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Q3 2026 HR Health Check: 5 Things to Fix Before the Year Ends

Filed Under: Advisory and compliance, Business Update, Career Planning, Change management, Culture, External HR Support, HR essentials, Leadership

Day 31 of 31 Days of Better Workplaces — the final day of the series, and I’m sending you into then last quarter of 2026 with a practical action list.

The end of August is an underutilised moment for SME leaders. You’re past the mid-year mark, the December holiday period is still far enough away to actually fix things, and Q4 is close enough that the decisions you make now will determine how you finish the year.
Here are five HR priorities worth addressing in the next eight weeks.

 

 

1. Review your employment contracts and policies

If you haven’t looked at them since before the last round of Fair Work Act changes, they need a review. Employment law has moved — pay rates, Award obligations, flexible work rights, psychosocial safety requirements. What you don’t know about is still your legal liability.

 

2. Address any outstanding performance issues 

If you’ve been managing a performance concern informally and it hasn’t resolved, formalise it now. A structured improvement process started in September gives you a proper timeframe to assess progress and make informed decisions before the holiday disruption of December.

 

3. Run retention check-ins across the team  

Have direct, genuine conversations with your key people. Not a formal survey — a human conversation. Ask how they’re going. Ask what would make their work better. Listen to the answers. People tell you when they’re thinking of leaving, if you ask the right questions and make it safe to be honest.

 

4. Audit your leave balances

Excessive annual leave balances are a liability on your balance sheet and, in many Awards, a compliance issue. If people are accruing significant leave entitlements, now is the time to encourage and plan leave before December when everyone wants to take it simultaneously.

 

5. Plan your last quarter resourcing

Are you going to need additional capacity for your busiest period? If so, the recruitment process needs to start now — not in October when you need someone by November. Identify the gaps, build the plan, start the process.

 

That’s 31 Days of Better Workplaces 

A full month of practical HR insight and forward-thinking perspective designed to help Australian businesses build workplaces where people actually want to work.
If any of these posts raised a question you want to dig into — or if you’ve been reading along and realising it’s time to take a closer look at your HR foundations — let’s talk.

 

Book a free 30-minute consultation at Blue Kite HR Consulting 

 

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