Being in hot water with the governing bodies of the area in which your business is based could bring serious consequences crashing down on it. So, as a business owner it is your duty to ensure your business complies by the rules set in place upon it. To save both money and face, a business must comply by the rules set by the government and its local authorities. Can your business really afford a fine? Can your business really afford being taken to court? Can your business’s brand really afford to be tainted in such a way? No matter how big your business is, the answer to these questions is always ‘no’. Below you can find a few hints and tips on how to keep your business out of hot water.

First of all you should be doing all you can yourself to make sure your workspace and your employees are as safe as can be. As a business owner, even if you have an HR manager in place or another employee to look after the OHS component of your business, it is still your job to oversee that everybody is safe in your workplace. It is your job to ensure that the manual handling aspect of your business is sufficient and not putting anybody in danger. It is your job to ensure nobody is being discriminated against. It is your job to build staff morale and put employee wellness at the helm of your priority list. Your first port of call should be to call for all your employees to work and live by the Work Active mantra: be proactive when it comes to work-related injuries and not just reactive to them. You should distill an attitude into them that it’s not a case of ‘them vs you’ when it comes to any potential injuries. It’s a case of, upon the unfortunate circumstance of any injury, being proactive and working together to reach the best outcome for all involved. There are a whole host of reasons why an employee may take to suing you — don’t let them thinking you don’t want what is best for them be one of them.

But it’s not just about staying on the right side of the tracks when it comes to your current employees. You also need to be aware that there are strict rules in place when it comes to headhunting and poaching employees from other businesses. For instance, you must adhere to any pre-existing agreements when it comes to that employee’s contract with the business they currently work for. If they are contracted for a certain amount of time elsewhere then you cannot hire them. If this is the case then you should ensure that you have spoken both with the employee and their current place of work and made everybody involved in the situation aware of what is happening.

So, in order to keep your business form being scolded by hot water tomorrow you must do all you can to keep it out hot water today.

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