Dealing with disaster

any appropriate expert guidance; and check first with your landlord/the owner of any goods and your insurer through your insurance broker. Generally, don't start non-essential, nonemergency repairs or disposal of stock without your insurer’s approval.

• Goods may need to be removed if they pose a health or safety risk: for example, badly saturated carpets or soft furnishings. But ensure you have good photographs and records of their condition, and ideally reports from experts if you can. If possible, it would be best to let your insurer to have an opportunity to see these on site before they are removed. Retain any other damaged items that don’t pose a health and safety risk. If in doubt, wait for insurer approval if you can.

• Where practical, keep clear inventories of damaged goods, stock or other items, and what is done with them, even if you expect someone else to prepare a report.

• Your insurer is likely to want to inspect the damage and may send a representative, assessor or expert to inspect and prepare a report.

• You may need an expert or assessor to prepare a report too. Your broker and in some cases a lawyer, may help you with this.

• If you’re unsure, or there are complications or big amounts involved, work with your broker, and/or a lawyer (preferably an insurance specialist) – sooner rather than later.

This list is not exhaustive – check Toolbox for a complete version. We urge you to seek whatever advice you need and work with experts as best you can. You don’t want to make a bad situation worse by prejudicing your possible insurance claims.

If unsure of anything please contact your MTA advisors, who will provide what advice they can.

MTA’s HR team is here to help, and has put together a range of things to consider during and after an emergency or natural disaster, such as the recent flooding in the Auckland region or major earthquake.

Employers and employees need to consider important issues such as health and safety, emotional wellbeing, and payment options. Good faith obligations apply while dealing with each other and the employer and employee must be communicative and responsive.

In general terms

If staff are ready, willing, and able to work, they need to be paid as per their contract. This will mean that they need to be paid the minimum hours set out in their contract, even if they are unable to work due to the employer not being able to provide work or the workplace not being safe to access or work in.

If a business has been forced to shut, options are as follows:

• Taking Paid Leave Entitlements. There are two options here:

• Entitled leave (Annual/Alternate)employers can request staff to take entitled leave and reach an agreement for them to do so, or give two weeks’ notice if no agreement is reached. Two weeks’ notice can only be given if you have tried to reach agreement and it can only be given if the staff have entitled leave to take. The two weeks’ notice still needs to be paid.

• Accrued/Anticipated leave- staff can only be requested to take this and agreement needs to be reached.

• Reduced pay. Employers could look to reach an agreement with staff to reduce pay whilst a business is closed. There is no obligation for staff to agree to this and they cannot be punished for not agreeing.

• Unpaid leave. Again, agreement needs to be reached with staff. This should be a last option. Redundancy is unlikely to be a real option unless the business needs to shut down indefinitely or for an unspecified duration. The business would need to be shut for well over a month or more to even consider this option.

Shift workers

If your staff are employed as shift workers and have a compliant employment agreement, then you may be able to cancel their shifts if you are unable to provide them with work or provide them with access to a suitable and safe workplace.

Whether an employee is entitled to compensation from their employer for ‘cancelling’ these agreed shifts or ending a current shift early will depend on the terms of their employment agreement, the date of their employment agreement, and the specific circumstances of the cancellation. Your ability to do this will depend on the terms in the employment agreement. If members want any advice on this or any other employment matter, please contact the HR team at HR@mta.org.nz.

Mta Hardship Fund

MTA members affected by hardship due to events such as the northern regions flooding, can apply for access to the Hardship Fund. This fund is in the form of access to business advisory services from third parties and paid for by MTA. To enquire about the fund, please contact Sean Stevens, MTA’s Membership Services Manager: Sean.stevens@mta.org.nz.