Our IR System Is Not Fair; You'd Better Accept It
- Tim Dive
- 6 days ago
- 3 min read
Author: Tim Dive, Director
It’s happening every week, and most business owners don’t even realise it until they find themselves in a tribunal hearing, facing a claim, or paying damages they never budgeted for.
From my conversation in Episode 089 of The HR Cartel Podcast, the pattern is clear: small and medium‑sized employers are under increasing pressure, not from one regulator, union or law, but from a coordinated ecosystem that targets risk, complexity and ambiguity.
The message is simple: the system isn’t broken, it’s working exactly as intended. What that means for employers is less clarity, less support and far more exposure.
The Quiet Alignment
Government departments, tribunals, unions and regulators all share an incentive model that privileges claims, creates risk for businesses, and holds employers to shifting standards.
It’s not conspiratorial, it’s structural. The rules are evolving faster than most businesses can keep up, guidance is contradictory, and if you make an honest mis‑step, you’re still at enormous risk of being penalised, even if you were acting in good faith.
The Cost of Compliance Illusion
Nearly every employer I speak to feels stopped in their tracks, not by cash flow, staff turnover or market competition, but by compliance. You know you’re paying good wages, acting ethically, and following advice, yet you’re still having to focus more on the micro matters of compliance - and you're getting nothing in return for the extra cost.
That’s because the standards are not fair - they never were, but now more than ever, this is true. Tribunal treat claims by employees or simple compliance errors like wilful misconduct, from a starting point that assumes every employer has acted unlawfully, eroding trust and raising risk for anyone employing people.
The Extreme Micro Management of Industrial Relations
The reality is, your "HR system" (nowadays) must go to extreme lengths to not only ensure, but to prove the clarity behind every role, every contract, every policy, every workplace decision, and every termination.
Today's IR system is not about safety nets and creating fairness, for all participants in workplaces. It's about continuing to transfer as much of the "balance" of power to employees and unions, and running a model of fear to keep employers compliant and in line.
The IR system is strangling businesses.
What You Can Do
If you’re employing people, even people based outside of Australia, and you haven’t revisited your HR / IR framework in the past six months or more, you’re in need for a check up.
Use content from The HR Cartel (podcast episodes and blog posts at hrcartel.com/media) to audit three things:
Are your contracts and policies aligned to the latest tribunal and court outcomes?
Can you capture, document and defend each pay period as if you were audited tomorrow?
Are your proactive efforts to be compliant visible, systematic, and capable of proving passive negligence is not a factor, when the regulator comes knocking?
Final Take‑aways
If there’s one thing I want you to leave with after reading this and listening to Episode 089, it’s this:
You’re not the problem. The System is. But if you don’t accept the system has long moved away from how you prefer to be, you’ll be the one paying the price if claims land on your desk.
When you’re operating a business, you’re the entity held accountable.
So listen to The HR Cartel Podcast, members should download the checklists and tools from The HR Cartel’s member's portal, and start building your internal systems.
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