This post has been updated on the 25th of May 2022 for legal comprehensiveness.
Every once in a while, your loyal employees get bored with their jobs or need a change but don’t know how to go about it.
As an employer, you can help your employees expand their skill set and broaden their horizons with secondment arrangements!
In Australia, the use of secondments is on the rise even during the COVID 19 pandemic.
If you want to know what secondment agreements are, their benefits, their legal issues, the types of secondments and how they work and what must be included in a secondment agreement. Read along!
A secondment agreement is when an employer decides to temporarily assign their employee to a different department, business, or office.
Here are the primary benefits of using secondment agreements:
Secondments are useful but can also raise important employment law questions. Some of these questions include:
Internal secondments are the simplest type of secondments. In this secondment arrangement, an employee is transferred to a different department in the same company.
The purpose of this is to encourage your employee to learn about how your business works in a different area.
This will allow the employee to have a broader perspective of the business and to develop skills that may benefit them in their regular position. This is how most graduate programs work, as it allows the employee and employer to determine which department is the best fit for the employee.
Your employee Jane from your marketing department receives an internal secondment to work full time in human resources for three months.
This agreement is arranged because you want Jane to further develop her interpersonal skills and learn the recruitment process. Part of Jane’s role in the marketing team is to promote employment opportunities at your business.
After her secondment, Jane has learned the recruitment process and feels more comfortable dealing with people. Through this, her job performance has improved, and she has attained knowledge that allows her to promote the business with more insight and expertise.
External secondments are where employees are moved outside of the business for a period of time to a host organisation rather than within your business. The secondment can be local, national or even international.
External secondments typically occur between businesses that have professional partnerships or offices interstate and overseas.
You own a consulting business in Sydney and have a partnership with a law firm. The law firm is Lawson & Sons, which has offices in several international locations.
You choose Sally from your legal affairs Department to go on secondment at Lawson & Sons’ office located in Tokyo for six months. Sally will return to your main office after six months.
External secondment agreements raise several legal issues. This is because your employee is technically working for someone else whilst being employed by you.
Some of these issues include:
Legal questions also arise for employees who are working overseas as typically that country’s laws will apply.
Similarly, Australian laws apply if an overseas employee is sent on secondment to your business.
For clarity, all parties should include new employment terms when drafting the external secondment agreement.
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