A panel of risk mitigation experts unpack some of the compliance considerations HR needs to keep in mind when operating in a remote work environment.

Risk mitigation has always been a key concern for HR professionals, but the work-from-anywhere world has opened up a plethora of new risks that HR, leaders and board directors need to manage.

In a panel session at the final day of AHRI’s Convention, Susan Sadler CPHR, AHRI’s South Australian State President and Director of Red Wagon Workplace Solutions, spoke with three risk experts about some of the things HR needs to keep on their radars. 

Below is a summary of their discussion.

1. What are some of the remote work risks that HR needs to be across?

Knowing when to act

Liana Reinhardt FCPHR , Chief People and Strategy Officer, Credit Union SA, says sometimes there’s more risk in doing nothing, than doing something.

“We had a situation where an employee who lived alone was working from home during lockdown. They contracted COVID19 and were unwell, so they [took time off work]. But they made the choice not to tell any of their family members that they had COVID-19.”

While Reinhardt says many HR professionals might feel the need to honour the employee’s wishes, she felt she had a moral and ethical obligation to step in.

“We kept checking in and they kept saying they were okay, but we could tell they weren’t. So we ended up going against our staff member’s wishes and calling an ambulance. They spent five days in hospital.

“In that situation, the risk of not acting outweighs the risk of doing something somebody is saying they don’t want you to do.”

That’s one of the biggest challenges she’s noticing HR deal with at the moment: knowing when to intervene into someone’s personal life for the sake of their welfare.

Getting off the treadmill

Jarrad Parker, Executive Counsel, Nine Entertainment refers to what he calls ‘treadmill risk’.

“We’re so busy running on the treadmill – there’s so much to do and so much to keep up with that by the time you’re reacting to everything that’s happening, you don’t have time to think [more expansively].”

He uses the example of getting caught up in managing the COVID-19 vaccination challenges and then not being able to adequately assess the risk of employees wanting to work flexibly in different states or countries.

“We don’t have the time or the bandwidth to go that extra step to ask, ‘Where are they going and what’s their workplace going to look like? How do we manage our safety obligations in that context? What kind of taxation requirements will we need to consider?’

“We’re often a few steps behind the game and having to sprint to catch up.”

Getting the right people onboard

Marcus Zeltzer, Co-Founder of Yellow Canary, says businesses need to be wary of rapid business growth. His own business has grown from 1 to 60 employees in just two years.

“We couldn’t have the physical interaction with people [we wanted to hire] to assess for values alignment, which, I have to admit, was never really important to me until I saw it go terribly wrong.”

To mitigate this risk, they introduced a new step to their recruitment process which they call the “two beers and a puppy” rule.

“So would I trust this person to look after my puppy for the weekend? And would we have two beers together? Because you can have one beer with anyone, right? But would you stay for a second?”

Of course, there’s a lot more that goes into hiring the right person for the job, and HR should also be looking for people who can bring diverse perspectives and unique expertise to the table. But this was Yellow Canary’s way of assessing for one of its core values – trust.

2. How can we avoid risk quashing innovation?

Don’t be held back by the rules

Reinhardt says people often get stuck in the legislation and rules. “There’s this line that people feel we need to stay behind,” she says.

But when you get flexibility to do things differently, it can open your business up to new opportunities.

“One example of this is that we’ve recently introduced public holiday swap – that’s in the National Employment Standard, but not many people necessarily know about it. Not everyone recognises the same holidays or wants to take Australia Day off, so it becomes a great D&I strategy.

“It also becomes a great business opportunity, because if a sufficient number of people want to work on that public holiday, all of a sudden you might be able to open your business on those days, keep production going, or continue to service your customers.”

3. What are some of the consequences of failing to mitigate risk?

HR, leaders and board directors have skin in the game

Zeltzer says if you want to be an employer of choice, you need to make sure you’re paying people properly, and that includes superannuation.

“The directors of your business are personally liable for unpaid super going back to 1993,” he says.

“And if you look at the Victorian Wage Theft Act, that has the potential for criminal sanctions against directors and officers of businesses that underpay employees. That legislation was very heavily modelled on the industrial manslaughter laws in Victoria.”

“The directors of your business are personally liable for unpaid super going back to 1993.” – Marcus Zeltzer, Co-Founder, Yellow Canary

He’s paying attention to rumblings coming out of Canberra which suggest a nationwide approach to wage theft could be on the horizon.

“And it appears that it will be modelled on the Victorian [approach].”

4. How might internal communication platforms expose businesses to risk?

Surveillance software could act as a safety device

Sadler has seen a massive increase in harassment claims over the last few years.

“And most of them have a mental health component… I’ve also never had the volume of sexual harassment issues that I’ve had in past few years.”

The panel suggests a few reasons for this, but one that stands out is the way in which we’re communicating online. It’s much easier to exhibit toxic behaviour in a one-on-one video call or via your internal communication platform.

“The person who can see through the periphery in the meeting room no longer exists,” says Parker. “It’s on Zoom, so it can be harder to report [without any bystanders]. And sadly, some people are taking advantage of that. It’s worth thinking about how workplaces are managing remote working and dealing with each other via video.”

Parker says to remember that victims don’t always feel comfortable coming forward immediately.

“They often take well-needed time [to recover] and then come forward. At this point, sometimes the evidence no longer exists [as it can be deleted]. It adds another layer of complexity for victims to substantiate their claims.” 

Reinhardt says online communication platforms present very real risks.

“In a previous organisation I worked for, we did a review [of internal communication platforms]. We found examples of isolation, bullying, negative commentary with customers – the list goes on.”

Sadler says there’s risk to employees using their personal accounts for these platforms, as it limits the amount of oversight employers can have on what’s being said.

She suggests that this is where things like workplace surveillance and monitoring can be beneficial.

“We always saw that as a punitive measure, but maybe workplace monitoring is part of the safety measures we need to be considering.”

Another thing HR can do, she says, is set up keywords to scan for, to prevent harmful conversations from taking place online.

Learn how to manage bullying and harassment in your organisation with this short course from AHRI. Sign up for the next session 8 September.

5. Who is responsible for managing these risks?

Don’t do it alone

Parker says it’s important for HR to realise that they don’t need to take sole responsibility for risk management.

“In my current role, I’ve got a couple of HR business partners who feel that risk is not in their ‘happy space’, so we have a reciprocal mentoring arrangement where I work with them on how they approach their risk activities and they educate me on the wonderful parts of HR that I don’t get exposure to.”

Zeltzer highlights the risk of laying responsibility on one team’s shoulders.

“In the last two years, we’ve done 50 odd remediation projects and have reviewed about $12 billion of employee payments across salary, wages, super and long service leave, and there seems to be a recurring theme in why these breaches occur.”

That is, a lack of communication between critical business partners.

“There are four parts of the Venn diagram – there’s HR, in-house legal, the payroll teams and the workforce planners. The responsibility to payroll compliance actually sits in the middle of that Venn diagram.”

There can’t just be one person who has visibility and responsibility for that risk, he adds.

6. What are the biggest areas of risk that need to be on HR’s agenda?

Mental health claims going through the roof

Mental health claims are going to dominate the risk space in the near future, says Zeltzer.

“In 2020, the Victorian worker’s compensation system was funded $900 million plus. That is to say that the amount taken from premiums was less of what was paid out to $900 million plus. As of today, it sits at negative $3.7 billion, and 27 per cent of claims were for mental health.

“So that’s a $4.6 billion swing in the workers’ comp system, in the great state of Victoria, in just two years. So if that’s not a leading indicator that mental health and workers comp is going to be an issue, I don’t know what is.”

Want to catch up on HRM’s other wrap-up articles from Convention? Read about the state of hybrid work cultures, the future of the public service and some quick tips for preparing for the future of work.