After giving is some serious thought and more than a little bit of prior planning, you have decided that an Enterprise Agreement will be a good thing for the future growth of your business.
What’s got you confused is how you make it happen.
Do you just give your staff an agreement that you prepared earlier and wait for a yay or nay from them? Or, do you give them a blank sheet of paper and get them to write down their wish list, picking and choosing what you want to put into it?
Whilst the process of negotiating an enterprise agreement is relatively easy, there are certain things that need to be done, and in the right order, otherwise you may have some explaining to do when you seek approval from the Fair Work Commission.
Notice Of Employee Representational Rights.
Before you can start bargaining for the enterprise agreement, you need to let your staff know that it is happening. This is where the Notice of Employee Representational Rights comes in.
Schedule 2.1 of the Fair Work Regulations 2009 specifies the content that the notice should have.
It is also worth noting that the notice of employee representational rights should be just that, and not have anything else attached to it, either in the email notification or when/if the notice is placed on a notice board.[GARD]
You’ve made the decision to start negotiating your first Enterprise Agreement. Before you send off your Notice of employee representational rights, there are a few things you need to think about first.
With regards to the Fair Work Act 2009, an enterprise agreement is an agreement on certain employment conditions between an employer and their employee(s).
Merriam Webster defines