podcast my business.com.au and today we’ve got Brad Adams from HRdept.com.au
Joining us in the office face to face environment which is in NSW what we’re able to do more of than in Victoria their not, so sorry about that, for everybody in Victoria.
But we are talking about the updates, job keeper in particular and the exposure for businesses on COVID-19. We’re doing this one as a special update.
Tony skinner
So its not a normal podcast that we put out. And you all know that I don’t like talking about the event, the COVID event because I like evergreen content. But hey, we’re gonna be talking about this for 20 years and something just fell down. And we’ll see where we end up with that. Hi, Brad. How you doing?
Brad
Very well. Thanks, Tony. Thanks for having me. In face to face love the face to face side. 
Tony skinner
Yes. All right. So if there’s a bit more Echo, I apologize. So yeah, I just wanted to get up to date on job keeper because job keeper has changed just recently. And what are some of those changes?
Brad
Yeah, so job keeping change 21st of July was announced by Treasury. And the changes are that there’s a gradual scaling down with the job keeper payment. But it’s also recognizing that some of the part timers getting being paid on the job keeper, were in fact earning more money than they did beforehand. So there was a rebalancing of the payments from a job keeper perspective to employees.
Tony skinner
So that’s interesting, isn’t it? So how you will part time and you get 1500 dollars a fortnight on job keeper, and you got a pay rise? Yes, I would like America because that’s a big thing in America. They don’t employ people full time. And they flip burgers or whatever, a minimum wage which is lower than Australia. are we heading in that direction?
Brad
No, I don’t believe so. I think we have very strong protection of our workers here in Australia and they pay a living wage. what happened was this legislation was rushed through. And when you rush the legislation through you, you can make mistakes or you may go back and change that around. But, certainly there were people who were working a few hours a week, who all of a sudden were being paid the full job keeper and earning substantially more.
Tony skinner
Wow. Okay. So the rates of the job keeper have changed.
Brad
They will change Ithey haven’t changed right now. But from the late September, the changes will start to come in and you’ll see a rebalance for the part timers, their payment is dropping, and we’re seeing a drop to payments to full time employees from $1500 down to $1200.
Tony skinner
Okay, so and I believe that’s based on the actual hours work, they’ve got to submit time sheets essentially to the government to justify that.
Brad
Well, it’s based around 20 hours, right? Okay. So if you work more than 20 hours, you’ll be paid as a full time employee. If you work less than 20 hours, you’ll fall into the part time category and you’ll receive less it makes sense.
Tony skinner
Okay, it does. All right. Okay. So that’s good. Now, the government’s moving towards trying to wean people off all the subsidies, and we will exclude Melbourne from this because I think they’re going to be subsidized for longer than anybody else. And that’s unfortunate. So in moving people off all these subsidies, if I’m working for an employer, and I’ve been getting the job keeper through the employer, and I now want to go back to being employed by the employer, what happens if they go to me? Oh, look, you know, now the payment has gone. So are you. 
Brad
Okay, so a lot of people have been working under the job keeper. So job keeper didn’t determine that You weren’t actually working job keeper was this as an economic stimulus that people were meant to spend, and they have been on the whole, Harvey Norman’s appreciated the extra business. So they, so many of those people working, when employees come back to work at the invitation the employer because things have started to pick up. If there isn’t enough work for them, then we go through the standard procedures for a redundancy. If there’s no work for them, the role is declared redundant. And it’s business as usual. From that perspective, the redundancy laws remain in place.
Tony skinner
Right. So it’s a subsidy from the government. So all entitlements and we’ve built up over that six month period such as holiday pay and whatever, yes. If they’re being paid as a 40 hour week employee, with the government tracking in some money towards that I still build up this same holiday leave and everything else is a 40 hour week employee.
Brad
Yeah, they do. They still continue to accrue their leave on the basis of the hours they work. So if they had been stood down and are now working through a job share or something like that for 20 hours a week, they would accrue annual leave on the basis of those 20 hours, they had actually worked.
Tony skinner
Okay, great. That’s something else that has come up as well, is employers liability around COVID-19 in the workplace and saw Now, of course, under the changes to workers comp, none of us are covered on the way to and from work unless we visit a client on the way and things like that. So what’s an employer’s liability in the office and outside of the office, 
Brad
okay, so an employer still has a duty of care to provide a safe workplace. There are a number of Different government departments which can provide advice on what to do and individuals who can provide an advice to the employer on how to make their workplace covert safe. So the duty of care obligation remains. If you follow the guidelines, then you mitigate your risk in the circumstance of someone contracting COVID-19 in the workplace.
Tony skinner
Cool. Okay. So any other advice you want to give around these sort of issues?
Brad
other advice around these issues? I think it’s really important as the job keeper payment starts to slow down or diminish that people are looking at their revenue curve. And looking at the headcount planning and making sure they align. And that I think that’s a critical element of this is don’t leave yourself short staffed if your revenue curves accelerating, but if your revenue curve is still falling, make sure that you’re still maintaining a profitable business and you’ve got longevity in the business profitability point of view.
Tony skinner
And that’s when you need an HR professional like yourself to help you to manage that, because once you got a few employees, it’s very difficult to keep up with what’s happening.
Brad
Yeah, look there, the changes are coming through thick and fast. Because the legislation was rushed through there’s a reason why Fair Work is the Fair Work Act is 1000 pages long COVID-19 job keeper was only 10 pages. And so there are always nuances and you know, we we pride ourselves on keeping abreast of those and helping small business owners not to make a mistake, whether you know, accidental or otherwise.
Tony skinner
So any tips or tricks on this issue that you recommend for employers.
Brad
Yeah, so it’s important for an employer to have a really clear picture of not just next month or the month after, but you know where their business is going to be and make sure they resource to that requirement. 6 12 even 24 months out.
Tony skinner
All right. Thank you for that Brad. So Brad Adams from HR debt.com.au
Brad
Thank you, Tony.
Tony skinner
Okay, now there’s something I want to do. Let’s see, delete the stuff. Sorry, you didn’t need the
Brad
just glanced at it for some of the dates.