From the bargaining table to the data hall

Mandate

Plan a cleared, rested and trained workforce for a business selling continuous availability to government, health and defence-supplier customers.

Outcomes

• Grew cleared staff from 61 to 146 through sponsored clearances
• Redeployed 17 service-desk analysts into level-two and network-operations roles
• Ended single-person night shifts in Darwin; site turnover fell from 29 to 12 per cent
• Reduced engineer turnover from 19 to 12 per cent

Decisions in context

This role joined the people function to the board's agenda. When I started, the committee received headcount and a staff survey. It now receives a clearance forecast, engineer turnover by team, overtime and extended shifts by site, psychosocial risks with named controls, and the gender pay gap by job family. I lead a team of 34, including a small vetting unit that manages clearance sponsorship and the reporting obligations that follow it. Most of my difficult work has involved timing. Sales dates, investor plans and vendor contracts move faster than clearance queues, technician training and genuine consultation. My contribution has been to make those slower clocks visible early enough to change a decision, while accepting that the company still has to win work, control costs and sometimes ask people to change how they earn their income.

Reason for the move

Current role; seeking a first listed or larger private-company non-executive seat alongside it.

Mandate

Build a people function that could support investor entry, a Darwin site with high turnover and the company's first defence-supplier work.

Outcomes

• Concluded the first enterprise agreement for critical-facilities technicians in 2021
• Wrote a hybrid-work policy distinguishing office and site roles
• Prepared the people elements of the Defence Industry Security Program application
• Prepared people due diligence for the 2021 investment

Decisions in context

I joined a founder-led company whose people practices had grown informally. Pay was set by individual negotiation, the Darwin site lost almost a third of its technicians each year and nobody owned the question of clearances. The pandemic arrived eleven months later. Office staff went home while technicians continued to staff the data halls, and I wrote a hybrid policy that treated the two groups differently and explained why. In 2021 I led bargaining for the first technicians' enterprise agreement, with delegates who were sceptical of a company that had never bargained before. The same year, the founders sold a majority stake to an infrastructure investor, and I prepared the people sections of their due diligence. The work turned an informal employer into one that could explain its people decisions to a board.

Reason for the move

Promoted to chief people officer after the investment created a board people and remuneration committee.

Mandate

Reduce engineer turnover and build pay and career structures for a company winning larger council and mining contracts.

Outcomes

• Introduced the company's first salary framework
• Created a technical career path to principal engineer
• Cut engineer turnover from 26 to 17 per cent over three years
• Led people integration after the 2018 acquisition

Decisions in context

Brisbane gave me my first commercial IT company without defence work. The challenge was retention. Engineers moved between firms for modest pay increases, and the only way to earn more inside the company was to manage people, which many good engineers did not want. I built a salary framework from market data and our own roles, then a technical career path up to principal engineer with clear expectations at each step. Managers resisted publishing the criteria at first, because it limited their discretion. Turnover fell over three years but never to the level I wanted, partly because mining-sector projects drew engineers to the regions at higher rates. When a national group acquired the company in 2018, I led the integration of contracts, payroll and leave balances, and kept the regional offices open through the first year.

Reason for the move

Returned to Adelaide after completing the integration, to be closer to family.

Mandate

Staff defence-integration programmes with cleared engineers, and keep people productive while their clearances were processed.

Outcomes

• Introduced a hiring plan working backwards from programme clearance dates
• Created interim unclassified work for engineers awaiting clearance
• Reduced the share of new starters waiting without billable work from 40 to 15 per cent

Decisions in context

Kesthaven was where I learnt that a workforce can be ready on paper and unavailable in practice. Most programmes required cleared engineers, and a successful offer might be followed by months of waiting. Engineers who joined to build simulators spent their first weeks reading manuals and wondering whether they had made a mistake. With the programme managers, I built a plan that started from each programme's clearance date and worked backwards to recruitment. We created unclassified work for new starters, such as test tooling and documentation, so that they contributed while they waited. Some candidates could not be cleared because of citizenship, and I learnt to say so at the first conversation. I reported to the chief operating officer and worked closely with the company's security officers, who held the formal obligations my team supported.

Reason for the move

Moved to Brisbane for a director-level role in a broader commercial IT business.

Mandate

Manage agreements, disputes and fatigue risks for a technician workforce working long distances and often alone.

Outcomes

• Negotiated two technician agreements without industrial action
• Introduced driving-hour and rest limits for remote fault work
• Introduced a check-in procedure for technicians working alone

Decisions in context

This was my first role inside an employer, and it removed the distance an adviser can keep. Technicians drove hundreds of kilometres to repair faults, frequently alone, and the pressure to close a job before the shift ended was real. I started by handling grievances and became employee relations manager in 2005, leading negotiations for two technician agreements. The most useful change I made was not in an agreement. With operations managers I introduced limits on driving hours after long shifts, and a check-in procedure for technicians working alone in remote areas. Some managers feared it would slow fault repair, and in places it did. I learnt to measure the cost of safety controls honestly, to report the repair delays they caused, and to make the case to the operating leaders who would carry that cost.

Reason for the move

Moved into a head-of-people role at a defence systems integrator.

Mandate

Advise member employers on awards, agreement negotiations and disputes, and prepare them for tribunal conciliation.

Outcomes

• Supported more than 30 agreement negotiations for members
• Prepared members for conciliation in unfair dismissal and award disputes
• Wrote member guidance on rostering under the relevant awards

Decisions in context

I joined straight from university, and most of what I know about awards and agreements I learnt here. My clients were small and mid-sized employers in manufacturing, cleaning and transport, often without a human resources manager of their own. I sat in negotiations, prepared documents for tribunal conciliation and explained to owners what the award already required before they asked for something new. The work taught me to read a dispute as a set of ordinary costs: childcare, travel, sleep, lost overtime. It also showed me the limits of advice. I could explain an option clearly and still watch an employer choose a course that made the next dispute more likely. After five years I wanted to work inside one organisation, share responsibility for what happened next and live with the consequences of my own advice.

Reason for the move

Joined an employer's own team to take responsibility for outcomes rather than only advice.