Webinar Wrap Up

On Thursday 29 October 2020, Stevens & Associates Lawyers held a Webinar in partnership with HowToo.

With cocktails/mocktails in hand, our presenters – Jane Murray, Bernard Cheng and Lisa Vincent provided professional insight into the approaches taken by employers to encourage safe and effective working from home practices and information and evaluation of the pertinent topic of whistleblowing.

“Remote Work: Lessons Learned from COVID”

The presenters reflected on lessons learned from the considerable shift in workplace structures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. As employees have moved towards work from home, it has been critical for employers to consider how work health and safety standards will be maintained from a distance. This involves determining what risks are ‘reasonably practicable’ for an employer to mitigate when an employee is working from home, providing a useful checklist of considerations for employees to be mindful of when developing WFH policies. Lisa also tested us through useful training modules to compliment the transition to work from home.

“Whistleblower Protections – the fine line between workplace grievance and protected disclosure”

With recent changes to federal whistleblower legislation, the presenters explored the new protections given to whistleblowers and highlighted the (often difficult to distinguish) differences between protected disclosures and personal grievances.

Lisa talked us through Howtoo’s whistleblowing module which provides training for employees on the various issues around whitleblowing. We found the module to be an excellent resource to train staff, encouraging them to feel protected if they find themselves in the position where they or a fellow colleague must disclose information to employers.

We’d like to thank all of those who attended our first webinar of hopefully more to come. If you have any remaining questions following on from the Webinar or if you’d like to discuss any concerns you may have in regard to the topics considered, please do not hesitate to contact us.