Articles

Stick to your knitting, it's safer

WorkSafe has issued a warning to farmers to refrain from attempting to harvest woodlots on farms themselves. Whilst it can be tempting to save a few dollars by cutting down your own trees, the reality is most farmers are not trained in commercial woodlot harvesting.

Many farms all over the country have small woodlots that are coming up to harvestable age. Most of these woodlots are planted on steep terrain and require experienced forestry professionals to safely harvest the trees. Unfortunately, there have been incidences of farmers attempting to manually fell woodlots with chainsaws themselves. This is a recipe for disaster.

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I hereby offer you employment

By law, good faith behaviour is required when entering into individual employment agreements. The essence of the obligations imposed on employers by the Employment Relations Act 2000 is to provide employees with the necessary rights to address the imbalance in bargaining power between them and the employer.

Often overlooked are the obligations on employers when offering employment to prospective employees. Let’s consider what must be done.

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The Great Fish & Chip Incident of 2007

It is important in business, as it is in life, to read the small print. This is also true when you are signing employment agreements.

I say this to lead into a public apology that I feel obligated to make following the Cottage Kindergarten’s disco and fish and chip night.*

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Protecting your business from IT scams

Recent ransomware attacks have highlighted the need for businesses and their employees to be alert for IT threats and scams.

The WannaCry ransomware attack managed to hold over 220 000 computers hostage around the globe.

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Who is recording you?

Under the Crimes Act, it is a crime to record a private conversation that you are not a party to. The offence requires you to deliberately record people in conversation who believe that they have an expectation of privacy.

It is not, however, an offence to record a conversation that you are a party to. Despite this, the legality of recording conversations where only one party knows they are being recorded does get hazy in the employment sphere.

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