Codes of Conduct

WorkAccord’s “Tuesday TalkAbout” to Return in July

Andrew C Wood Codes of Conduct, Employment Agents, Employment Services, Governance, Professional COnduct Leave a comment

Slide17WorkAccord’s “Tuesday TalkAbout” series of free, short webinars is set to return for a fourth season at 8:30 am AEST on July 21st 2020.

With The Recruitment, Consulting & Staffing Association’s new Code for Professional Conduct, authorised by the ACCC last year, commencing on August 8, the focus of the series will be on the Code’s principles of operational integrity.

As the author of the Code, I’m looking forward to  discussing topics such as Confidentiality, Care, Complaints Handling, Certainty of Engagement, Social Sustainability, Assurance, and Disclosure.

Here’s the Winter programme:

1.   RCSA Code: What’s New? (21/07/20)

Our first Tuesday TalkAbout for the Winter 2020 season presents an overview of the RCSA Code for Professional Conduct and asks, “What’s new?”

We’ll explain why this Code is different from what has gone before. We’ll explore the ethical principles that underpin the Code; and look at its statement of principles for personal professionalism and operational integrity. Finally, we’ll discover what the Code requires of RCSA Members and how RCSA supports its Members’ journey along the “Pathway to Professionalism”.

2.   Social Sustainability (28/07/20)

The new RCSA Code requires Members to

  • conduct business in a way that avoids causing or contributing to exploitation through their activities; and
  • seek to prevent or mitigate risks of exploitation that are linked to their operations or services by their business relationships, even if they have not contributed to those risks.

In this session, we’ll discover what the Code means when it talks about “exploitation” and we’ll learn about steps that you can take along your pathway to professionalism to reduce the risk of exploitation in your service networks.

You can register for this webinar here.

3.   Ascertain & Assure (4/08/20)

RCSA Members will be required to:

  • apply resources; and
  • establish and maintain controls

to ascertain and assure themselves, to a reasonable standard of confidence, that they meet the requirements of the regulatory environment in which they operate.

This session focuses on how to identify regulatory requirements and what types of controls you can implement in a recruitment and staffing environment to be confident that you are meeting them.

You can register for this webinar here.

4.   Certainty of Engagement (11/08/20)

Under RCSA’s new Code, Members will need to take reasonable steps:

  • to ensure the certainty, transparency, and scope of their agreements; and
  • to obtain adequately informed consent

for the provision of a workforce service, or for the performance of a service network role.

In this session, we’ll talk about provisions that present regular challenges and discuss what you can do to make their operation more certain. We’ll look at scoping provisions, screening responsibilities, fees & charges, restraints of trade, candidate replacement and other guarantees.

You can register for this webinar here.

5.   Confidentiality & Privacy (18/08/20)

Recruitment & staffing professionals handle vast quantities of confidential and personal information. Much of it is highly sensitive.

In this session, we’ll talk about some of the challenges that you will face and how you can deal with them. You’ll learn to identify when information is confidential and how to handle exceptions. You’ll learn about the different privacy regimes that you might operate within and why it is important to have a good understanding of your privacy obligations when you are obtaining consent to collect, use and disclose personal information. We’ll also look briefly at some of the additional issues that arise when you are operating in an on-line environment.

You can register for this webinar here.

6.   Complaints Handling (25/08/20)

RCSA Members will be required to establish and maintain credible grievance handling mechanisms and corrective action procedures, appropriate to their size and circumstances, to address any failure to meet the standard of professional conduct required by the RCSA Code.

In this session we will talk about how you can do that, using some of the principles in AS/NZS 10002:2014 Guidelines for complaint management in organizations.

You can register for this webinar here.

7.   Care (1/09/20)

A concept of care, requiring attentiveness, responsibility, competence, and responsiveness underpins the new RCSA Code for Professional Conduct.

In this session, we’ll explore the concept of care and talk about its specific application to Members’ responsibility to meet the value promises they make about the quality of their services. Is there room, in a professional conduct framework, for an “all-care-no-responsibility” approach anymore? Let’s find out!

You can register for this webinar here.

Let’s talk again soon!

Andrew C. Wood Hon, FRCSA (Life)

 

 

 

 

“Tuesday TalkAbout” Summer 2020 Program to Address Recruitment & Staffing Sector “Waypoints”

Andrew C Wood Bigger Pictures, Codes of Conduct, Collaborative Practice, Competition Law, Contract, Dispute Resolution, Employment Agents, Employment Law, Employment Services, Employment Services Agreements, Recruitment Leave a comment

Tuesday TalkAbout takes a new direction for its Summer 2020 Program of free, short webinars, as we discuss some larger themes at work in the recruitment and staffing sector.

Now, I certainly don’t claim to be a seer or a futurist. I observe and interpret. So, I’m not going to attempt to predict the course of the decade or anything like that.

Instead, I’ll describe the “waypoints”, which I think the recruitment & staffing sector in Australia and New Zealand has reached in eight key areas. ‘

A “waypoint” can be understood as a place on a route or pathway, a stopping point, or a point at which one’s course can be changed.

What the future holds from that point forward largely flows from the decisions and commitments which recruitment & staffing professionals make for their own organisations and professional lives – either intentionally or by default.

The observations and insights that I hope to share reflect experience gained over four decades in legal and workforce consulting practice and in recent work done with RCSA, designing its new Code for Professional Conduct, its grievance intervention guidelines & protocols, its StaffSure certification program, and many of its key resources and templates.

The eight key areas we’ll be discussing are:

1. Professional Conduct (21st January)

RCSA’s new Code for Professional Conduct has been authorised by the ACCC to commence on 8 August 2020. How is it different from previous codes or other industry codes? Why is it different? What statement does it make about emerging professionalism? How might recruitment & staffing professionals respond to it? How is it enforced and administered?

This webinar has now been archived. Please contact me if you would like a link.

2. Quality Management (28th January)

What does “quality” mean in the context of the work undertaken by recruitment & staffing professionals as labour market enablers and intermediaries. Does the ISO 9001 definition of “quality” say it all? How well does the “customer focus” requirement stand up to the professional conduct responsibilities of recruitment & staffing professionals? Is quality perceived as outcome or experience? Is it even an either/or question?

This webinar has now been archived. Please contact me if you would like a link.

3. Risk Management (4th February)

We know (at least I hope we do) that risk is defined for the purposes of risk management and quality management standards as the “effect of uncertainty on objectives”. But how might risk be categorised to be more manageable for recruitment & staffing professionals? What sorts of risk do recruitment & staffing professionals face in 2020? At what points does risk intersect with professionalism and quality? How can risk be managed to minimise its effects on professional and quality objectives?

This webinar has now been archived. Please contact me if you would like a link.

4. Collaboration (11th February)

What is “collaboration”, really? Why is it important for recruitment & staffing professionals in 2020? Is collaboration possible with customers and clients? Candidates? Competitors? Consultants? If so, how is achieved? How is it managed and maintained?

This webinar has now been archived. Please contact me if you would like a link.

5. Doing Business (18th February)

Something is wrong if you’re not upgrading your terms of business at least as frequently as your mobile phone! Wonder why you’re getting pushback from clients who won’t pay you that “introduction fee”, or who won’t sign up to your “all-care-no-responsibility” conditions? Terms of business modelled on 1980s recruitment & staffing practices and 1980s legal culture are no longer viable. In this session, we explain why and talk about what you can do about that.

This webinar has now been archived. Please contact me if you would like a link.

6. Conflict & Dispute Resolution (25th February)

Even for those who might be energised by conflict, there comes a point when stocks of energy and finances to meet the crushing cost of feeding conflict, run low. What is your conflict/ dispute profile? Do you still handle business disputes like it’s the 1980s and you’re a bank? Or have you found a better way? What are your options in 2020? What distinguishes the way you handle conflict and disputes as “professional”?

View the recorded Conflict & Dispute Resolution “Waypoint” webinar here

7. Employment Shaping (3rd March)

What is the difference between legitimate employment shaping and sham contracting or avoidance? How much flexibility is there to shape an employment relationship to suit labour market conditions in 2020? What are the limits? How do you know if you are approaching or transgressing them? Are there any “golden rules”. If so, what are they and how do you apply them?

View the recorded Employment Shaping “Waypoint” webinar here

8. Independent contractor on-hire (10th March)

What are the main challenges to independent contractor on-hire in 2020? Is the business integration test still reliable? What investigations should a recruitment & staffing professional undertake to ensure that independent contractor engagement and on-hire models are compliant with a wide range of regulatory requirements and are not exploitative?

Register for the Independent Contractor On-Hire “Waypoint” webinar here

I do hope you’ll join me when WorkAccord’s Tuesday TalkAbout Summer Program returns at 8:30 am AEDT on Tuesday 21 January 2020 and I’d love to learn of any questions you might have in advance.

 

Andrew C. Wood

Industry Certification Schemes – Regulatory Alternatives?

Andrew C Wood Bigger Pictures, Certification, Codes of Conduct, Employment Agents, Governance, Labour Hire Licensing, Labour Market, Regulation Leave a comment

TT_8 Cwertification Full

Can industry certification schemes be viable alternatives to statutory licensing schemes?

In WorkAccord’s next free Tuesday TalkAbout I’ll discuss different types of certification schemes and consider their pros and cons as regulatory alternatives. In doing so, I’ll also look at Regulatory Impact Statement that supported the Victorian licensing scheme to see how it worked. What assumptions were made? Were they correct? How might a federal RIS and outcome differ?

I hope you’ll join me.

Andrew C. Wood

 

Let’s Shed Light on Recruitment Fees!

Andrew C Wood Codes of Conduct, Consumer Protection, Contract, Dispute Resolution, Employment Agents, Employment Services, Employment Services Agreements, Procurement, Recruitment, Restraint of Trade, Webinar Leave a comment

 

Slide1Temp-to-Perm Fees, Agency-Switching Fees, Introduction Fees and Release Fees.

I hope you’ll join me when we shed light on the topic of Recruitment Fees in two separate webinars planned for Thursday 22nd November and Thursday 29th November at 10:30 am AEDT.

In our first webinar, you’ll learn how to make binding and enforceable recruitment fee agreements.

In our second webinar, you’ll learn how to manage fee recruitment disputes ethically and professionally.

You can find out more about the webinars in my Recruiters’ Casebook blog here.

 

Andrew C. Wood, Hon FRCSA (Life)

Two Webinars about Recruitment Fees

Andrew C Wood Codes of Conduct, Consumer Protection, Contract, Dispute Resolution, Employment Agents, Employment Services, Recruitment 1 Comment

I’m looking forward to presenting two webinars on recruitment fee topics later this month. I’m looking forward to it because it’s a topic that I’m constantly asked about and one that needs to be mastered in the interests of promoting and maintaining professional standards in the recruitment and staffing industry.

Slide1Webinar #1: Make Binding & Effective Agreements (22nd Nov. 2019 )

In the first session, we will discuss how to make binding and effective recruitment fee agreements that will reduce the cost of disputes and help get your fees paid.

You’ll learn about:

  • basics of contract
  • the battle of forms – Does the client’s purchase order trump your standard terms?
  • traps when using standard form terms of business
  • State and Territory employment agent regulation
  • what happens if your terms of business are not signed?
  • terms of business that need special treatment.

 

RF2Webinar #2: Handle Disputes Ethically & Professionally (29th Nov. 2019)

In the second session, you will learn how to handle recruitment fee disputes professionally and ethically to preserve goodwill, reputation, and to improve payment outcomes.

You’ll learn about:

  • common causes of recruitment fee disputes
  • common defences to recruitment fee claims
  • traps to avoid when involved in disputes
  • RCSA Code of Conduct and Grievance Intervention Guidelines
  • pathways to resolution
  • the benefit of early intervention.

 

I hope you’ll join me. And if you have questions about the topic, please feel free to send them to me ahead of the event.

 

Andrew C. Wood, Hon FRCSA (Life)

 

 

 

Are You “Over-Promising” on Confidentiality & Privacy?

Andrew C Wood Codes of Conduct, confidentiality, Privacy, Recruitment Leave a comment

“Over-promising” often occurs as a result of making unqualified statements. Sometimes, those statements are made inadvertently; other times, they may be made recklessly or through ignorance.  Sometimes they are harmless; other times, they can mislead and create false expectations that cannot be met.

One area in which it’s always good to be wary of unqualified statements is the area of confidentiality and privacy.

For example, if as a mediator, I were to say to the parties something like:

Information you give me is confidential. I will never, in any circumstances, disclose it

I would be “over-promising”. That’s because there may be circumstances where disclosure could be required or permitted by law.

Similarly, if a recruiter were to say to a candidate something like:

Information about our candidates can never, in any circumstances, be disclosed for a purpose other than finding them employment

that recruiter might be “over-promising”. Again, that is because there may be circumstances where disclosure could be required or permitted by law. You can probably think of a few of them. Some of them appear as exceptions to privacy principles. There may be other exceptions that apply at common law. In fact, your recruitment software (including integrated, third-party software ) probably captures and discloses information that you might not even have thought about!

By over-promising, you can end up misleading people into divulging information, which they might not have willingly disclosed if you had qualified your promise properly. Consent may have been improperly obtained – not being sufficiently informed. And the information may have been collected and disclosed unfairly.

In short, “over-promising” on confidentiality and privacy crosses the boundaries of professionalism. So, it’s essential to know where the limits of confidentiality and privacy lie and to mark them out with carefully considered and qualified statements.

 

Andrew C. Wood

 

Gender & Intersectional Identity in Grievance Intervention & Professional Conduct Review

Andrew C Wood Codes of Conduct, Dispute Resolution Leave a comment

My Post-Law transition is leading me into deeper reflection about the work that I do in the field of professional conduct grievance intervention, and I’d really like to get some feedback on an issue I’m grappling with at the moment.

Many professional conduct review programmes allow grievants to request anonymity or pseudonymity when their grievances escalate to a professional conduct review panel. No problem with that. It protects privacy and allays fears of victimisation.  But here’s the thing…

It’s considered good practice to redact all identifying information. Typically, I’d redact name, address, contact details… that sort of thing.  It’s also common to redact gender identifying pronouns – his/her; she/he. And that’s what I’m wondering about.

By redacting gender identifying pronouns, might we be erasing something significant? Are there gender or other intersectional overlays to conflicts that should be preserved? I don’t mean in discrimination complaints – gender identity is clearly a material issue there – but in other cases, for example, cases involving more subtle power imbalances between parties to a grievance that might colour conduct that could be characterised as bullying, unprofessional, or disrespectful?

My present thought is that it might be best to let the parties choose whether they want to disclose their gender identity – with the assistance of an explanation about why it could be significant in the circumstances of their grievance.

So, if you were sitting on a professional conduct review panel, are there cases where you would be assisted by knowing the gender identity of the parties? And if so, what sort of cases might they be?

I’d really like to hear your views.

 

Andrew C. Wood

 

Supply Chain Conversation #3: Supply chain labour governance and certification.

Andrew C Wood Certification, Codes of Conduct, Procurement, Regulation, Supply Chain 1 Comment

conversation-3-_22119259_5e71cc57f3ba272e61ac1c66d01c5d2482cb9abcRCSA’s CEO, Charles Cameron, has been posing a number of questions about supply chains for me, lately. In this series of Supply Chain Conversations, we explore the involvement of recruitment and workforce services firms in supply chain operations.

Our third conversation reveals how certification of workforce services providers, who exercise good stewardship over their service value networks, can contribute to better supply chain labour governance and trigger a collaborative “race to the top” that harnesses the power to convert a supply chain, one link at a time.

CHARLES: RCSA is currently developing a certification program to make it easier to make clean and ethical workforce services buying decisions which, in turn, will force change in the market by ensuring unethical and non-compliant providers don’t win work.  This program incorporates the concept of a ‘service network’, where workforce services providers are part of a ‘service network’ and have to use their control or influence to enhance supply chain labour governance.  Can you explain how this would work? Continue reading →

Reclaiming the Power of Self-Regulation in the Employment Services Industry.

Andrew C Wood Bigger Pictures, Codes of Conduct, Employment Agents, Employment Services, Recruitment, Regulation Leave a comment

Recreation 069

In the Future of Work, the employment services industry must reclaim its power of self-regulation.

It’s not about setting up sympathetic hierarchies to make soft-edged rules for the commercial comfort of “the Regulated” – as some industry detractors want us to believe.

It’s about using relational resources that can be discovered at the positive core of the industry to nurture response-ability[1] – the ability to choose and to act as effective and ethical agents in multi-actor employment services transactions.

And it might require us to take a new look at what we think we know about the compliance education and compliance activity upon which we’ve been dependent to date.

How might we begin that process? 

I’ve been having an engaging conversation with Lisa O’Hara of Exclusive Migration about non-compliance, compliance education, and self-regulation. It was triggered by a provocative comment from work futurist, Jeremy Scrivens, who has been tweeting:

“The opposite of non-compliance in the future of work is not compliance; but self-regulation.”

Enticing – but not much to work with until you go deeper. So, I followed up on Jeremy Scrivens’ writings and discovered what I think is gold in his article, We Can’t Get On Together with Suspicious Minds (Love that title!). Here’s an extract…

 

We are living at a time when there has never been more compliance and regulation in organisational life and it is killing the joy, adventure, wonder and passion in our work. Everywhere I go, I hear from people that they want to spend more time on the bigger, life issue for working, which is to contribute something meaningful and less time on the ‘paperwork’ and compliance aspects of work. People are crying out to be engaged in more meaning, more contribution and less compliance.

Please don’t get me wrong; I am not saying that we don’t need checks and balances in our organisations to ensure that we are ‘safe’ and secure across the board; what I am saying is that we need to restore the balance and change the order of the questions. Rather than safety first, let’s put adventure first. Rather than compliance first, let’s look at how we can experience more contribution and meaning.

Jeremy went on to quote Dov Seidman in Forbes Magazine:

‘Most companies today are committing a fundamental mistake: they are “doing” compliance –the U.S. spent $29.8 billion on compliance activities in 2010 according to a study from AMR Research – but they are not “getting” more compliance. The frequency of compliance violations is increasing rather than diminishing and the impacts of non-compliance in a more interconnected and interdependent world are much more dramatic.

According to Jeremy, Seidman says that:

“…we need to experience a shift in organisations from one of compliance and risk to a new focus on fostering a positive culture which emphasis ethical behaviours and innovation, not compliance.”

Having spent the last 18 months or more designing a code for assisted self-regulation of the employment services industry, comments like these were always going to capture my attention.

What had also captured my attention was a submission to the Queensland Labour Hire Inquiry along lines which suggested that, in order to achieve compliance with already existing statutory regulation, perhaps all that is needed is more education about compliance.

There are several reasons why I think we’re going to need more than that.

The first is that education is not always a good predictor of compliance; and in my experience, it’s the already-mostly-compliant, who turn out for the education!

Moreover, compliance education is often too narrowly targeted at a single point of agency in the interplay of multiple actors, who are in a position to affect real outcomes – it is directed to employers, or to employment services providers, or to consumers; rather than being designed to build understanding and promote collaborative action simultaneously from multiple parties’ perspectives, stories and experience. There are, of course, exceptions … but, in the manner of exceptions, they are exceptional!

Additionally, much of the compliance education currently on offer is problem-centered. It’s scary stuff! And I’d be the first to admit that I’ve been responsible for some of it in the past. But there is a lot that we can learn from the field of appreciative inquiry, and at last I am beginning to get that:

If you focus on a problem and you design around a problem and you build actions around a problem, what you’re more likely going to get… is more of the problem.[2]

So, what do we do if we choose not to focus on the problem – bearing in mind that making  that choice might be our first step towards effective self-regulation?

I like what Peter Pula of Axiom News says about redirecting our problem-focused energy:

You feed that energy when you’re focusing on the problem. Whereas you could say, ‘What would I rather was happening?’ Paint a picture of that. ‘These are the things we would like to be experiencing. If you’d like to be experiencing these similar things, come into conversation with us and we’ll see what happens’[3].

Several things immediately fell into place.

Firstly: Industry or professional self-regulation isn’t about making do with sympathetic hierarchies & soft-edged rules; it’s about using relational resources to inform choice and to act as effective and ethical agents in multi-actor employment services transactions.

Secondly: When a profession or industry declares its commitment to high-core principles such as:

We provide an appropriate standard of service to your work seekers and customers.

We act with integrity and deal fairly.

and to outcomes such as:

We provide services that meet our customers’ proper and agreed requirements…

…it is really making statements about what it would “rather was happening”. It is redirecting what has previously been problem-focused energy towards describing and achieving positive outcomes that are consistent with values of service and fair dealing that can be discovered at its positive core.

Thirdly: When an industry or profession commits itself to collaboration with its interest-holders, it positions itself to co-produce an architecture that can supports constructive dialogue about acceptable outcomes, which make valuable contributions to the proper functioning of the labour market with which it interacts. Everyone benefits.

It is important, in seeking this new approach, that we do not reject the notion of regulatory compliance, so much as highlight the type of self-regulation that is essential to achieve the “opposite of non-compliance” – once the necessary foundational knowledge has been attained.

It therefore remains necessary to educate and equip businesses with the tools and knowledge about what the rules are and how to avoid breaking them. Beyond that, we must have the imagination to go further; because education, in the absence of an effective capacity for self-regulation, can only ever create the awareness of non-compliance. For it is the ability to self-regulate – to make the right choices – that will advance the industry beyond the state of non-compliance, which many presently assert characterizes it.

As each new story about labour market exploitation and non-compliance appears on a current affairs program (or in a public inquiry)  doing damage to the employment services industry’s social licence, the awareness of non-compliance increases and we are reminded of the need for the industry to reclaim its power of self-regulation.

Many firms already exercise that ability on a daily basis. They lead by example. They are to be commended for it. What is necessary to take the next step in reclaiming the power of self-regulation is for the industry to engage its interest holders in the co-production of statements of acceptable business outcomes that make valuable contributions to the proper functioning of the labour market.

There is now an important conversation to be had; and I hope you might join it.

 

Andrew C. Wood

 

[1] Stephen Covey’s expression describing the ability to choose our response to any situation.

[2] Co Creating Generative Conversations in Community, Axiom News (2016) http://axiomnews.com/co-creating-generative-space-community  

[3] Co Creating Generative Conversations in Community, Axiom News (2016) http://axiomnews.com/co-creating-generative-space-community