Work with roles, rights and protocols
Understanding work roles and workplace rights and expectations is an important first step to navigating your career. It involves the ability to identify and manage responsibilities, recognise and respond to your legal rights and responsibilities, and to recognise and respond to expectations and accepted work practices.
Visit the ECU CareerHub for more information, resources and support on managing responsibilities and work practices.
These focus areas describe the kinds of skills, knowledge and understandings that an individual should demonstrate to be able to navigate the world of work:
Work with roles and responsibilities
- Consider the role as a part of a broader whole
- Take responsibility and ownership of your own work
- Manage the factors that may affect your achievements
Operate within legal rights and responsibilities.
- Monitor your adherence to legal and regulatory rights and responsibilities
- Implement strategies to meet legal or social responsibilities
Recognise and respond to protocols
- Recognise protocols must be maintained
- Identify protocols that are no longer useful
- Know how and when to challenge some protocols
All people working in Australia are entitled to general workplace protections. It is crucial that you know your workplace rights as you decide what industry and where you want to work.
At a basic level, the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) provides protections of certain rights, including:
- workplace rights
- the right to engage in industrial activities i.e. unions
- the right to be free from unlawful discrimination (race, colour, sex, sexual orientation, age, physical or mental disability, marital status, religion, etc)
- the right to be free from undue influence or pressure in negotiating individual arrangements.
The Fair Work Act prohibits any adverse action, coercion and misrepresentations in connection with these rights.
- Participate in extra-curricular activities or take up part-time work in addition to your degree. This will show employers that you can balance multiple responsibilities and workloads.
- Make and use timetables to define responsibilities i.e. Outlook calendar or a scheduling assistant.
- Upskill yourself: develop a plan to learn or build a new skill.
- Undertake an internship or long term volunteer project to develop your knowledge.
