Human Resources Management: Legislation, Planning, Contract Issues

This report delves into several critical aspects of human resources management. It begins by outlining key employment legislation, including the Fair Work Act, National Employment Standards, Safe Work Australia standards, and Workers Compensation acts, emphasizing the importance of HR professionals' awareness of these laws. The report then examines the creation and implementation of a strong code of conduct, highlighting essential elements such as clear language, ethical integration, legal compliance, accountability, and disciplinary actions. Furthermore, it discusses the alignment of strategic and operational HR plans, emphasizing the interdependence of resource allocation and labor requirements. The report also identifies potential contract problems and performance issues, such as ineffective leadership and employee misplacement. Finally, it underscores the importance of feedback in improving communication, productivity, and employee retention within an organization. This document is available on Desklib, where students can access similar solved assignments and study resources.

Summative Assessment 1
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Question 1
Human resources professionals must be aware of the current employment and managing
legislation that apply to their size and field of business in their geographic location. Five of the
key pieces of legislation that apply to manage human resources are :
● Fair Work Act: under this legislation employees are prevented from discrimination
based on gender, age and race. The Anti Discrimination in Fair work Act protects
workers from discrimination.
● National Employment Standards: employee rights to join and form unions are
protected under the National Labours Relations Act, Railway Labor Act and The Civil
Service Reform Act. This happens when development in working conditions are required
by a group of employees. The national employment standard are to be known by every
HR manager.
● Safe Work Australia: is required to protect workplace hazards. The Safe Work
Standards Act sets minimum wage and overtime pay requirements. The Occupational
Safety and Health Act seta workplace safety and medical aid.
● Workers Compensation : Compensation in relation to workers and operations is to be
determined follow the Workers compensation act. This law grants certain rights to union
members and protects their interest by promoting democratic procedures within labour
organizations.
The network of state and federal laws and legislation that exists to regulate employment and
labour relations is extensive.
Question 2
A powerful and engrossing code of conduct can create a positive ripple effect across an
organization. It might also be appropriate for the code to refer to guidance and support while will
aid understanding and compliance. The seven elements that are found in a well-written code of
conduct are:
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● Use of simple, clear and acceptable languages which provide coherent instructions for
what your staff can and cannot do. Values that are included in the code of conduct must
be honest, unbiased and unprejudiced.
● In order to integrate ethical conduct into the operations of the organizations. The general
standard of care, ethical behaviour towards directors and officers and all other people in
the workplace.
● Compliance with all applicable laws is a crucial element in a code of conduct since
employment laws are the backbone of the policies curated for the staff.
● Accountability includes taking responsibilities for one’s own action, ensuring appropriate
use of information, avoiding conflicts of interest and acceptance of duties to be fulfilled.
Those governed by the code are accountable for their actions and must submit themselves
to the scrutiny to ensure this.
● Standard of conduct when coupled with a commitment to the organization, proper usage
of electronic devices and data, yields better work results.
● Standard of practice includes current policies and procedures and business operational
manuals. A business owner will have certain expectations as to how his employees work,
thus mentioning employee policies in the code of conduct is mandatory.
● Disciplinary actions in a code of conduct should include complaints handling specific
penalties for any violation of the code.
Provision code of conduct is very much to be followed in order ot ot make sure that a legal and
ethical workforce environment is maintained within the company’s workforce and workplace. It
is also important that the above provisions are followed to maintain such decorum.
Question 3
Planning and services provide for the groundwork for the future and give a way of tracking
performance and accessing achievements. Human resources strategies and planning services are
the alignment of the proper people, place and time to achieve company objectives, strategically.
An operational Human resources plan is the comprehensive way in which a department will use
its resources to achieve company goals. The primary link between strategic plans and operational
plans is the establishment of a departmental budget. One essential link between the two is that
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the operational plan provides the details necessary to execute the strategic plan. When choosing
resource allocations for its proper use for the company's objectives, the strategic and operational
plans are then put together side-by-side to determine the effective allocation of resources.
Operational plan bases their needs on performance management numbers, these numbers are set
by the projections in the company strategic plans. The interdependence means that the result of
whatever is planned for one resource will have its impact on the other resources as well. Every
strategy in an operational plan should be linked directly to one or more goals of the strategic
planning; also every goal in a strategic plan must have one or more supporting goal in an
operational plan.
In terms of labour requirements, successful organizations have well-suited employees and the
number of people required for the fulfilment of the company's objectives requires finding the
best-suited man in the market-place. This is where the human resource planning comes into play
by defining how to attract the right employees, develop knowledge, skills and abilities of the
employees and retain them within the organization.
Question 4
Contract problem could be identified as a disagreement, miscommunication or misinterpretation
or failure of a contract. The problems that might be identified when managing contracts are :
● Contract management is not well understood because it is still believed that it focuses
predominantly on the terms and conditions of the documents itself. This means that the
procurement people think that managing contract is all about disputes and arguments
relating to those elements.
● Contract management is usually spread throughout the organization, involving varied
people from varied corners, thus when building a community, the challenge arises.
● Contract management requires adept skills, although because it is not well understood,
the query always pops up if it is a full-time job in an organization or just an element of a
wider job.
● Nevertheless, it is difficult to manage the benefits of a contract. Ineffective leadership,
inadequate work-system and individual incapability often contribute to its failure.
2 possible root causes of performance problems:
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● Wrong employment in the wrong working field: due to certain privileges that
employees gain while being on a job, they are reluctant to leave. Some are unable to
leave their present jobs because they can’t get anything better suited to them. This can't
be serious reason for the inefficacy of the workforce within the organization and this will
affect the company’s operational activities.
● Ineffective leadership: when the team is not performing at its best, it is the leader who is
to be questioned. He holds the greatest responsibility is motivating and upbringing the
employees. Thus, failure in influencing the employees often leads to issues in managing a
contract. The leader has to continuously retrospect his actions and build an effective
organizational culture. Effective leadership is a evident cause which may lead to various
problems the leadership approach determines the ways in which the workforce of the
company achieves a goal.
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Question 5
The importances of feedback in Human resource industry are as follows:
● It helps in eliminating the guesswork within the organisation.
● Proper communication among the organisational workers and the human resource team
gets initiated properly
● Feedback helps in better understanding the work scenario
● Feedback helps in increasing the productivity within an organization.
● It helps in better building of harmony and confidence among workers.
● Feedback helps in retaining workers in the organisation
● Proper feedback in the organisation helps in keeping pace with the standards and the
actual achievements.
● Feedback helps in proper and continuous learning in organisation.
● Proper building of focus is also an important aspect that gets fulfilled by the feedback
from others in positive manner.
● Feedback helps in proper follow up for the human resource department.
Feedback can be used in order to determine the major shortcomings which will be there within
the company's operating activities using which there can be effective measures taken to mitigate
such problems and to ensure that there is effective and efficient operational activities maintained
within firm. Feedback can use to measure the performance of the firm from both Human
resources and firm's perspective.
The feedback can also be useful I terms of assessing the standards of work and can also be
supportive in evaluate g current status of development. The most important aspect that can be
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understood from the feedback is the nature and thoughts of employees as well as colleagues on
work performed by a person.
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