July 5, 2026 • 41 mins
Everyone has an employment contract, but what should you be aware of when presented with a new one?
Some key parts that you'd think are a given may also be missing, so what shoud you make sure you have?
MyHR's Chief Evangelist Sylvie Thrush-Marsh joins Tim Beveridge to answer your employment questions.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks,
EDB No one, Side, silent.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
All much almost wide.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Selling and.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome back to the show. I'm Tim Beverridges. Is the
Weekend Collective or welcome in? Should I say obviously it's
welcome in introducing myself right, this is smart money And
as I say you every hour, we want your cause,
you're welcome to join us, inviting your calls and participate
on one hundred eighty ten eighty text nine two nine two.
And as I say, I feel the need to repeat
(01:10):
this just a little bit and I'll flog this horse
for a while. You don't have to call up with
the answer to the meaning of life if you simply
want to contribute to the conversation, or you've got a question,
in which case you may for our guests, who's joining us?
Because we never talk about employment contracts and any questions
you've got around it the ones that I actually had
(01:31):
to start with, because you know, it can be a
bit daunting when you've got to sign a contract, especially
young job seekers. You get a pile of documents. Do
you even read it? Do you just assume, well, other
people have signed it? It must be Okay, did you
read if you're listening right now, did you read your
employment contract? Or did you just turn to the patriots
says how much you can get paid and went, oh, yeah,
that'll do, and just ignore the rest because I mean
(01:55):
I read mine a few times. But that's because I've
studied law and I thought I should. I just did
it because I thought I should. And the problem wise,
I mean, if you didn't like it, well, how much
can you do about these things? So we're going to
talk about employment contracts, any questions you've got. But also
a lot of people assume that the law will look
after things, So we're going to dig into are there
(02:18):
things that should be in your contract because the law
doesn't look after it. So yeah, eight hundred and eighty
ten eighty and joining me, she is it's a new
guest on our show, not new in the media. Necessarily
I'm interested in her calling card. She works for my
HR and she is described here in the introduction as
their chief evangelist, and her name is Sylvie Thrushmash and
(02:41):
she joins me. Now, Sylvie, get afternoon.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Gotter, Tim, thanks for having me chief evangelist.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
What's that?
Speaker 4 (02:48):
My role is to work in with our sales and
marketing team on behalf of the business, so I'm the
face of the business. Typically, I am an HR employment
law person by training. I've been with the business for
ten years, and after a couple of quite gnarly leadership roles,
I said, I'm very tired. Can I do something a
bit front? And so I tend to show up in
our content a lot, doing events and webinars and socials
(03:09):
and conversations like this, and also working with our sales
team to help talk to new customers and be the
HR voice in the conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
How did you get involved in HR and employment, Lauren,
Because I mean, it's an interesting niche to get involved,
and so tell us a bit about you. How you
get how'd you get where you are now?
Speaker 4 (03:27):
I had part time jobs from quite a young age,
and I did read my employment agreements because I was
a delicate little nerd who really liked this kind of stuff.
And when I got to university and didn't quite have
the grades for law school, I still really love employment law.
It tickles my brain in the right way, and I
really like working with people and solving problems. So HR
(03:48):
was kind of a natural fit. For my interest HR.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
So where I mean you're When people hear HR, I
don't I think they don't hear anything in particular when
they hear my HR. But when they hear the word HR,
it's the thing that people joke about if they're about
to tell a dodgy joke in the workplace, it's like, oh, maybe,
I mean not because of what is HR? Because some
people just think it's the place where you if you've
asked a colleague out and appropriately on a date, then
(04:13):
that's where you're headed. But what is HR?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
That is certainly part of our role is to help
our business leaders and managers enforce appropriate behavior in the workplace.
But it is a really broad umbreller of disciplines which
includes everything from recruitment and selection, so choosing who you
bring into your business, employee onboarding, making sure that your
staff have the tools to kind of get up and
run in quickly, through to remuneration resource planning. The point
(04:40):
end of HR does tend to be things like restructuring
and terminations and managing situations like when employees are sick
for a long time, how do you manage those sorts
of things. But we also tend to get lumped with
this cultural piece. People talk about people in culture a lot,
as though the rule setters and rule enforces are the
best people to look after culture in an organization. I
don't think we are. But it's a very broad umbrella
(05:02):
which covers pretty much everything to do with people in
processes in the business.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So my HR, who you work for? You predominantly work
for employears?
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Yeah, that's right. So we've got about seventeen hundred employers
around New Zealand that we support. Those include brands like
how Pizza and the Breast Cancer Foundation and the Warriors.
But typically our customers are smaller medium businesses who want
to get HR right. So they are big enough to
have some people problems having all of their employment contracts
you know, tucked away and the glovebox kind of isn't
(05:33):
working for them anymore. So they bring us on board
to help them get their HR up to speed and
to make sure that they are as far as they can,
following the law and doing right by their people.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Actually, gosh, when I know that, you describe it, what
a brilliant idea for business. Now, seriously, because there'd be
so many smaller medium businesses who they just want to
get the work in and do the work, and the
shark infested waters of the legislation of HR must be
really difficult to negotiate, especially.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
When you're a smaller business having you know, twenty to
fifty staff. Having a full time HR person is incredibly
they're not very useful. I don't know what I would
do full time in a business of thirty people. So
lawyers are quite expensive. Consultants can be a bit hidden miss.
So for us, kind of having a consistent month to
month relationship with actually like a subscription. It's exactly like
a subscription, that's right. And especially when you're a plumber
(06:20):
you aren't running a plumbing business because you're fantastic and
employment law, or if you're a graphic designer again, knowing
that holidays act and now it's not going to be
kind of your skill set. So knowing where to turn
when you need some expert support is the is the
gap that we tend to fill.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
God, it's a no brainer. Now, I think, what a
brilliant idea. I know it's been I know my actual
has been around for a while, by the way, but
it's funny, I've never actually reflected on on exactly you
know that just the genius of an idea of providing
a service to all those small to medium businesses. And
I don't mean to be polishing your apple deliberately, that's
just yeah, how how complic Now? I know that when
(06:58):
you get into a contract. There've been dealings I've had
throughout my career where and because I've worked as a
producer of concerts and I engage people, but it's always
on a one off sort of contract, and if I
to be honest, I've always done it by a letter
and an understanding in relationships because it's a very intimate
sort of space I'm working, and so it's a heavily
(07:21):
trust reliant model. But I also know that as soon
as you decide let's do a contract, then you can
disappear in the woods, into the weeds and never get
anything done. How complex does an employment contract need to be? So?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
At its real fundamentals? In New Zealand, an employment agreement
needs to have nine clauses in it and that's it.
You can get away with a one page employment agreement.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Which I want to good.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Yes, that's at its basics. I don't know if I
would recommend that approach. Typically we see employment documents in
the kind of ten to twelve pages. But getting them
right is really important from a hygiene perspective. If they
are not in place, or if they are not particularly
robust or very well thought through, they can cause you
to trip up later down the line and cause problems
(08:03):
in the employment relationship later on. But you can have
the most beautiful, spick and span, perfectly typed, evenly spaced
employment agreement.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
And it's not the format is just amazing. The colors
are there, the perfect font.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
The perfect font, your brand's on it. That is not
going to make sure you have a really robust root
employment relationship. So it needs to be there from a
pragmatic kind of managing risk perspective. But if you're relying
on a beautifully typed employment agreement to set out productive
relationships with your staff, you're not going far enough.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So how much conversation, I mean, how much time should
an employer spend explaining an employment contract to the employee
or is it just the employees should just say listen,
you need to take the same and read it thoroughly,
full stop.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
There are some legal guidelines around this actually, so you
need to give your employees a quote reasonable time unquote
to review any employment documents you put in front of them.
What reasonable time looks like is deliberately stretchy to account
for kind of different people circumstances. But you should be
able to talk them through the key points, answer any
questions that they have, and make sure that they've got
(09:14):
time to go and talk to the union if they're
a member of the union, or talk to a friend,
or or pay a lawyer or an advocate to review it.
Typically it's not on the employer to make sure the
employee perfectly understands every single clause in their employment agreement,
but they should make themselves available to answer any questions.
And typically we see employment agreements that are written in
(09:35):
plain English. Again, often are a more accessible and pragmatic
stat to an employee.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Well, I mean, plain English is the way the law's
gone for a while, hasn't it.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
So you can.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Few of the few less notwithstandings, yes exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
And heretofore is and there rafters and trying to stay
away from their language.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Took me a while to work out what notwithstanding meant. Actually,
so the confidentiality of agreements, A lot of agreements have
you know, the sug is confidential, And yet I don't
know how enforceable that is, because if you've got a
friend or an advisor to look at these things. I mean,
(10:14):
what's the limits of if I was signing a contract
and somebody said, well, you can run it past a friend, well,
or two friends who happen to be lawyers or whatever.
How does What's how enforceable is confidentiality of a contract,
especially when it comes to the person who is has
been given the contract, because you know, there's the rule
(10:36):
about whoever drafts the contract. You know, they're the ones
who have got probably got a higher standard applied to
you know, the way it's drafted. But what does confidentiality mean?
Speaker 4 (10:45):
There's a couple of different answers to that question. So
I'll start with the big picture on first. Okay, So
an employee's relationship with their employer is confidential, So details
about their their address, or particular perks they might have negotiated,
any of that kind of stuff, any discipline reaction that
might have been undertaken. All of that is confident that
neither party can kind of talk about it in other contexts.
(11:08):
Having said that, when you receive an employment agreement, you
are very welcome to go and show that employment agreement
to someone for the purposes of seeking advice. So pasting
photos of it on Instagram and asking for people to
give your feedback probably doesn't meet that standard. But taking
it to your cousin who's lawyer, or to your auntie
who's in the union, that's appropriate because you're doing it
(11:30):
for the purposes of getting advice and getting some feedball.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
What if they don't talk about it because and you're
not particularly bothered, but your employer.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Is, it would be really, really difficult to trace the
pattern of information sharing back to the employee. Typically there's
a bit of an expectation of confidentiality on the part
of the person you're showing it too. But ultimately, if
an employer was able to say, Sylvie went and showed
her employment agreement to her cousin, her cousin went to
(11:57):
a cocktail party and talked to a competitor about it,
any of those kinds of dynamics. Ultimately, because the relationship
between the employee and the cousin wasn't covered by a
legal agreement or buy an agreement, that they would be
treating it confidentially, Particularly, the employee could be liable. I've
never seen it pursued that far, but in the hypothetical
(12:17):
that's something that could.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Happen, because yeah, it's an interesting one. Obviously, if you
talk to a lawyer about it, there's a natural relationship
with confidentiality. But if you just talk to a couple
of a couple of friends who've been in a through
a similar situation, I don't know what expectation there can
be on those people that should be sheeted home to you.
And if they don't do their part of it and
(12:39):
keeping it quiet, how much should you bear the brunt
of that? That's funny one, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
I've never seen an employment agreement that was so scandalous
or so salacious that the benefit of the cousin going
and running their mouth about at a party would outweigh
their damage to their relationship. But maybe there is one
out there and I just hadn't come across it yet.
But typically not something we see and forced a lot.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Well, by the way, where where is the law at
with money? The money side of things? You know a
lot of times people employers don't want other employees to
know what each one's getting paid, because then they'll all
want whoever's on the most.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
There was a law change last year about this, So
the Employee Employment Relations Employee Remuneration Disclosure Act, which is
a mouthful at the best of times, Little on a Sunday,
says that employees now can talk about their pay, or
their perks, or their benefits and can't be asked to
keep that confidential. So, before the twenty twenty five law change,
(13:33):
lots of employment agreements had a clause in them which said,
the terms of this employment agreement are confidential. Yet they
can't be discussed elsewhere again except for the purposes of
seeking advice if you are going and getting a lawyer
to review them. But now those clauses can remain in writing,
but they are legally unenforceable. So employees can talk amongst
themselves about what their pay is, whether they've got a
(13:54):
pay raise or not, and employers don't have any mechanism
for enforcing that. Again, practically, even before this law change,
employees talk. I've talked to people about what my remuneration
has been. Kind of outside of a work context, it's
very difficult to prove that an employee was in breach
of those t's and c's unless it comes up in
(14:14):
kind of quite limited employment context. But now the law
is really clear employees can talk about pay to anyone
at any time and not be punished for it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Actually, this is interesting. I mean, you're welcome to call
us on this if you like, But I have a
theory that you know, you've everyone wants to feel free
to talk about their remuneration, but they just want to
know what the other person's getting that. I wonder how
many people actually have talked about what they're getting paid.
I don't hear any talk within this place about how
much you get paid, because everyone's nervous that they might
(14:43):
be on the good wicket and it'll impinge their ability
to get more money because everyone else has had to catch.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Up to, you know, or nervous they're on the lowest wicket.
Maybe if you were one of a pool of twenty
producers who was earning the lowest rate, that might be
a bit uncomfortable to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Do we know, actually how many people would have talked
about it? Since there is there any sort of no
one's done a survey, not.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
That I've seen. It would be really difficult to get
access to that data unless you were looking at like
a self reported survey of some kind. I haven't seen one.
There might be one out there, but it would be
interesting over the next couple of years to see how
many personal grievances come up where an employee has talked
about their pay, their employer has retaliated in some way,
(15:25):
told them off, taking them through a disciplinary process, and
then the employees lodged a PG on the grounds that
they were retaliated against for discussing their pay. I suspect
we won't see many, but it's early days. We might
get a couple of them come through.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Do you guys also, do people employees seek you out
for advice at all or how does that work?
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Was it mainly on social media and in the comments
on our content. Absolutely we get lots of employees commenting
telling us that HR are the worst people ever and
we're just there to protect the employer. When employees come
to us kind of through our more official channels, we're
very quick to say that we act for the employer.
We don't take employee employees on for advice. Employers pay us.
It would frankly be a conflict of interest us to
(16:05):
be trying to advise their employees, and.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
So if somebody is working for someone who wasn't one
of your clients of an employee, want.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
To take them on? No, we're employee only.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Okay, right, I eight hundred eighty ten eighty. But would
you give advice to employees today?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
So, here's the exception to the rule. I eight hundred
eighty ten eighty. Any questions you've got about your employment contract?
I eight hundred eighty ten eighty Text nine to nine two.
My guest is Sylvie thrush Marsh. She's described as my
HR's chief evangelist. Will be back in just a moment,
but the lines are open, so jump on the blower.
I've got a few texts to get onto the start up,
(16:41):
and I've got a few questions for Sylvie myself. But
you can get ahead of me if you give.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Us a call.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
It is twenty three past five. News Talk said, be
welcome to back to the Weekend Collective. This is smart money.
My guest is Sylvie thrush Marsh. She's a chief evangelist
at my HR, and we're talking employment basically HR. If
you want to be more look at it more broad,
but contracts in particular. Actually, I've got just a simple
(17:10):
question back in the day. I mean, I know plenty
of people who actually meet each other in the workplace.
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they provide as also supporters of this show. So yeah, right, Sylvie.
Can you ask someone out in the workplace any longer?
Speaker 4 (18:47):
It's not illegal, but I would proceed with caution, really
absolutely so. One of the things that we need to
be really conscious about are imbalances of power in the workplace.
If you're both barristas and you are colleagues, and you
work similar chefs, and you ask the other person out
and that keen to go out with you, there's nothing
wrong with that. I would encourage you to think about
(19:08):
disclosing that relationship to your boss so that they become aware.
Worst case scenario, they say no and you now have
this kind of awkward wish. I could sink into the
flow dynamic with someone you have to share a pretty
cramped space with. So I would never tell anyone not
to follow their dreams and follow their heart. But certainly
when we are thinking about workplace dynamics, we're thinking about
(19:29):
if things do go sideways, especially if there's someone who's
junior to you or who reports to you, and those cases,
I would say it's an absolute no.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
So actually, I guess to be honest, when is asking
someone out and an appropriate asking the matter? As opposed
to God, I'm knacked, it was exhausting. You want a
beer after the you know, do you want to ever
beer after the shift? I mean that's not necessarily asking
someone out on a date either. Is it the way
you do it as well?
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I think it depends a bit on what the norm
for the workplace is. So I mean at my AhR,
we'll have a couple of glasses of one on a
Friday afternoon. Sometimes we'll go out and do social event
time Monday. Hi stories are wild, but anyway, so there
are totally circumstances where hanging out with people socially. I mean,
I've made friends at work. I don't think it's I
think it's lovely when you have people at work who
(20:14):
care about you and who you care about. But I
think introducing romantic entanglements adds a layer of complexity to
an environment you might not be able to leave easily,
and then you might not be able to manage easily.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
How much can reasonable human behavior just monitor this stuff?
So for instance, look, I won't go back to my
own the theater days because that's a god that plum me.
They would have I think everyone would have been a
branch of HR then. But I mean, so for instance,
if you have established you know, you've got a work
colleague who you've established really good sort of relationship with,
(20:49):
as you know, sharing stories and just becoming mates at
the workplace and things, how much can people rely on
just the fact that relationships can evolve. I would because
I would imagine you in caution. You know, if you've
just met, if you've just arrived at the workplace as
a new person who's come in and you think that
they're hot, don't just cold call us them on a day.
(21:13):
You should probably spend a few months getting to know them.
And if you worked out that there was some sort
of vibe, there is that safer or still risky.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
I work in HR, so I see a lot of
ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff. So I
am absolutely convinced that there are very sensible, very mature
people out there who have good eq and who can
recognize when they're getting some signals from someone who might
be into them men, So pursuing that is totally appropriate.
Having said that, I think it is common sense is
(21:43):
not as common as we would like to think, and
so often when it is a work relationship, there are
other dynamics that you're managing in terms of not all
of us have the flexibility and freedom to leave work
and find another one if that job doesn't suit us
or we don't get on with the people there. So
my radar for risk is tingling. I think if you
(22:03):
have a really good read on the situation, you have
a good relationship with this person, you've both built up
some trust that you would both feel comfortable saying no
if you were invited out for a beer or no
if you were asked on a date, then that might
be something you want to consider. I personally wouldn't want
to be really really confident that I had a good
read on this person's level of comfort with me.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Actually would be honest. If you don't know the answer
to the question, you should never answer ask it. Probably
if you know that there's a vibe there. I mean,
I'm just curious because I just remember back in the day,
It's like I thought, I know the number of people
who met in the workplace. I don't know how often
people would meet in the workplace these days. I mean,
do we know how often that goes on.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
With this way?
Speaker 4 (22:41):
I would love that data because I'm a massive data nerd,
but I don't know that it exists. I think it
used to be really common. I've got friends who couples
with the people they met at work. But I think,
like you say, if you don't know the answer to
the question, maybe don't ask it. And certainly, the number
of times we've had people hauled into kind of nali
hr conversations when they thought they were being friendly, all
(23:02):
their attentions were welcomed, and it turned out the other
person felt too uncomfortable or too threatened or too ill
at ease to kind of tell them to back off.
That's kind of the worst place this can end up.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
How about let's get on to some of the other things.
I've got all sorts of things we could chip in
on there.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
But.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
The Employment Relations Act, there's been an amendment, and I
want to dig into this one the shakeup of employment
law which introduces a new gateway test for contractors, a
two hundred thousand dollars income cap on unjustified dismiss or
personal grievances, and reduced remedies for employees who commit serious
(23:44):
misconduct conduct. Okay, the one that stood out to me
when I first heard about it was why should the
fact that someone's earning a good income mean that somehow
they can't access personal grievances?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
What the hell?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
What is that and how did it come about? And yeah,
what's your advice on it?
Speaker 4 (24:04):
So we're following the law in Australia here for quite
a number of years now they've had an income cap
on personal grievances or in Australian law of action related
to your dismissal.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
And so the.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Policy thinking is that anyone who's earning more than two
hundred grand a year, which includes salary bonuses, use of
company cutley, all of your income considered in one package,
those people are probably pretty significant and important to the company.
They're probably general managers, managing directors, principles, chief executives, or
very skilled technical specialists. And so if those people suck
(24:38):
at their job or are dickheads and are not good
for the business. Being able to move them on is
really important to the ability of small businesses to respond
to these people who are just a profit for the
role and so removing and employees access to an unjustified
dismissal personal graand it's not all pgs, it's just once
related to their dismissal is intended to give particularly small
(25:01):
and medium employers more flexibility around managing these very important,
kind of highly paid resources who might not be delivering
what needs to be delibered or behaving a part.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So is it enabling a business basically to go listen,
it's not working out, see you.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
That's the intention. Yeah, with the idea that if you
are earning more than two hundred grand a year, you
can probably wear it, you know, like it would be
different for a person earning minimum wage to get an advocate,
get a lawyer to challenge the dismissal. But the combination
of people probably having some resources under their belt, and
also again the significance of these roles where people are
(25:38):
likely to be pulling down two hundred grand a year.
The policy decision was about saying, actually, we think it's
more important for small and medium employers in particular, to
be able to move quickly if the people in these
roles aren't a good fit, versus having to go through
sometimes protracted kind of performance management processes.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Right, we'll dig into that a bit more, actually, because
we welcome to add your feedback on that, because on
the face of it, don't like that idea very much
at all. But anyway, let's take some calls alf Hello,
all right, ah, yeah, good, thanks.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
How I've got a quick question. So I'm a contractor.
I'm a worker as contracted to thirty two hours a week.
I get paid fortnightly. It's a grand table of sixty
four hours of fortnight. I'm a shift worker. So this week,
this is the first week. I've done fifty eight hours
(26:31):
this week, so my question and then I've got sixteen
hours next week. So my question to my manager today
was done fifty eight hours. Do I get there twenty
four hours over time? Because I've got over my thirty
two hours for the week. Now. She came back to
me and said, no, you are Are you sixty four
(26:52):
hours of fortnight? And I said no, I'm thirty two
hours a week and she says, no, it's sixty four
hours of fortnight. I said, no, my contract is thirty two.
She said, no, the way we run that hours a fortnight,
and you'll be doing seventy two hours in a fortnight,
so you'll be in times of eight hours over time.
And I said, no, that's that's not right. So there's
(27:16):
this conversation today when I was sitting on your radio.
Here again we're not perfect timing.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Oh well, here we go. So your contract says just
does it say what are the words in your contract?
Does it say you are contract one.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Of that at the moment work around?
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yes, okay, I see what you said earlier on. I
didn't quite read the whole on of it.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Okay, I'm handled over to Sylvie.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Sylvie cure to alf thanks for calling him. I think
the language of your employment agreement is going to be
really important here. So if it says thirty two hours
per week, anytime above thirty two hours and the week
will be paid at an overtime rate of let's say
time and a half, then I would agree with you.
In a week you have done more than thirty two hours,
(27:59):
and so anytime above thirty two hours should be paid
at time and a half. Having said that if your
employment agreement says that you work a sixty four hour
fortnight and any hours above sixty four hours in a
fortnight will be paid at time and a half, let's
say one point five times your normal rate to pay,
then Unfortunately, I think I agree with your manager. So
(28:23):
the wording of your documents really important here. I would
encourage you to dig it up and see what the
details are. But it is possible that you might do
sixty four hours in week one and zero hours in
week two, and if your employment agreement says hours over
sixty four in a fortnight are considered over time, then
none of those hours will attract overtime.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Right, No, thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, time to read the contract. Al.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, one more quick question. Can I tune down? After
I do the thirty two hours for the week? Can
I turn down the rest of the rest of the
hours that they got me to do?
Speaker 1 (29:02):
It?
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Maybe eight hours this week killed.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Or so, whatever the quota is, Once you've reached it,
can you turn it down.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
So they core again? I'm sorry to direct you back
to your employment agreement here, ALF, but there is likely
to be something called an availability clause, and it might
be in your hours of work clause, but it will
say something like the employee cannot turn down additional hours
and they will be paid a bit extra for the
fact that they can't turn the hours down, or it
(29:31):
will say additional hours are optional and the employee you
can choose to accept them or not. So again, the
wording's really important here. I wish I could be more
specific in terms of giving you advice, But the first
place to go would be probably the hours of work
clause in your employment agreement. And have a look for
the piece that talks about availability or additional hours or overtime,
(29:54):
some of that kind of language, and see what it
says about either those hours being compulsory or about whether
you can decline them.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, are going to You're going to have to read
that contract, palf.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
How will be doing that tomorrow? Good?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Only mate, all the best. So, actually, are there are
there are there restrictions on the amount of hours that
people can be contracted to do, because somebody can say
I'm contracting you for every hour that they know that
God gives sort of thing, not they want to quit
anything religiously. But is there a limit to depending on
whether you're a contractor or an employee as well.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Broadly, no, so there are some quite highly regulated industries
where there are some restrictions around how many hours you
can do, kind of the length of time off shift
basically before your next one starts. So we're thinking trucking
like anything where there pretty gnarly safety regulations. Broadly, though,
there's no cap or limit on how many hours of
work you can contract someone for. Typically we see thirty
(30:52):
seven point five forty forty two point five hour agreements
as being full time. We do see them up to fifty.
I've seen one up to seventy for a seasonal worker
who was working the festival over summer and was engaged
on a fixed term agreement with really intense hours. Because
you know you're hosting a festival, there's quite a lot
to do. So broadly, as long as you are not
(31:12):
putting someone to work in ways that are going to
affect their health and safety. So contracting someone for twenty
four point seven, what's the quick mouth on the one
hundred and sixty something hours a week, that would be allegal?
Sixty eight one hundred and sixty eight, thank you, that
would be illegal because there's just no way a person
can do that for more than a day or two
before they start experiencing very significant fatigue, which would be
a massive health and safety risk. So broadly speaking, no
(31:35):
caps unless there is a particular regulation or a particular
kind of health and safety piece to be mindful of.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Right, if you'd like to give us a call. Sylvie
Thrushmash is our guest today. She's from my HR, and
any questions you've got about employment contracts or the workplace
or HR, give us a call. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty.
There's a few things we're going to dig into. We've
only scratched the service of them, actually, but eight hundred
eighty ten eighty is the number. We'll be back in
(32:01):
just a moment. News Talk ZB News Talk, Gosh. Time
is flying, by the way, Look on the contract thing, Sylvie,
Sylvie Thrushmash from my HR. So there's that thing about
not being a two hundred thousand dollars income cap on
unjustified dismissal. It ties into the question around what I mean,
(32:24):
can you contract in if you're someone who's look, I'm
getting paid. I'm not, by the way, I'm just an
imagined scenario. Say you're on three hundred thousand bucks a year,
and you know you've structured your personal affairs and your
mortgage and everything your lifestyle around a job. Can you
contract back into that personal grievance procedure? Because I am
sure as hell would be what's the answer on that.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
The short answer is yes. So the law says that
if the employee and employer agree, then the employee can
opt into that personal grievance for unjustified dismissal pathway. So
if there ever was any shady dealings when it came
to terminating them or ending their employment, they would have
access to that remedy in terms of raising a PG
for their dismissal. And it's going to be interesting to
(33:09):
see how it plays out, because if you're earning more
than it's either one hundred and fifty or one hundred
and sixty grand a year, you're in the top five
percent of income earners in New Zealand. So if you're
over two hundred, you know you're in a bit of
an upper echelon again. And so I would think that
these employees or these people would be pretty highly skilled,
pretty hard to find, and employers, if they were good,
(33:30):
would want to keep a hold of them. So it'll
be interesting to see if in these negotiations someone goes
for a role that's two hundred and twenty grand or
two hundred and eighty grand and says, I'm the only
person you're talking to for this highly specified medical research role.
I would very much like to have this personal grievance
remedy in my employment agreement. And I think I have
enough leverage in this negotiating process to make that happen.
(33:52):
So yes, employers and employees can opt into having them, because.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
I sort of imagine you'd be a mug not to.
I mean, it's interesting you use the word opt in
because I have over feeling you'd be dragging the employer
into that. But if you're important, and if you are
valued at being able to be paid three hundred thousand
dollars a year, I would have thought that. If that,
you've got a very strong bargaining cas It's like, listen,
I'm not happy with this screevance thing. You're not going
(34:17):
to dump me without some notice, so we're going to
build notice. And I mean that would almost be a
take it or leave it sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Typically when you're in these highly paid roles as well,
when it is time to be moved on for a
variety of reasons, some of which are kosher and some aren't.
There typically is a settlement agreement of some kind anyway,
so it would be again the impact of this, I
think from a headline's perspective, is quite quite impactful. It's
quite high catching in terms of the impact it's going
(34:45):
to have on these highly skilled, typically pretty switched on
and educated people to make sure that they aren't treated unfairly.
It's not clear to me that it's going to be
as devastating as it kind of seems on the face
of it.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
How much.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
What are the other particular things that are obvious that
people would assume, Oh, this is going to be looked
after by the law. But what are the things that
you should make sure is in your i'm a contract
that might not actually be covered by the.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Law, anything you want to be able to enforce later
down the line. Is kind of the high level piece.
So those are nine compulsory clauses I mentioned earlier tend
to be the tip of the iceberg. So the compulsory
clauses tend to include things like the job title, the
position description, an indication of where the job is to
be performed like a plain language explanation of what to
do if things go sideways. Beyond that, all kinds of
(35:29):
things get captured in employment agreements. So if you want
to have a trial period or a probation period for
your new starter, you absolutely must have that written in.
If you want to have a clause that talks about
your employee's obligations to be a good colleague and to
take kind of care when it comes to managing their
duties and to again not be a dickhead. If there
(35:50):
are pieces in there around confidentiality and privacy, like a
lot of this stuff isn't compulsory, but it's certainly very
standard practice. And so when we're thinking about employment agreements, yes,
they should be a living document that you revisit at
least every year just to check to see that it's
still kind of captures the t's and sees of this
person's like what their day to day actually looks like.
(36:11):
And from a risk management kind of compliance perspective, there
are a bunch of things that you would want to
be including to make sure that if the proverbial hits
the fan, you have all this documented so that you
can manage things with this employee f Bush Game Show.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
I actually got a text on that one. I'm saying,
my wife works for a corporate who opted out of
the stupid law. I imagine that. I mean if people
have suddenly had the protection of grievance and then the
law's withdrawn, Actually, what would happen? So I'm working, You're
on a high salary, and the law has been that
everyone has a personal grievance, suddenly they change it. Can
(36:47):
where does it leave people who have negotiated a contract
which doesn't allow for it because they didn't know the
law change was coming.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
The law gave a twelve month kind of negotiation window
for this to take place. So anyone who is entering
into a new employment agreement after that I think was
the February twenty sixth, this law came into place by
default that opted out, only say negotiate Otherwise, anyone who
was already employed on a two hundred K plus contract
as a February twenty twenty six there is a twelvemonth
(37:13):
window to negotiate with their employer. What happens otherwise their
existing teas and cs remain the same, I believe. So
there is a there is a time frame to negotiaate.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Okay, high Zb, my contract allows me to take a
work vehicle I can take home. My boss has just
given us notice that we can no longer take the
work vehicles home due to the amount of breaking and
insurance issues we now have to drive to and from work.
The only parking is paid parking tour undred meters up
the road. Should the company compensate us for the parking
seas Ben, I would imagine on the face of it,
(37:44):
if your contract includes a company car, then yes, Hey.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Ben, thanks for your text. If an employer wants to
remove a benefit like a company vehicle that you can
drive to and from work, which, as you've kind of identified,
also meant that you didn't have to pay for parking,
they need to go through a consultation process with you
to remove that benefit, and a part of that process
will need to involve some form of compensation for taking
the work vehicle off you. When we support our customers
(38:11):
to do this, this sometimes looks like a one off
payment to acknowledge that there are going to be some
extra costs. Sometimes the company will pay for parking for
a period of time to kind of ease the transition
into this. Sometimes they'll offer to bump everyone's salaries by
a certain amount to offset the removal of the work vehicle.
So on the face of it, yes, I would say
that your employer should have been compensating you for the
(38:31):
removal of the work vehicle.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
What's a worth vehicle? A work vehicle worth? Ah? Man, Well,
it's quite a lot. Because if you suddenly have to
go out and you might not have a car, I
mean your company car. Okay, we're changing that. It's like, okay,
well that's got to be a few thousand bucks a
year or at least pay for the new vehicle.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
On.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
There are some very complicated fringe benefit tax calculations that
accountants are very well placed to answer.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Here.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
Typically, if it was a company vehicle that was fully
personal use, so you could use it to get to
and from work, but you could use it to go
to Tatanaki on the weekend for a long weekend from Auckland,
and that would be kind of starting at the ten
to twelve K range up to kind of twenty to
twenty four def depending on the value of the car itself.
So if you think about a twelve k a year
premium being attached to having a company car with full
(39:17):
personal use. That would be a good place to start
assessing the value of their benefit.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
We're going to come back in a moment and talk
a quick talk about restraint of trade, which pops up
here and there and tries to get insisted upon. But
I do wonder how enforceable it is these days. It's
eight and a half minutes to six news talk, said b.
My guest is Sylvie Thrushmash from my HR Gosh. Time
has flown so we've only got a couple of minutes left.
(39:42):
But I meant to get onto this ages ago, but
a text has come in restraints of trade. How defensive
are the defensibill are they? Example, I'm looking to hire
someone with one year previous experience. Their contract is a
restraint of trade stating six months non solicits twelve month
non compete in twelvemonth non dealing. They're based in Auckland,
but the restraint is nationwide and they are not. I
(40:05):
can't there's a type out at the end of it. Anyway,
it sounds like a very restrictive restraint of trade. Sylvie.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
On the face of it, I would say unenforceable again,
please go and seek legal advice for the specifics of
your circumstances. But restraints of trade are a bit of
a bustard because they stop a person from earning a living,
and so therefore they have to be very very carefully
applied to make sure we don't just have employers being
quite vindictive with them.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
So if you feel though you're on a job which
doesn't pay a lot, you don't have a lot of resources,
and you've got an employer who's trying to insist on
a restraint of trade, you think I can't afford to
fight this sort of thing, which is a lot of
it's a bullying thing. Basically, what advice would you have
to people for people who are who really it's not
going to be enforced.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
I would get a lawyer to look over it, and
a lawyer might cost you a few hundred dollars but
could save you thousands of dollars of lost income and
also a peace of mind. If you don't have specific,
defensible commercial reasons to be under a restraint of trade,
they probably can't encorse one. It can't just be because
they don't want you to go work for a competitor.
(41:10):
You have to have access to protectable commercial information that
your employer has an interest in defending for barristas.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
For kind of yeah, and not just cause we can
stick it in.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Okay, very difficult.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Gosh, time flies when you're having fun. Sylvie, thanks so
much for joining us, and we'll look forward to the
next time I go to Tim. Thanks for having me okay,
and thanks my producer Locke. We'll be back. I actually
Andrew Dickins. I'm having a few days off. Andrew dickinss
in next week catch us Stone Sundout. Sex is next.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
For more from the Weekend Collective, listen live to News
Talk Said Be weekends from three pm, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks,
EDB No one, Side, silent.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
All much almost wide.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Selling and.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Welcome back to the show. I'm Tim Beverridges. Is the
Weekend Collective or welcome in? Should I say obviously it's
welcome in introducing myself right, this is smart money And
as I say you every hour, we want your cause,
you're welcome to join us, inviting your calls and participate
on one hundred eighty ten eighty text nine two nine two.
And as I say, I feel the need to repeat
(01:10):
this just a little bit and I'll flog this horse
for a while. You don't have to call up with
the answer to the meaning of life if you simply
want to contribute to the conversation, or you've got a question,
in which case you may for our guests, who's joining us?
Because we never talk about employment contracts and any questions
you've got around it the ones that I actually had
(01:31):
to start with, because you know, it can be a
bit daunting when you've got to sign a contract, especially
young job seekers. You get a pile of documents. Do
you even read it? Do you just assume, well, other
people have signed it? It must be Okay, did you
read if you're listening right now, did you read your
employment contract? Or did you just turn to the patriots
says how much you can get paid and went, oh, yeah,
that'll do, and just ignore the rest because I mean
(01:55):
I read mine a few times. But that's because I've
studied law and I thought I should. I just did
it because I thought I should. And the problem wise,
I mean, if you didn't like it, well, how much
can you do about these things? So we're going to
talk about employment contracts, any questions you've got. But also
a lot of people assume that the law will look
after things, So we're going to dig into are there
(02:18):
things that should be in your contract because the law
doesn't look after it. So yeah, eight hundred and eighty
ten eighty and joining me, she is it's a new
guest on our show, not new in the media. Necessarily
I'm interested in her calling card. She works for my
HR and she is described here in the introduction as
their chief evangelist, and her name is Sylvie Thrushmash and
(02:41):
she joins me. Now, Sylvie, get afternoon.
Speaker 4 (02:42):
Gotter, Tim, thanks for having me chief evangelist.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
What's that?
Speaker 4 (02:48):
My role is to work in with our sales and
marketing team on behalf of the business, so I'm the
face of the business. Typically, I am an HR employment
law person by training. I've been with the business for
ten years, and after a couple of quite gnarly leadership roles,
I said, I'm very tired. Can I do something a
bit front? And so I tend to show up in
our content a lot, doing events and webinars and socials
(03:09):
and conversations like this, and also working with our sales
team to help talk to new customers and be the
HR voice in the conversation.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
How did you get involved in HR and employment, Lauren,
Because I mean, it's an interesting niche to get involved,
and so tell us a bit about you. How you
get how'd you get where you are now?
Speaker 4 (03:27):
I had part time jobs from quite a young age,
and I did read my employment agreements because I was
a delicate little nerd who really liked this kind of stuff.
And when I got to university and didn't quite have
the grades for law school, I still really love employment law.
It tickles my brain in the right way, and I
really like working with people and solving problems. So HR
(03:48):
was kind of a natural fit. For my interest HR.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
So where I mean you're When people hear HR, I
don't I think they don't hear anything in particular when
they hear my HR. But when they hear the word HR,
it's the thing that people joke about if they're about
to tell a dodgy joke in the workplace, it's like, oh, maybe,
I mean not because of what is HR? Because some
people just think it's the place where you if you've
asked a colleague out and appropriately on a date, then
(04:13):
that's where you're headed. But what is HR?
Speaker 4 (04:15):
That is certainly part of our role is to help
our business leaders and managers enforce appropriate behavior in the workplace.
But it is a really broad umbreller of disciplines which
includes everything from recruitment and selection, so choosing who you
bring into your business, employee onboarding, making sure that your
staff have the tools to kind of get up and
run in quickly, through to remuneration resource planning. The point
(04:40):
end of HR does tend to be things like restructuring
and terminations and managing situations like when employees are sick
for a long time, how do you manage those sorts
of things. But we also tend to get lumped with
this cultural piece. People talk about people in culture a lot,
as though the rule setters and rule enforces are the
best people to look after culture in an organization. I
don't think we are. But it's a very broad umbrella
(05:02):
which covers pretty much everything to do with people in
processes in the business.
Speaker 2 (05:06):
So my HR, who you work for? You predominantly work
for employears?
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Yeah, that's right. So we've got about seventeen hundred employers
around New Zealand that we support. Those include brands like
how Pizza and the Breast Cancer Foundation and the Warriors.
But typically our customers are smaller medium businesses who want
to get HR right. So they are big enough to
have some people problems having all of their employment contracts
you know, tucked away and the glovebox kind of isn't
(05:33):
working for them anymore. So they bring us on board
to help them get their HR up to speed and
to make sure that they are as far as they can,
following the law and doing right by their people.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
Actually, gosh, when I know that, you describe it, what
a brilliant idea for business. Now, seriously, because there'd be
so many smaller medium businesses who they just want to
get the work in and do the work, and the
shark infested waters of the legislation of HR must be
really difficult to negotiate, especially.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
When you're a smaller business having you know, twenty to
fifty staff. Having a full time HR person is incredibly
they're not very useful. I don't know what I would
do full time in a business of thirty people. So
lawyers are quite expensive. Consultants can be a bit hidden miss.
So for us, kind of having a consistent month to
month relationship with actually like a subscription. It's exactly like
a subscription, that's right. And especially when you're a plumber
(06:20):
you aren't running a plumbing business because you're fantastic and
employment law, or if you're a graphic designer again, knowing
that holidays act and now it's not going to be
kind of your skill set. So knowing where to turn
when you need some expert support is the is the
gap that we tend to fill.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
God, it's a no brainer. Now, I think, what a
brilliant idea. I know it's been I know my actual
has been around for a while, by the way, but
it's funny, I've never actually reflected on on exactly you
know that just the genius of an idea of providing
a service to all those small to medium businesses. And
I don't mean to be polishing your apple deliberately, that's
just yeah, how how complic Now? I know that when
(06:58):
you get into a contract. There've been dealings I've had
throughout my career where and because I've worked as a
producer of concerts and I engage people, but it's always
on a one off sort of contract, and if I
to be honest, I've always done it by a letter
and an understanding in relationships because it's a very intimate
sort of space I'm working, and so it's a heavily
(07:21):
trust reliant model. But I also know that as soon
as you decide let's do a contract, then you can
disappear in the woods, into the weeds and never get
anything done. How complex does an employment contract need to be? So?
Speaker 4 (07:31):
At its real fundamentals? In New Zealand, an employment agreement
needs to have nine clauses in it and that's it.
You can get away with a one page employment agreement.
Speaker 2 (07:40):
Which I want to good.
Speaker 4 (07:41):
Yes, that's at its basics. I don't know if I
would recommend that approach. Typically we see employment documents in
the kind of ten to twelve pages. But getting them
right is really important from a hygiene perspective. If they
are not in place, or if they are not particularly
robust or very well thought through, they can cause you
to trip up later down the line and cause problems
(08:03):
in the employment relationship later on. But you can have
the most beautiful, spick and span, perfectly typed, evenly spaced
employment agreement.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
And it's not the format is just amazing. The colors
are there, the perfect font.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
The perfect font, your brand's on it. That is not
going to make sure you have a really robust root
employment relationship. So it needs to be there from a
pragmatic kind of managing risk perspective. But if you're relying
on a beautifully typed employment agreement to set out productive
relationships with your staff, you're not going far enough.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
So how much conversation, I mean, how much time should
an employer spend explaining an employment contract to the employee
or is it just the employees should just say listen,
you need to take the same and read it thoroughly,
full stop.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
There are some legal guidelines around this actually, so you
need to give your employees a quote reasonable time unquote
to review any employment documents you put in front of them.
What reasonable time looks like is deliberately stretchy to account
for kind of different people circumstances. But you should be
able to talk them through the key points, answer any
questions that they have, and make sure that they've got
(09:14):
time to go and talk to the union if they're
a member of the union, or talk to a friend,
or or pay a lawyer or an advocate to review it.
Typically it's not on the employer to make sure the
employee perfectly understands every single clause in their employment agreement,
but they should make themselves available to answer any questions.
And typically we see employment agreements that are written in
(09:35):
plain English. Again, often are a more accessible and pragmatic
stat to an employee.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Well, I mean, plain English is the way the law's
gone for a while, hasn't it.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
So you can.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Few of the few less notwithstandings, yes exactly.
Speaker 4 (09:50):
And heretofore is and there rafters and trying to stay
away from their language.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Took me a while to work out what notwithstanding meant. Actually,
so the confidentiality of agreements, A lot of agreements have
you know, the sug is confidential, And yet I don't
know how enforceable that is, because if you've got a
friend or an advisor to look at these things. I mean,
(10:14):
what's the limits of if I was signing a contract
and somebody said, well, you can run it past a friend, well,
or two friends who happen to be lawyers or whatever.
How does What's how enforceable is confidentiality of a contract,
especially when it comes to the person who is has
been given the contract, because you know, there's the rule
(10:36):
about whoever drafts the contract. You know, they're the ones
who have got probably got a higher standard applied to
you know, the way it's drafted. But what does confidentiality mean?
Speaker 4 (10:45):
There's a couple of different answers to that question. So
I'll start with the big picture on first. Okay, So
an employee's relationship with their employer is confidential, So details
about their their address, or particular perks they might have negotiated,
any of that kind of stuff, any discipline reaction that
might have been undertaken. All of that is confident that
neither party can kind of talk about it in other contexts.
(11:08):
Having said that, when you receive an employment agreement, you
are very welcome to go and show that employment agreement
to someone for the purposes of seeking advice. So pasting
photos of it on Instagram and asking for people to
give your feedback probably doesn't meet that standard. But taking
it to your cousin who's lawyer, or to your auntie
who's in the union, that's appropriate because you're doing it
(11:30):
for the purposes of getting advice and getting some feedball.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
What if they don't talk about it because and you're
not particularly bothered, but your employer.
Speaker 4 (11:37):
Is, it would be really, really difficult to trace the
pattern of information sharing back to the employee. Typically there's
a bit of an expectation of confidentiality on the part
of the person you're showing it too. But ultimately, if
an employer was able to say, Sylvie went and showed
her employment agreement to her cousin, her cousin went to
(11:57):
a cocktail party and talked to a competitor about it,
any of those kinds of dynamics. Ultimately, because the relationship
between the employee and the cousin wasn't covered by a
legal agreement or buy an agreement, that they would be
treating it confidentially, Particularly, the employee could be liable. I've
never seen it pursued that far, but in the hypothetical
(12:17):
that's something that could.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Happen, because yeah, it's an interesting one. Obviously, if you
talk to a lawyer about it, there's a natural relationship
with confidentiality. But if you just talk to a couple
of a couple of friends who've been in a through
a similar situation, I don't know what expectation there can
be on those people that should be sheeted home to you.
And if they don't do their part of it and
(12:39):
keeping it quiet, how much should you bear the brunt
of that? That's funny one, doesn't it.
Speaker 4 (12:43):
I've never seen an employment agreement that was so scandalous
or so salacious that the benefit of the cousin going
and running their mouth about at a party would outweigh
their damage to their relationship. But maybe there is one
out there and I just hadn't come across it yet.
But typically not something we see and forced a lot.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Well, by the way, where where is the law at
with money? The money side of things? You know a
lot of times people employers don't want other employees to
know what each one's getting paid, because then they'll all
want whoever's on the most.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
There was a law change last year about this, So
the Employee Employment Relations Employee Remuneration Disclosure Act, which is
a mouthful at the best of times, Little on a Sunday,
says that employees now can talk about their pay, or
their perks, or their benefits and can't be asked to
keep that confidential. So, before the twenty twenty five law change,
(13:33):
lots of employment agreements had a clause in them which said,
the terms of this employment agreement are confidential. Yet they
can't be discussed elsewhere again except for the purposes of
seeking advice if you are going and getting a lawyer
to review them. But now those clauses can remain in writing,
but they are legally unenforceable. So employees can talk amongst
themselves about what their pay is, whether they've got a
(13:54):
pay raise or not, and employers don't have any mechanism
for enforcing that. Again, practically, even before this law change,
employees talk. I've talked to people about what my remuneration
has been. Kind of outside of a work context, it's
very difficult to prove that an employee was in breach
of those t's and c's unless it comes up in
(14:14):
kind of quite limited employment context. But now the law
is really clear employees can talk about pay to anyone
at any time and not be punished for it.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Actually, this is interesting. I mean, you're welcome to call
us on this if you like, But I have a
theory that you know, you've everyone wants to feel free
to talk about their remuneration, but they just want to
know what the other person's getting that. I wonder how
many people actually have talked about what they're getting paid.
I don't hear any talk within this place about how
much you get paid, because everyone's nervous that they might
(14:43):
be on the good wicket and it'll impinge their ability
to get more money because everyone else has had to catch.
Speaker 4 (14:49):
Up to, you know, or nervous they're on the lowest wicket.
Maybe if you were one of a pool of twenty
producers who was earning the lowest rate, that might be
a bit uncomfortable to acknowledge.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Do we know, actually how many people would have talked
about it? Since there is there any sort of no
one's done a survey, not.
Speaker 4 (15:05):
That I've seen. It would be really difficult to get
access to that data unless you were looking at like
a self reported survey of some kind. I haven't seen one.
There might be one out there, but it would be
interesting over the next couple of years to see how
many personal grievances come up where an employee has talked
about their pay, their employer has retaliated in some way,
(15:25):
told them off, taking them through a disciplinary process, and
then the employees lodged a PG on the grounds that
they were retaliated against for discussing their pay. I suspect
we won't see many, but it's early days. We might
get a couple of them come through.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
Do you guys also, do people employees seek you out
for advice at all or how does that work?
Speaker 4 (15:43):
Was it mainly on social media and in the comments
on our content. Absolutely we get lots of employees commenting
telling us that HR are the worst people ever and
we're just there to protect the employer. When employees come
to us kind of through our more official channels, we're
very quick to say that we act for the employer.
We don't take employee employees on for advice. Employers pay us.
It would frankly be a conflict of interest us to
(16:05):
be trying to advise their employees, and.
Speaker 2 (16:08):
So if somebody is working for someone who wasn't one
of your clients of an employee, want.
Speaker 4 (16:11):
To take them on? No, we're employee only.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Okay, right, I eight hundred eighty ten eighty. But would
you give advice to employees today?
Speaker 1 (16:19):
Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (16:20):
So, here's the exception to the rule. I eight hundred
eighty ten eighty. Any questions you've got about your employment contract?
I eight hundred eighty ten eighty Text nine to nine two.
My guest is Sylvie thrush Marsh. She's described as my
HR's chief evangelist. Will be back in just a moment,
but the lines are open, so jump on the blower.
I've got a few texts to get onto the start up,
(16:41):
and I've got a few questions for Sylvie myself. But
you can get ahead of me if you give.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Us a call.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
It is twenty three past five. News Talk said, be
welcome to back to the Weekend Collective. This is smart money.
My guest is Sylvie thrush Marsh. She's a chief evangelist
at my HR, and we're talking employment basically HR. If
you want to be more look at it more broad,
but contracts in particular. Actually, I've got just a simple
(17:10):
question back in the day. I mean, I know plenty
of people who actually meet each other in the workplace.
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We had to let people know about the wonderful service
(18:37):
they provide as also supporters of this show. So yeah, right, Sylvie.
Can you ask someone out in the workplace any longer?
Speaker 4 (18:47):
It's not illegal, but I would proceed with caution, really
absolutely so. One of the things that we need to
be really conscious about are imbalances of power in the workplace.
If you're both barristas and you are colleagues, and you
work similar chefs, and you ask the other person out
and that keen to go out with you, there's nothing
wrong with that. I would encourage you to think about
(19:08):
disclosing that relationship to your boss so that they become aware.
Worst case scenario, they say no and you now have
this kind of awkward wish. I could sink into the
flow dynamic with someone you have to share a pretty
cramped space with. So I would never tell anyone not
to follow their dreams and follow their heart. But certainly
when we are thinking about workplace dynamics, we're thinking about
(19:29):
if things do go sideways, especially if there's someone who's
junior to you or who reports to you, and those cases,
I would say it's an absolute no.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
So actually, I guess to be honest, when is asking
someone out and an appropriate asking the matter? As opposed
to God, I'm knacked, it was exhausting. You want a
beer after the you know, do you want to ever
beer after the shift? I mean that's not necessarily asking
someone out on a date either. Is it the way
you do it as well?
Speaker 4 (19:54):
I think it depends a bit on what the norm
for the workplace is. So I mean at my AhR,
we'll have a couple of glasses of one on a
Friday afternoon. Sometimes we'll go out and do social event
time Monday. Hi stories are wild, but anyway, so there
are totally circumstances where hanging out with people socially. I mean,
I've made friends at work. I don't think it's I
think it's lovely when you have people at work who
(20:14):
care about you and who you care about. But I
think introducing romantic entanglements adds a layer of complexity to
an environment you might not be able to leave easily,
and then you might not be able to manage easily.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
How much can reasonable human behavior just monitor this stuff?
So for instance, look, I won't go back to my
own the theater days because that's a god that plum me.
They would have I think everyone would have been a
branch of HR then. But I mean, so for instance,
if you have established you know, you've got a work
colleague who you've established really good sort of relationship with,
(20:49):
as you know, sharing stories and just becoming mates at
the workplace and things, how much can people rely on
just the fact that relationships can evolve. I would because
I would imagine you in caution. You know, if you've
just met, if you've just arrived at the workplace as
a new person who's come in and you think that
they're hot, don't just cold call us them on a day.
(21:13):
You should probably spend a few months getting to know them.
And if you worked out that there was some sort
of vibe, there is that safer or still risky.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
I work in HR, so I see a lot of
ambulance at the bottom of the cliff stuff. So I
am absolutely convinced that there are very sensible, very mature
people out there who have good eq and who can
recognize when they're getting some signals from someone who might
be into them men, So pursuing that is totally appropriate.
Having said that, I think it is common sense is
(21:43):
not as common as we would like to think, and
so often when it is a work relationship, there are
other dynamics that you're managing in terms of not all
of us have the flexibility and freedom to leave work
and find another one if that job doesn't suit us
or we don't get on with the people there. So
my radar for risk is tingling. I think if you
(22:03):
have a really good read on the situation, you have
a good relationship with this person, you've both built up
some trust that you would both feel comfortable saying no
if you were invited out for a beer or no
if you were asked on a date, then that might
be something you want to consider. I personally wouldn't want
to be really really confident that I had a good
read on this person's level of comfort with me.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
Actually would be honest. If you don't know the answer
to the question, you should never answer ask it. Probably
if you know that there's a vibe there. I mean,
I'm just curious because I just remember back in the day,
It's like I thought, I know the number of people
who met in the workplace. I don't know how often
people would meet in the workplace these days. I mean,
do we know how often that goes on.
Speaker 3 (22:40):
With this way?
Speaker 4 (22:41):
I would love that data because I'm a massive data nerd,
but I don't know that it exists. I think it
used to be really common. I've got friends who couples
with the people they met at work. But I think,
like you say, if you don't know the answer to
the question, maybe don't ask it. And certainly, the number
of times we've had people hauled into kind of nali
hr conversations when they thought they were being friendly, all
(23:02):
their attentions were welcomed, and it turned out the other
person felt too uncomfortable or too threatened or too ill
at ease to kind of tell them to back off.
That's kind of the worst place this can end up.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
How about let's get on to some of the other things.
I've got all sorts of things we could chip in
on there.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
But.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
The Employment Relations Act, there's been an amendment, and I
want to dig into this one the shakeup of employment
law which introduces a new gateway test for contractors, a
two hundred thousand dollars income cap on unjustified dismiss or
personal grievances, and reduced remedies for employees who commit serious
(23:44):
misconduct conduct. Okay, the one that stood out to me
when I first heard about it was why should the
fact that someone's earning a good income mean that somehow
they can't access personal grievances?
Speaker 3 (23:59):
What the hell?
Speaker 2 (23:59):
What is that and how did it come about? And yeah,
what's your advice on it?
Speaker 4 (24:04):
So we're following the law in Australia here for quite
a number of years now they've had an income cap
on personal grievances or in Australian law of action related
to your dismissal.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
And so the.
Speaker 4 (24:15):
Policy thinking is that anyone who's earning more than two
hundred grand a year, which includes salary bonuses, use of
company cutley, all of your income considered in one package,
those people are probably pretty significant and important to the company.
They're probably general managers, managing directors, principles, chief executives, or
very skilled technical specialists. And so if those people suck
(24:38):
at their job or are dickheads and are not good
for the business. Being able to move them on is
really important to the ability of small businesses to respond
to these people who are just a profit for the
role and so removing and employees access to an unjustified
dismissal personal graand it's not all pgs, it's just once
related to their dismissal is intended to give particularly small
(25:01):
and medium employers more flexibility around managing these very important,
kind of highly paid resources who might not be delivering
what needs to be delibered or behaving a part.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
So is it enabling a business basically to go listen,
it's not working out, see you.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
That's the intention. Yeah, with the idea that if you
are earning more than two hundred grand a year, you
can probably wear it, you know, like it would be
different for a person earning minimum wage to get an advocate,
get a lawyer to challenge the dismissal. But the combination
of people probably having some resources under their belt, and
also again the significance of these roles where people are
(25:38):
likely to be pulling down two hundred grand a year.
The policy decision was about saying, actually, we think it's
more important for small and medium employers in particular, to
be able to move quickly if the people in these
roles aren't a good fit, versus having to go through
sometimes protracted kind of performance management processes.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
Right, we'll dig into that a bit more, actually, because
we welcome to add your feedback on that, because on
the face of it, don't like that idea very much
at all. But anyway, let's take some calls alf Hello,
all right, ah, yeah, good, thanks.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
How I've got a quick question. So I'm a contractor.
I'm a worker as contracted to thirty two hours a week.
I get paid fortnightly. It's a grand table of sixty
four hours of fortnight. I'm a shift worker. So this week,
this is the first week. I've done fifty eight hours
(26:31):
this week, so my question and then I've got sixteen
hours next week. So my question to my manager today
was done fifty eight hours. Do I get there twenty
four hours over time? Because I've got over my thirty
two hours for the week. Now. She came back to
me and said, no, you are Are you sixty four
(26:52):
hours of fortnight? And I said no, I'm thirty two
hours a week and she says, no, it's sixty four
hours of fortnight. I said, no, my contract is thirty two.
She said, no, the way we run that hours a fortnight,
and you'll be doing seventy two hours in a fortnight,
so you'll be in times of eight hours over time.
And I said, no, that's that's not right. So there's
(27:16):
this conversation today when I was sitting on your radio.
Here again we're not perfect timing.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Oh well, here we go. So your contract says just
does it say what are the words in your contract?
Does it say you are contract one.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
Of that at the moment work around?
Speaker 1 (27:30):
Yes?
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yes, okay, I see what you said earlier on. I
didn't quite read the whole on of it.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
Okay, I'm handled over to Sylvie.
Speaker 4 (27:39):
Sylvie cure to alf thanks for calling him. I think
the language of your employment agreement is going to be
really important here. So if it says thirty two hours
per week, anytime above thirty two hours and the week
will be paid at an overtime rate of let's say
time and a half, then I would agree with you.
In a week you have done more than thirty two hours,
(27:59):
and so anytime above thirty two hours should be paid
at time and a half. Having said that if your
employment agreement says that you work a sixty four hour
fortnight and any hours above sixty four hours in a
fortnight will be paid at time and a half, let's
say one point five times your normal rate to pay,
then Unfortunately, I think I agree with your manager. So
(28:23):
the wording of your documents really important here. I would
encourage you to dig it up and see what the
details are. But it is possible that you might do
sixty four hours in week one and zero hours in
week two, and if your employment agreement says hours over
sixty four in a fortnight are considered over time, then
none of those hours will attract overtime.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
Right, No, thank you for that.
Speaker 2 (28:47):
Yeah, time to read the contract. Al.
Speaker 3 (28:50):
Yeah, one more quick question. Can I tune down? After
I do the thirty two hours for the week? Can
I turn down the rest of the rest of the
hours that they got me to do?
Speaker 1 (29:02):
It?
Speaker 3 (29:02):
Maybe eight hours this week killed.
Speaker 2 (29:05):
Or so, whatever the quota is, Once you've reached it,
can you turn it down.
Speaker 4 (29:09):
So they core again? I'm sorry to direct you back
to your employment agreement here, ALF, but there is likely
to be something called an availability clause, and it might
be in your hours of work clause, but it will
say something like the employee cannot turn down additional hours
and they will be paid a bit extra for the
fact that they can't turn the hours down, or it
(29:31):
will say additional hours are optional and the employee you
can choose to accept them or not. So again, the
wording's really important here. I wish I could be more
specific in terms of giving you advice, But the first
place to go would be probably the hours of work
clause in your employment agreement. And have a look for
the piece that talks about availability or additional hours or overtime,
(29:54):
some of that kind of language, and see what it
says about either those hours being compulsory or about whether
you can decline them.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Yeah, are going to You're going to have to read
that contract, palf.
Speaker 3 (30:05):
How will be doing that tomorrow? Good?
Speaker 2 (30:07):
Only mate, all the best. So, actually, are there are
there are there restrictions on the amount of hours that
people can be contracted to do, because somebody can say
I'm contracting you for every hour that they know that
God gives sort of thing, not they want to quit
anything religiously. But is there a limit to depending on
whether you're a contractor or an employee as well.
Speaker 4 (30:28):
Broadly, no, so there are some quite highly regulated industries
where there are some restrictions around how many hours you
can do, kind of the length of time off shift
basically before your next one starts. So we're thinking trucking
like anything where there pretty gnarly safety regulations. Broadly, though,
there's no cap or limit on how many hours of
work you can contract someone for. Typically we see thirty
(30:52):
seven point five forty forty two point five hour agreements
as being full time. We do see them up to fifty.
I've seen one up to seventy for a seasonal worker
who was working the festival over summer and was engaged
on a fixed term agreement with really intense hours. Because
you know you're hosting a festival, there's quite a lot
to do. So broadly, as long as you are not
(31:12):
putting someone to work in ways that are going to
affect their health and safety. So contracting someone for twenty
four point seven, what's the quick mouth on the one
hundred and sixty something hours a week, that would be allegal?
Sixty eight one hundred and sixty eight, thank you, that
would be illegal because there's just no way a person
can do that for more than a day or two
before they start experiencing very significant fatigue, which would be
a massive health and safety risk. So broadly speaking, no
(31:35):
caps unless there is a particular regulation or a particular
kind of health and safety piece to be mindful of.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Right, if you'd like to give us a call. Sylvie
Thrushmash is our guest today. She's from my HR, and
any questions you've got about employment contracts or the workplace
or HR, give us a call. Eight hundred eighty ten eighty.
There's a few things we're going to dig into. We've
only scratched the service of them, actually, but eight hundred
eighty ten eighty is the number. We'll be back in
(32:01):
just a moment. News Talk ZB News Talk, Gosh. Time
is flying, by the way, Look on the contract thing, Sylvie,
Sylvie Thrushmash from my HR. So there's that thing about
not being a two hundred thousand dollars income cap on
unjustified dismissal. It ties into the question around what I mean,
(32:24):
can you contract in if you're someone who's look, I'm
getting paid. I'm not, by the way, I'm just an
imagined scenario. Say you're on three hundred thousand bucks a year,
and you know you've structured your personal affairs and your
mortgage and everything your lifestyle around a job. Can you
contract back into that personal grievance procedure? Because I am
sure as hell would be what's the answer on that.
Speaker 4 (32:47):
The short answer is yes. So the law says that
if the employee and employer agree, then the employee can
opt into that personal grievance for unjustified dismissal pathway. So
if there ever was any shady dealings when it came
to terminating them or ending their employment, they would have
access to that remedy in terms of raising a PG
for their dismissal. And it's going to be interesting to
(33:09):
see how it plays out, because if you're earning more
than it's either one hundred and fifty or one hundred
and sixty grand a year, you're in the top five
percent of income earners in New Zealand. So if you're
over two hundred, you know you're in a bit of
an upper echelon again. And so I would think that
these employees or these people would be pretty highly skilled,
pretty hard to find, and employers, if they were good,
(33:30):
would want to keep a hold of them. So it'll
be interesting to see if in these negotiations someone goes
for a role that's two hundred and twenty grand or
two hundred and eighty grand and says, I'm the only
person you're talking to for this highly specified medical research role.
I would very much like to have this personal grievance
remedy in my employment agreement. And I think I have
enough leverage in this negotiating process to make that happen.
(33:52):
So yes, employers and employees can opt into having them, because.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
I sort of imagine you'd be a mug not to.
I mean, it's interesting you use the word opt in
because I have over feeling you'd be dragging the employer
into that. But if you're important, and if you are
valued at being able to be paid three hundred thousand
dollars a year, I would have thought that. If that,
you've got a very strong bargaining cas It's like, listen,
I'm not happy with this screevance thing. You're not going
(34:17):
to dump me without some notice, so we're going to
build notice. And I mean that would almost be a
take it or leave it sort of thing.
Speaker 4 (34:24):
Typically when you're in these highly paid roles as well,
when it is time to be moved on for a
variety of reasons, some of which are kosher and some aren't.
There typically is a settlement agreement of some kind anyway,
so it would be again the impact of this, I
think from a headline's perspective, is quite quite impactful. It's
quite high catching in terms of the impact it's going
(34:45):
to have on these highly skilled, typically pretty switched on
and educated people to make sure that they aren't treated unfairly.
It's not clear to me that it's going to be
as devastating as it kind of seems on the face
of it.
Speaker 1 (34:57):
How much.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
What are the other particular things that are obvious that
people would assume, Oh, this is going to be looked
after by the law. But what are the things that
you should make sure is in your i'm a contract
that might not actually be covered by the.
Speaker 4 (35:07):
Law, anything you want to be able to enforce later
down the line. Is kind of the high level piece.
So those are nine compulsory clauses I mentioned earlier tend
to be the tip of the iceberg. So the compulsory
clauses tend to include things like the job title, the
position description, an indication of where the job is to
be performed like a plain language explanation of what to
do if things go sideways. Beyond that, all kinds of
(35:29):
things get captured in employment agreements. So if you want
to have a trial period or a probation period for
your new starter, you absolutely must have that written in.
If you want to have a clause that talks about
your employee's obligations to be a good colleague and to
take kind of care when it comes to managing their
duties and to again not be a dickhead. If there
(35:50):
are pieces in there around confidentiality and privacy, like a
lot of this stuff isn't compulsory, but it's certainly very
standard practice. And so when we're thinking about employment agreements, yes,
they should be a living document that you revisit at
least every year just to check to see that it's
still kind of captures the t's and sees of this
person's like what their day to day actually looks like.
(36:11):
And from a risk management kind of compliance perspective, there
are a bunch of things that you would want to
be including to make sure that if the proverbial hits
the fan, you have all this documented so that you
can manage things with this employee f Bush Game Show.
Speaker 2 (36:26):
I actually got a text on that one. I'm saying,
my wife works for a corporate who opted out of
the stupid law. I imagine that. I mean if people
have suddenly had the protection of grievance and then the
law's withdrawn, Actually, what would happen? So I'm working, You're
on a high salary, and the law has been that
everyone has a personal grievance, suddenly they change it. Can
(36:47):
where does it leave people who have negotiated a contract
which doesn't allow for it because they didn't know the
law change was coming.
Speaker 4 (36:52):
The law gave a twelve month kind of negotiation window
for this to take place. So anyone who is entering
into a new employment agreement after that I think was
the February twenty sixth, this law came into place by
default that opted out, only say negotiate Otherwise, anyone who
was already employed on a two hundred K plus contract
as a February twenty twenty six there is a twelvemonth
(37:13):
window to negotiate with their employer. What happens otherwise their
existing teas and cs remain the same, I believe. So
there is a there is a time frame to negotiaate.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Okay, high Zb, my contract allows me to take a
work vehicle I can take home. My boss has just
given us notice that we can no longer take the
work vehicles home due to the amount of breaking and
insurance issues we now have to drive to and from work.
The only parking is paid parking tour undred meters up
the road. Should the company compensate us for the parking
seas Ben, I would imagine on the face of it,
(37:44):
if your contract includes a company car, then yes, Hey.
Speaker 4 (37:49):
Ben, thanks for your text. If an employer wants to
remove a benefit like a company vehicle that you can
drive to and from work, which, as you've kind of identified,
also meant that you didn't have to pay for parking,
they need to go through a consultation process with you
to remove that benefit, and a part of that process
will need to involve some form of compensation for taking
the work vehicle off you. When we support our customers
(38:11):
to do this, this sometimes looks like a one off
payment to acknowledge that there are going to be some
extra costs. Sometimes the company will pay for parking for
a period of time to kind of ease the transition
into this. Sometimes they'll offer to bump everyone's salaries by
a certain amount to offset the removal of the work vehicle.
So on the face of it, yes, I would say
that your employer should have been compensating you for the
(38:31):
removal of the work vehicle.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
What's a worth vehicle? A work vehicle worth? Ah? Man, Well,
it's quite a lot. Because if you suddenly have to
go out and you might not have a car, I
mean your company car. Okay, we're changing that. It's like, okay,
well that's got to be a few thousand bucks a
year or at least pay for the new vehicle.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
On.
Speaker 4 (38:49):
There are some very complicated fringe benefit tax calculations that
accountants are very well placed to answer.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
Here.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
Typically, if it was a company vehicle that was fully
personal use, so you could use it to get to
and from work, but you could use it to go
to Tatanaki on the weekend for a long weekend from Auckland,
and that would be kind of starting at the ten
to twelve K range up to kind of twenty to
twenty four def depending on the value of the car itself.
So if you think about a twelve k a year
premium being attached to having a company car with full
(39:17):
personal use. That would be a good place to start
assessing the value of their benefit.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Right.
Speaker 2 (39:21):
We're going to come back in a moment and talk
a quick talk about restraint of trade, which pops up
here and there and tries to get insisted upon. But
I do wonder how enforceable it is these days. It's
eight and a half minutes to six news talk, said b.
My guest is Sylvie Thrushmash from my HR Gosh. Time
has flown so we've only got a couple of minutes left.
(39:42):
But I meant to get onto this ages ago, but
a text has come in restraints of trade. How defensive
are the defensibill are they? Example, I'm looking to hire
someone with one year previous experience. Their contract is a
restraint of trade stating six months non solicits twelve month
non compete in twelvemonth non dealing. They're based in Auckland,
but the restraint is nationwide and they are not. I
(40:05):
can't there's a type out at the end of it. Anyway,
it sounds like a very restrictive restraint of trade. Sylvie.
Speaker 4 (40:12):
On the face of it, I would say unenforceable again,
please go and seek legal advice for the specifics of
your circumstances. But restraints of trade are a bit of
a bustard because they stop a person from earning a living,
and so therefore they have to be very very carefully
applied to make sure we don't just have employers being
quite vindictive with them.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
So if you feel though you're on a job which
doesn't pay a lot, you don't have a lot of resources,
and you've got an employer who's trying to insist on
a restraint of trade, you think I can't afford to
fight this sort of thing, which is a lot of
it's a bullying thing. Basically, what advice would you have
to people for people who are who really it's not
going to be enforced.
Speaker 4 (40:49):
I would get a lawyer to look over it, and
a lawyer might cost you a few hundred dollars but
could save you thousands of dollars of lost income and
also a peace of mind. If you don't have specific,
defensible commercial reasons to be under a restraint of trade,
they probably can't encorse one. It can't just be because
they don't want you to go work for a competitor.
(41:10):
You have to have access to protectable commercial information that
your employer has an interest in defending for barristas.
Speaker 2 (41:18):
For kind of yeah, and not just cause we can
stick it in.
Speaker 4 (41:22):
Okay, very difficult.
Speaker 2 (41:23):
Gosh, time flies when you're having fun. Sylvie, thanks so
much for joining us, and we'll look forward to the
next time I go to Tim. Thanks for having me okay,
and thanks my producer Locke. We'll be back. I actually
Andrew Dickins. I'm having a few days off. Andrew dickinss
in next week catch us Stone Sundout. Sex is next.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
For more from the Weekend Collective, listen live to News
Talk Said Be weekends from three pm, or follow the
podcast on iHeartRadio.
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