There are special rules in the Holidays Act governing the observance of the Christmas/New Year public holidays when they fall on a weekend.

Note:  This requires an individual assessment for every employee.

This year 25 December is a Sunday and therefore:

• If that day would otherwise be a working day for the employee, the public holiday will be treated as falling on that day for that employee.
• If that day would not otherwise be a working day for the employee, the public holiday will be treated as falling on Tuesday 27 December for that employee.

26 December is a Monday and therefore Boxing Day is observed on that day for all employees.

The arrangements for New Years’ Day and 2 January follow the above pattern.

An employee is not entitled to more than four public holidays in respect of Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Year’s Day and 2 January.

If an employee does not work on a public holiday, they are entitled to:

• Payment at their relevant daily pay for the day (ie what they would have got had they worked on that day), provided that day would otherwise be a working day for them, or
• A day off without payment if that day would otherwise not be a working day for the employee.

Relevant Daily Pay (RDP) is the amount the employee would have got paid had they worked on the day in question. Note that this includes productivity or incentive-based payments (including commission) and overtime payments that the employee would otherwise have received for working on that day.

If it is not possible to determine the employees RDP, then the employee’s Average Daily Pay (ADP) may be used. The ADP is determined by dividing the employee’s gross earnings over the prior 52 weeks by the number of whole or part days the employee worked to achieve those earnings.

Employee does work on the holiday

If an employee does work on a public holiday, they are entitled to payment for the time worked at the greater of:

• The appropriate portion of their RDP or ADP (less any penal rates) plus half that amount again, and
• The portion of the employee’s RDP that relates to the time actually worked on the day.

The first option in essence provides for payment at time and a half.  The second option is to cater for situations where the employment agreement provides for a higher rate of pay, such as double time.

Provided the holiday would otherwise be a working day for the employee, they are also entitled to a paid alternative holiday to be taken at a later date.

Please call if you require further advice.

A terminating employee is entitled to any public holiday which would have fallen during the employee’s annual holidays, had the remaining annual holidays been taken immediately after the date of termination.

So in essence, add the number of days of annual holidays that are outstanding to the employee’s termination date and the employee is entitled to any public holidays falling during that period.

Please call if you require further advice.

The reason is that 2.52% of the increase was caused by increases in GST, ETS and tobacco tax, which as a matter of Government policy were offset by tax cuts of around 3% depending on income level.

So any increase of more than 1.5% provided for a real wage increase. Moreover the tax cuts are ongoing whereas the impact of the GST on the CPI will soon disappear.

Inflation is expected to reduce to around 2.6% for the year to 31 December and then continue to decline to around 2% by June 2012.

The Maritime Union has given notice of two periods of strike action on 1-2 December and 8-10 December.

The Port Company has retaliated by locking out employees for a similar period of time after each period of strike action ends, effectively doubling the period of time the port will be out of action.

This tactic is likely to become more common because it seems to work. It also proved to be effective in the Australian context with the recent Qantas strike.

However, the overall trend of the last 10 years has been a significant decline in strike action and we expect a continuation of this trend when the next stats are released.

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Collective Bargaining

• The requirement to conclude a collective agreement would be removed. There would still be an obligation to bargain in good faith but for the many employers with low numbers of union members they would at last have the power to end time consuming and expensive bargaining processes that only benefit a small number of employees.
• Where there is a collective agreement in place an employer would be able to employ new employees on a different basis (ie they would not be required to be employed on the terms of the collective for the first 30 days). This would return to employers a key method to achieve change where there has been a refusal to agree to more modern conditions. It also arguably gives more bargaining power to employees in an environment of skill shortages.
• Employers would also be able to opt out of multi-employer collective bargaining, instead of having to go through the charade of not agreeing terms in an expensive and protracted bargaining process.
• Where employees engage in partial strikes the employer would be able to reduce pay to the level that reflects the work still being performed. While this no doubt would cause disputes about the pay reduction applied in such circumstances, in principle it re-balances the right to strike.

Personal Grievances

• National would seek input from the Department of Labour and the employment law community on the best way to prevent constructive dismissal being used inappropriately in employment disputes, while maintaining access to justice for those who bring legitimate claims.

KiwiSaver

• All new employees would automatically be enrolled in KiwiSaver but the ability to opt out would remain.

Minimum Wage

• The minimum wage would be increased each year, as has occurred for each of the last three years, but it is highly unlikely to reach $15 any time soon.
• There would be a new Starting Out minimum rate for young workers. This rate would be set at 80% of the minimum wage. The existing training rates for the first 3 months or 200 hours would be scrapped. There would be three levels of eligibility for the new system:

• 16 and 17 year olds in their first six months of work with a new employer.
• 18 and 19 year olds entering the workforce after more than six months on a designated benefit.
• 16 to 19 year olds training in a recognised industry course involving at least 40 credits a year.

With the unemployment rate for 15-19 year olds being 27.6% (or more than 4 times the overall rate of 6.5%) creation of jobs for young workers is a hot topic.

Trial Periods

• The existing arrangements for trial periods would continue and it’s fair to say there haven’t been many examples of employers rorting the system. By international standards the existing policy is quite conservative. For example, in Australia an employee of a small employer (under 15 employees) may not claim unfair dismissal for the first 12 months of employment (or during the first 6 months for a large employer). In the UK at present no employee may claim unfair dismissal in the first 12 months of employment, but this will be extended to 2 years from 1 April next year. However, a leaked independent report to the British Government suggests that unfair dismissal be scrapped altogether, and replaced by a “compensated no-fault dismissal” where employers would pay a fixed amount of compensation and notice pay when dismissing an employee, but the employee would then have no right of redress. This is an approach we have advocated for a number of years.

Superannuation

• The Government’s policy is not to increase the age of entitlement.

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What we’ve observed is that organisations establish patterned approaches to making change – their own particular ‘change playbook’ prescribing processes for designing and implementing change often influenced more strongly by legal obligations than by a well researched sense of what it takes to make change successfully.

Experience shows us that two key ingredients for success in organisational change are often missing from a client’s ‘play book’. These are speed and high quality process. Why speed? Many academics and practitioners advocate slower paced change or ‘boiling the frog slowly’. We generally don’t. Our analogy is a surgical one since major business change can reasonably be compared with operating to change what would otherwise be the patient’s course of life. In surgery the longer the patient stays open on the operating table the longer the period to full recovery and the greater the risk of infection.

Similarly, slow business change often brings negative side effects and loss of commercial momentum. Useful projects and essential initiatives are put on hold in case they don’t suit the new direction or regime and attention to BAU suffers while good people worry about whether they have a future. Often the organisation is distracted by tortuous attempts to achieve the perfect reorganisation – a nirvana that doesn’t exist. Change leaders don’t factor in the law of diminishing returns when planning change. They fail to appreciate that beyond a certain point time spent collecting data, analysing options and designing the perfect departmental structure or new service will return little added dividend while customer and employee engagement corrode. While leadership makes slow progress with change, frontline employees just want to know what the answer will be. As those dealing with customers or leading internal teams suffer uncertainty their impatience and resistance grow and, inevitably, your customers suffer. The corollary of speed is, of course, quality of process. The surgeon moves expeditiously and watches the clock but without, except in severe trauma cases, compromising quality.

The costly error we see manifested through the ‘change playbook’ adopted by organisations is to define change process success in terms of compliance with legal obligations while adopting a ‘need to know’ approach to communication to preserve commercial sensitivity. Yes, avoiding personal grievances is desirable but your ‘change playbook’ must aim much higher. To achieve your target ROI on change, your process ‘playbook’ must deliver the vast majority of employees and at least 60% of managers actively supporting the changes, with employee engagement and productivity rising through the process.

In our experience the hallmarks of high quality change processes include;

• Building a strong fact base – so decisions are well founded;
• Early exposure of the need for change and the new ‘concept’ to all those involved (rather than waiting until the proposal is effectively set in stone before indulging in often sham consultation).
• A robust challenge process – where those who do the work today get to pressure test new concepts before senior management adopt them (face it, as the popular ‘Undercover Boss’ TV show demonstrates each week, CEOs, senior managers and consultants DON’T know what happens in the front lines of customer service well enough to design change alone).
• Early, persistent, comprehensive, two way communication is the only way to build essential support – your people will not buy into a plan they don’t understand or which they don’t believe will work. Would you?

Finally, fast, high quality change takes resource. The tasks of analysis, design, communication, involvement, training and implementation require discipline, expertise and effort, too much effort for busy managers to deliver on top of BAU.  So a critical part of the investment required for successful change is adequate resourcing which can vary from over the shoulder expert advice to ‘hands on’ delivery of multiple elements of the change process. That, of course, is where our team can assist make you change project a success. Register for our workshop………

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Course Description:

Using a combination of presentation, case studies and discussion, the workshop delivers the following:

• Research based understanding of the risks and success factors for reorganisation
• Project organisation, planning and governance
• Project resourcing considerations
• Improving organisation design
• Getting the herd heading roughly west – communications
• High value consultation options
• Ways to protect customer service through transition
• Alternative approaches to reassignment
• Expedited recruitment and appointment processes
• Working successfully with Unions
• Progressing remuneration and harmonising terms and conditions

This is a practical workshop where you will learn how to plan and execute various stages of a change process, alternative processes that result in efficient and effective consultation, and receive tools and templates that will assist you back in your workplace.

Who Should Attend:

This program will appeal to HR Leaders and their teams, Project Leads and their teams, and line managers who either don’t have dedicated HR resources or would like to benefit from increased knowledge of how to navigate change in their areas of responsibility.

Date:   15 or 17 November 2011

Location:   Teesdale Loof, Level 5, 36 Kitchener Street, Auckland

Time:   8.30 am – 1.30pm

Cost:   $550 +GST per person

To register, or seek more information, please call Tracy on 09 366 2220 or email tracyg@teesdaleloof.com

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HR2GO can provide the content, or design your HR intranet solution, to provide your managers with resources to assist them to manage their people, supported by our 24/7 Ask an Expert service.

For more details call Tony Teesdale (021 920 323) or Paul Loof (021 948 782).

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