Dealing with increased legislation, regulation, and a harder IR landscape.

?In a short video posted on 10 January 2023, Sarah McCann-Bartlet, Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director at Australian HR Institute (AHRI), noted that the above topic was a trend for 2023.?

?As she pointed out to her audience, the impact of this will be HR Practitioners need to keep up to date, ensure compliance, and report more to senior management.?

?While it can be argued that the increased legislation, regulation, and the harder IR landscape Sarah refers to, is driven by the current Federal Government wanting to increase union power and influence in the workplace, that’s been part of the Australian political system since Federation.?

My question is, in response will the HR profession reinvent and transform HR delivery?? Or will we continue to repeat our old ways and introduce more bureaucratic, unwieldy, and cumbersome processes in response to the legislative changes????

As I have argued for many years, we should choose to transform HR practices such as performance management and disciplinary action into simpler, more user-friendly processes.? Such transformation must meet four objectives:?

1. Make it easier to manage in the more complex environment?
2. Ensure such processes are robust and defendable within the new more complex environment?
3. Allow HR to collect and manager the ‘big data’ necessary for analysis and reporting?
4. Provide senior management and the Board with relevant real-time data to manage risk and make decisions.?

?And over the past few decades, there has been many examples of organisations achieving such transformational goals. To see more go to www.neoshr.com.au.?

?Therefore, the challenge I see for HR practitioners is how to take this learning and experience to achieve such transformation in their own organisations.?

?While the hardest step may be the first, make it a small step and transformation is achievable. Let’s stop adding complexity as regulation and legislation increases. Let’s transform our HR practices and processes based on proven techniques and experience.?