Be aware of important new employment standards

Simpson Grierson urges employers and employees to be aware of important new employment standards

Simpson Grierson Partner Phillipa Muir says that from 1 April 2017, all individual employment agreements need to comply with new requirements under the Employment Relations Act 2000.

Collective employment agreements will only need to be updated when the collective agreement is replaced.

The key changes relate to "zero-hour contracts" (now referred to as availability provisions), secondary employment provisions, and cancellation of shifts for shift workers, Phillipa says.

Some legal commentators have recently said that an "hours of work" clause in a salaried employee's agreement (requiring an employee to work additional hours if necessary to perform their role) is an "availability provision", which would trigger several new requirements for employers, Phillipa says.

"Simpson Grierson disagrees with this view. We do not believe that was what Parliament intended. Rather, the requirements relating to availability provisions are intended to apply to situations where an employee is required to be effectively "on-call" to work additional hours, without (until now) any guarantee of work.

"I urge employers to review their individual employment agreements and check to ensure that they are compliant by 1 April 2017."

Failure to do so could result in employers facing personal grievance claims, penalties, or being unable to enforce non-compliant clauses, she says.

Further information on the new requirements for employment agreements can be found by clicking here.

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