Workplace Solutions are excited to announce that the Local Government Officer’s Day and HR Seminar are now finalised and will be occurring as part of this year’s Local Government Convention being held at the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre. The last HR Seminar two years ago was a great success and we expect this years' to be even better.

These two Officer’s Days are planned to help Local Government employees and managers in their roles and bring together representatives from Local Governments to stimulate relationships and networking.  The flyer attached outlines the presentations on both days.

Workplace Solutions are pleased to announce Federal Magistrate Toni Lucev will be the keynote speaker and his presentation will be on the current jurisdictional dilemma faced by Local Governments in WA. As Federal Magistrate Lucev may have to make a decision on this issue one day we believe he can provide valuable insight into the issue.

Our other main speakers are Kathy Reid and Erica Hartley from Freehills and Helena Bellotti from Roper Gulf Shire Council in the Northern Territory.

Kathy and Erica are leading experts in employment legislation in Western Australia and will be giving a presentation on good faith bargaining, enterprise agreements and negotiating enterprise agreements under the new Fair Work Act 2009. Providing advice to a range of industries and arguing before courts and commissions regularly make Erica and Kathy ideally placed to present on these issues.

Helena Bellotti is the Human Resource Manager for one of the biggest Local Governments in Australia with employees scattered across 185,000 square kilometres of land. Helena was involved in successfully managing the amalgamation of over nine smaller community shires into the new Roper Gulf Shire Council and will be presenting on the challenges she faced and providing practical hands on advice to HR managers that may be faced with amalgamation.

Simon White from Workplace Solutions will be giving a report on the strengths and weaknesses of the Fair Work Act 2009 and will give guidance on some of the areas that Local Governments should be concerned with and other areas that they can possibly take advantage of.

Alasdair Malloch-Smith and Scott Roffey from Workplace Solutions will be presenting on how to handle workplace investigations. With a number of Local Governments being investigated by the Workplace Ombudsman in the previous year this is becoming an increasing problem with some of the complaints being either groundless or vexatious. Alasdair and Scott will be giving a run down on the dos and don’ts so that they are resolved quickly and painlessly.

Finally an employee misconduct exercise will be held that tests participants handling of misconduct by employees, the disciplinary and performance management they put in place and ultimately the steps that should be taken to dismiss an employee and successfully defeat any possible unfair dismissal application that could be lodged.

A finalised schedule will be released in the next few weeks and we look forward to seeing you all at this year’s HR Seminar. To register please go to the WALGA website and click on the register tab under the Local Government Convention and Trade Exhibition box down the left hand side or via the following link https://www.secureregistrations.com/lgc10/. Alternatively please get in contact with a member of the Workplace Solutions team.