Why You Need An HR Solution In Your Business?

People are an integral part of most businesses and therefore having access to good HR solutions and resources is a must. Rosalind Loxton will discuss some of the different aspects of HR in the workplace and provide advice on where you can get answers.

Joshna: Welcome, everybody, and thank you for taking a few minutes out with us to watch our Momentum Talks. I'm Joshna Daya, founder and director of Your Business Momentum. Today we have Ros Loxton from PerformHR. Welcome Ros.

Ros: Hello, how are you?

Joshna: Great. Thanks, Rose, and thank you for joining us. So before we get started, I just want to give you a quick introduction to Ros. Ros has 15 years’ experience working as a HR Generalist as an in-house HR Manager. During this time, she recognised her preference was helping to solve people’s problems, so when the time was right, she actively sought a consulting role.

As the ER Service Director of PerformHR, Ros is passionate about solving ER pain points, and empowering her clients to lead, grow and protect their organisations. Once again, thank you for joining us Ros.

Ros: No problems.

Joshna: The purpose of Momentum Talks is to share valuable content with business owners, and to introduce specialists who can help overcome challenges in your business. So it's no secret that people are an integral part of our businesses and therefore having access to good HR resources is a must. Ros is going to talk us through some of the different aspects of HR in the workplace and provide some guidance on where you can get some of the answers.

So Ros, I've got some questions to fire away at you. Are you ready?

Ros: All right.

Joshna: Okay, great. So the first question I have Ros is, what might be a crazy or an amazing statistic relevant to HR that others might not know.

Ros: In the news, we often see the really bad cases of unfair dismissals with lots of money being paid out in and that's the thing I wanted to share with everyone that unfair dismissals aren't necessarily worst-case scenario. So, it's not the end of the world when a case comes through.

I'm just going to share some statistics from January to March this year, so there were 3,583 application submitted. However, only 172 of these actually made it to the commission hearing. So the rest were all sold before that. So, they do a conciliation course and it was settled.

Of the 172 that went to be where the actual commission, about 80% of them which is about 140 were dismissed. So 29 were dismissed because it was founded dismissal was actually fair. 111 were dismissed because the cases were actually found to be vexatious or the applicant failed to comply with that was supposed to do. For example, someone didn't even turn up so at the end of the day, only 32 of those 3,583 cases went through the whole process and compensation was provided to the employee. So, yeah, that's a big thing to, I think that businesses need to know that sometimes unfair dismissal aren't the worst thing in the world.

Joshna: Yeah, it's an important point, Ros, because I know, you know, dealing with business owners every day, it can often be quite an area of fear. And you know with business owners not really sure how to approach it or if they're in that particular situation, you know, I guess, not wanting to get there in the first place. But if they are there, you know, what some of the things that they need to be doing as this is to work through that.

Ros: Exactly, yeah. And we did share some of that in our webinar that we did earlier this year, which was really be helpful for people.

Joshna: Yes. Okay, so Ros what might be I guess the two or three major problems that you see arising for business owners when they recruit and manage people?

Ros: Being involved in consultancy, I actually get to see a lot of different businesses and often the same problems come up. So I do have a little bit of knowledge about this.

So I guess one, with regards to recruitment, rushing that process can be an issue, and not hiring for culture, but hiring for convenience. So just rushing through the process and getting the first person that looks good on paper, rather than really thinking about it.

Also, taking a no news as good news approach to employee feedback. So only talking about the negatives and letting people know when they've done something wrong, rather than actually also looking at telling them and they're doing a good job.

In saying that, though, another major issue I come across is where businesses got themselves into a bind, because I haven't done that enough around managing performance. So there's usually two scenarios it’s either that some, they've got a fairly new employee. And they haven't decided they haven't worked out, but they haven't achieved anything about it until after that first six months, and then they're kind of stuck in that position of having to manage a whole performance improvement process rather than being able to be a little bit more lax with it within those first six months of employment.

The other issue I sometimes find is employees who have been there for a very long time. And then suddenly, it's been decided that they are not performing, and they haven't performed for the whole time they've been employed, but nobody's actually told them so. Performance rate conversation often comes as a big surprise to that employee, and of course, they get defensive because they've been working the same way for so long.

Joshna: Yes. Okay. Ros, it's certainly I know being in my experience working with business owners, where they tends to be very little structure to the performance review and development conversation and like you said, sometimes when we start to put these things in place, it comes as a total surprise, because it's just not been raised before. Or if it has, it's been very informal, with just very little structure to it. So, Ros, would there be any particular tips that you might have around how businesses can create a structure for this?

Ros: Around their performance improvement? Yes, I guess, looking at that whole thing I said, we don't want to leave feedback toward annual performance reviews. So you do want to be giving your employees feedback along the way, whether it is that is majorly structured or just, you know, having those catch ups but booking them in at least, you know, once a month or so, and letting people know, things that they can provide support on or the good feedback as well. Nothing wrong with just having that annual review, but also ensuring that people are aware of how they're going along that way. Nothing should come as a surprise at the annual review.

Joshna: Sure. So what I'm hearing you say there Ros, it's having more regular feedback conversations and giving, you know, the good feedback as well, because it's not just all about what needs to be improved in their performance. It's getting the good feedback as well. So when we do have if it's a development review, 12 months down the track, there's nothing that comes as a surprise.

Ros: Exactly. Yeah. And the good feedback is also fostering your culture within the organization. Everyone’s only hearing about the negatives it doesn't impose a good culture.

Joshna: Sure. Okay. So Ros, what would be I guess, you know, a couple of actions that business owners can be taking as well just to help some of these issues that arise around HR.

Ros: I think I can touch on that recruitment as well. Then I talked about before as being a pain point. So maybe consider a can-do, will-do, will-fit approach to recruitment.

So the 'can do' is does the candidate have the basic skills need for the role which is usually the easiest thing to work out because you just look at their resume and look at their qualifications.

The 'will do' is will the candidate do the job, so, you need to assess their motivations, why they're applying for the job and assess their values to ensure they're fit with the company values. People are more likely to stay with the company when the values align.

And the last one is the 'will fit' and this is about the culture. So, you need to be really sure that the person is going to be able to fit in with your current culture. And you don't think there's going to be any major clashes.

Joshna: Okay. So Ros, would you have a resource or a valuable piece of content relevant to this, that, you know, you'd be able to share with some of our listeners of Momentum Talks?

Ros: So with regards to performance improvement, there's always a performance improvement plan that can be that can be implemented. That's the best way to be looking at performance improvement and having a really good record of what you're doing.

But also, I also want to say that when you because often people Google, when they're looking at HR things, they Google the answers when people are googling need to make sure they're looking at reputable sites. There are some companies out there that try to look like their fair work. So I have some of our clients have been caught out having Google seeing things that have actually ended up being other companies providing them information on you know, they've been thinking, they've been talking to a Fair Work, but they're not actually talking to a Fair Work that they're talking to, advisable they may need to pay some money.

The real Fair Work website, however, is a good resource. And it's got some really good templates for even just basic contracts and basic lessons that you might need within your employment and just as much as well.

Companies may also look at HRIS, that’s Human Resources Information Systems. I couldn't say which one is the best one because there's a heap of them and they've all got their different levels of budgets, they suit and also the levels of requirements. So, some of them are quite basic, but really helpful for just having all your information at your fingertips, but others can do all sorts of things like automating workflows and things like that.

Joshna: Okay, beautiful. That's pretty good, tangible tips there in terms of resources, right? So it's gonna be good time to talk a little bit about the services you provide in what you're known for?

Ros: So Perform HR is an outsourced HR company and we work flexibly with our clients. So, meeting what they need, some clients we work with as their full HR department. So basically the whole function is outsourced to us.

Others have their own HR, and we help with them just some special projects or strategic top up and things like that. And we also provide ad hoc support some of our clients so it's a bit of a phone a friend, you know, sometimes you have a burning question, if you don't know the answer to write a friend and ask us.

We also do like smaller projects such as recruitment, and policy reviews, content reviews, things like that. We also we have the full gamut of HR skills and mine just happened to be ER relations or employee relations related.

Joshna: Okay, beautiful. Ros I know, I've certainly been very grateful for the help that you've provided to our clients. So thank you again for that.

So Ros, what's the best way to reach you if the listeners have any particular questions and would like to get in touch with you?

Ros: They can contact PerformHR by phone or by my email address. My email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. We also got a chatbot on our website so that's also getting in touch with us. That's a new feature we've got.

Joshna: Okay, beautiful and I've noticed your new branding as well it looks great. So Ros, thank you for here for providing that sort of valuable information to our listeners out there.

I'm sure you can see the passion that Ros has for HR and the work that she does. So if you do need to speak with words, please check out their website at www.performhr.com.au.

Please also take a few short minutes now to follow us on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. And that'll make sure that you do get Momentum Talks each time we interview someone that can add value to our business owners.

So thank you again for joining us today Ros and until next time, all the very best.

Ros: Thank you.