Most businesses contact an HR consultant at the worst possible moment. A resignation has already been handed in, a complaint has already been made, or a dismissal has already happened and a claim has landed. By that point the options have narrowed considerably.
Engaging an HR consultant Perth businesses can actually reach, before a situation becomes formal, usually costs less and produces a better outcome. The difficulty is knowing when that point has arrived.
What does an HR consultant do?
The work is broader than most people expect. It generally falls into four areas.
Compliance work covers award interpretation, pay reviews, employment contracts, policies, record keeping and the paperwork that sits behind employing people.
Advisory work is the day to day question answering. Can we refuse this flexible work request. How do we handle this absence. What do we do about this complaint. These are usually short conversations that prevent long problems.
Casework is the difficult end, covering performance management, investigations, disciplinary processes, terminations and redundancies, and responding to claims.
Project work covers restructures, recruitment, position descriptions, remuneration reviews and building an HR function from nothing.
When is it worth bringing one in?
The signs are fairly consistent across the businesses we work with.
- You are spending more time on people issues than on the work the business exists to do.
- A performance or conduct issue has been running for months without resolution.
- You are about to dismiss someone and you are not confident the process would hold up.
- Your contracts, policies or pay rates have not been reviewed in several years.
- You are growing and about to cross 15 employees, which changes your obligations.
- An employee has raised a complaint about another employee and you would be investigating your own team.
- You have received correspondence from the Fair Work Commission or the Fair Work Ombudsman.
The last three are the ones where outside help matters most, because they are the situations where being close to the people involved works against you.
Does it need to be a Perth consultant?
For most employment matters, the law is national. For some Western Australian businesses it is not, and this catches people out.
Sole traders, partnerships and other unincorporated businesses in WA generally sit in the state industrial relations system rather than the national system. That means different minimum conditions, different award coverage and a different tribunal. Two businesses doing identical work in the same suburb can be covered by different systems purely because of how they are structured.
Safety is state based as well. Western Australia operates under the Work Health and Safety Act 2020 and the accompanying regulations, administered by WorkSafe WA, with its own codes of practice. Advice written for the eastern states will not always match.
Local knowledge is worth having for those reasons, and because someone who can attend your site is more useful during an investigation or a difficult meeting than someone on a video call from another time zone.
What to look for when choosing one
Ask who will actually do the work and whether you will be dealing with the same person each time. Continuity matters more in HR than in most professional services, because context takes time to build.
Ask how they handle urgent matters. A dismissal decision cannot wait five business days for a written response.
Ask whether they will document their advice. Written advice protects you and gives you something to point to if a decision is later questioned.
Ask whether they can support the safety side as well. HR and safety overlap constantly, particularly around bullying, harassment, fatigue and return to work, and splitting them across two providers creates gaps.
Consultant, or ongoing support?
One off consulting suits a defined piece of work with a clear start and finish, such as a contract rebuild, a restructure or an investigation. Our consulting services are set up for exactly that.
Ongoing support suits businesses that want advice available whenever a question comes up, along with their compliance kept current in the background. That is what HR Shield was designed for, and Total Shield covers businesses that want HR and safety handled together.
Businesses that only call when something breaks tend to call more often than they expect. If people issues are arriving monthly rather than yearly, ongoing support is usually the better value.
How ProcessWorx Can Support You
This is general information rather than advice for your circumstances. ProcessWorx has worked with Western Australian businesses on HR and safety for many years, across both the national and state systems.
Contact us on (08) 9316 9896 or get in touch.
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