Episode Summary
Episode Seven: Compliance – How to Resource People & Culture Before It Breaks
In this episode of The PAX Hospitality Podcast, Leon Kennedy sits down with HR and people & culture specialist Kate Hemat-Siraky to unpack the relatively unsexy but absolutely critical foundation of a healthy hospitality business: compliance. Sitting in the Consistency layer of the PAX Pyramid (after Identity and Product, before Promo), this conversation is about getting your “house in order” so your people, finance and culture have something solid to stand on.
Together, they walk through the core building blocks of HR compliance for venues doing roughly 30–80 staff and beyond: choosing the correct awards (or awards, plural), getting classifications right, building watertight employment contracts, and pairing them with clear policies and job profiles – Kate’s “compliance triangle”. From there they explore respect & inclusion, psychosocial safety, and the new “positive duty” to prevent harassment, plus how under-resourcing HR and people functions leaves founders and managers dangerously exposed.
They also dig into the role of tech – time & attendance vs HRIS – and why systems like Deputy, Tanda and Employment Hero only work if they’re configured properly. Kate breaks down the implications of the Fair Work Ombudsman vs Coles/Woolworths decision, why “better off overall” now has to be assessed in the pay period, and what that means for time-in-lieu, overtime and TOIL-heavy rosters. If you’ve ever thought “I don’t have time for compliance”, this episode shows you why you can’t afford not to make time.
Topics covered:
How HR compliance fits inside the Consistency layer of the PAX Pyramid (identity → product → consistency → promo).
The compliance triangle: employment contracts, policies/guidelines, and job descriptions/job profiles.
Awards, classifications, award-free roles and why “don’t assume, do check” is now survival, not semantics.
Respect at work, psychosocial safety, and the new positive duty to prevent harassment and discrimination.
Tech, time & attendance, HRIS, and the impact of the Coles & Woolies decision on TOIL, overtime and “in the pay period” compliance.
And the 5 key takeaways?
1. Compliance is the foundation that makes consistency possible.
Without the right awards, contracts, policies and job profiles, nothing in the business can operate consistently — not culture, not training, not performance.
“If you don’t have that stuff right… first of all, you’re at risk. Second, there’s really no point doing all of the fun, exciting, jazz-hands sort of stuff.”
2. The compliance triangle protects you: contracts, policies and job profiles.
These three documents form the non-negotiable core of a safe and well-structured workplace, giving clarity to both leaders and staff.
“If we’ve got those three things in the triangle, we are pretty well protected.”
3. Respect, inclusion and psychosocial safety are legal obligations — not culture-nice-to-haves.
With the new “positive duty,” businesses must proactively prevent harassment and discrimination, not just respond after something happens.
“It’s not a complaint anymore — I’m making a report. And a good employer says: we’ve been taking steps so this didn’t happen in the first place.”
4. Tech only helps if it’s built properly — otherwise it becomes another liability.
Time & attendance and HRIS platforms can remove huge amounts of risk, but only when classifications, rules and workflows are configured correctly.
“People say ‘that system’s really shit,’ but then we get in and go… how come you’re not using classifications? They say, ‘I didn’t even know that was a thing.’”
5. “In the pay period” rules change how TOIL and overtime must be handled.
The Coles/Woolies case means businesses can no longer “smooth out” busy and quiet weeks — compliance must be achieved every single pay period.
“In each pay period you’ve got to be better off overall than the award… if you’re doing time in lieu but not using it in the pay period, that’s where the risk is now.”
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Credits
The PAX Hospitality Podcast is produced by PAX and Craate Creative. Support for this podcast comes from Square and Brunswick Design and Innovation. Our music is produced by Patricia Heath and Mattias Westergren.