How should employers deal with legislative changes coming to Australian workplaces?

There are a lot of legislative changes affecting Australian workplaces that are coming this year. 

Amid all these changes, listening to employees simply becomes even more important, according to one expert.

“If you actually look at all four of these things – if you actually look at what's common through all of them — you actually see a really, really clear pattern. And it is about listening to your employees and having conversations, having consultations with them,” said Dr. Cecilia Herbert, principal behavioural scientist, Qualtrics XM, in talking with HRD.

Legislative changes coming to Australian workplaces

Since Dec. 12 2023, the Australian Human Rights Commission has new powers under the Sex Discrimination Act to make investigations and enforce compliance with the positive duty to ensure the prevention of sexual discrimination and harassment in workplaces.

Starting Feb. 27, major organisations will have their gender pay gaps published online as a new Australian law on gender equality takes effect. The law, which passed Parliament last year, mandates organisations with over 100 employees to publish their gender pay gap data on the Workplace Gender Equality (WGEA) website.

The Australian government is also rolling out new work health and safety (WHS) regulations to help employers minimise the risk of psychological harm in the workplace.

“There are new regulations about creating [a work] environment that is free of psychosocial risks, or psychosocial threats, such as bullying and harassment… So that's a big change that's coming in as well,” said Herbert.

Australia is also set to introduce the right to disconnect for workers later this year, allowing workers to refuse contact from their employer out of hours unless that refusal is unreasonable.

Legislation means ‘social challenge needs to be resolved’

Herbert noted that these changes do not suddenly come out of nowhere for employers to stumble upon. Instead, these only address issues that may have been present in the workplace all along.

“Changes in legislation… they don't suddenly happen. There has to be quite a big social movement towards this change to be happening. You have to have a lot of organisations agreeing, different political parties agreeing to it. You've got to have a lot of industry bodies on board.

“They're usually in response to a social issue or a social challenge that needs to be resolved. So when I think about this, you've probably got employees who feel this way. You've probably got employees in your organisation who are trying to find ways to disconnect outside of business hours, but they don't feel that they can. They don't feel empowered to do so. Or maybe they don't have a channel to share their voice or to share their feedback in a constructive way. 

“And if that happens enough, if that happens across a niche of employees, then you may end up with legislation that reflects that experience.”

This calls for more attention from employers to their employees’ experience, said Herbert.

What employers can do is to look at employee experience data to make “evidence-based decisions,” she said.

That data will come from listening to employees far more than just through annual satisfaction surveys.

“An annual survey isn't going to surface these insights alone. They are going to surface an incredible amount of insights around your organization, your organizational health, where you're heading, to help you set your strategy,” said Herbert.

But if they're only happening once a year, you're going to miss things and things are going to emerge that you don't know about. And you will be finding out about them when there's a complaint, or when there's an investigation [going on] that you didn't see coming.”

Core principles to navigate legislative changes

To help employers navigate the legislative changes, Herbert shared the following tips:

Understand the core principles behind the legislations and apply to your individual needs: “Look at the core principles behind this work and these changes, and understand how those principles apply to your organization, and how to convert those into practices that will get the best results for you, for your organization and for your employees. It’s not just about copying and pasting these practices. It’s about understanding the intention behind them, and what they mean for your organization of your context. Because one size does not fit all.”

Use these changes as an opportunity to spark the interest of senior leaders: “If they haven't been very interested in employee experience programs or things like that in the past, these legislative changes are going to maybe be the thing that sparks their interest,” she said.

“My suggestion to any HR leader would be: Don't miss the opportunity to engage them in a strategic conversation around not only how you can be compliant with the legislation, but actually take it one step further. Build employee experience employee listening programs that can actually build your strategic advantage as well.”

Rethink what employee experience is: “The employee experience isn't just when employees tell you what they want, and you do it… It is about tapping into the ideas, the feedback, the suggestions and understanding the work that your employees are doing, so that you can use that information to make informed, right decisions,” said Herbert.

“This requires us to have better listening in place so that we actually are engaging in a conversation consistently throughout all these legislations… So the question would be ‘How are you engaging your employees in these conversations?’ And get creative.”