A lawyer has concerns about the pace of changes implemented by the new Government to the employment landscape and warns 2024 will be a "tough year" for employees.
The coalition Government is overhauling employment legislation as part of its 100-day plan. Included in the plan are the removal of the fair pay agreements, the return of 90-day trials, limits on personal grievances and huge public sector layoffs.
But the speed of the changes has employment lawyer Steph Dyhrberg concerned. Speaking to AM on Monday morning, she said 2024 will be a "tough year" for employees.
"I think the pace of change is what is causing me a little bit of concern because when big changes happen quickly, then mistakes get made," she told AM co-host Lloyd Burr.
"There's a lot of pressure on the people making changes, either to legislation or organisations running, for example, restructuring or redundancy processes, or employers who maybe haven't used 90-day trials for a while... when people implement things they're not used to or they're doing it in a hurry, they often just don't follow good processes and that's when people can be disadvantaged by that and they can get quite aggrieved and then they might want to take legal action."
Dyhrberg said the changes by the new Government are a "rebalancing" to favour employers over employees but she does believe it will have an effect on the public sector.
"I think that's where a lot of pressure is going to come on and particularly saying that contractors are to be reduced or having headcount reductions, that's going to put a lot of pressure on the delivery of services," she said.
"While there might be programs that are no longer continued so that you might say there's not as much work to be delivered, it's still going to put pressure on people, who I have to say, over the last four years have had a lot of pressure already."
She believes a big focus of businesses this year should be on supporting their employees.
"Everyone's experiencing lots of pressure, so I think that means the looking after people is going to be really important," Dyhrberg said.
"Quite often when there are cost-cutting exercises, the nice to have, as they're seen, get reduced. So some of the things that support and care for people, some of those things get reduced. So I'd be encouraging employers to really put people at the centre of these processes and look after people."
While the coalition Government is overhauling employment legislation, there are still more areas Dyhrberg wants to see sorted out, including the Holidays Act.
Watch the full interview above.
