My contribution to a board
Many technology boards discuss people through two numbers: headcount and engagement. I would help a board see the workforce as part of its operating risk. In a company selling continuous services, the questions that matter are more specific. How long will it take to staff the next contract with people who are cleared or qualified? Who is working alone, at night or beyond safe hours? Which roles is automation changing, and what has the company promised the people in them? Is the pay gap explained by role mix or by decisions nobody has examined? I can read an enterprise agreement, a roster and a psychosocial risk register, and I know what good evidence on each looks like. I also know the limits of my experience. I have not been a director of a listed company, and I would need to learn its financial and disclosure obligations carefully. My contribution would be strongest on a people and remuneration or safety committee, where I could ask practical questions management expects to be asked and some it does not.
Judgement in practice
01Asking when a contract can be staffed, not only whether it can be won
In the clearance decision, the commercial case was strong and the delay was unwelcome. The question I would bring to another board is simple: on what date will the people needed for this commitment be available, and what happens to the customer if they are not? A board should not choose between contractors and sponsored clearances itself. It should make sure management has compared them honestly, including the cost of a later start and the message each option sends to existing staff. I would also ask how many people were excluded by eligibility rules and what the company had offered them. Those questions are uncomfortable for a sales team on the verge of a win, but they are far cheaper than discovering after signature that a contract cannot be delivered by the people the company actually has.
02Testing a workforce saving before the board accepts it
The service-desk decision began as a finance model showing a clean annual saving. A director's job is not to oppose savings. It is to ask what the model leaves out: consultation obligations, the cost of losing system knowledge, vacancies elsewhere, and work the new tool may not handle safely. I would want to see the ticket categories automation would absorb, who had tested them, and what the people affected had said. I would also want the saving reported again a year later against the original claim. When a board accepts a workforce saving without that follow-up, management learns that optimistic models are rewarded, and the people who predicted the problems learn that they were not heard. That record matters more than any single decision.
My first year on a board
My first months would be spent understanding how the company actually runs, not how its policies describe it. I would ask the chair for a structured induction and visit at least one operating site at night or during a peak period, with management's agreement and a clear purpose. I would read the main enterprise agreements, the latest safety and psychosocial risk reports, and the papers for the previous year's people and remuneration decisions. Before speaking on executive pay I would want to understand the company's strategy and the performance measures already set. In committee I would ask questions and record what I learnt rather than propose new reporting in my first meeting. I would also meet the company's safety and people leaders without other executives present, so that I hear their concerns directly. By the end of the year I would ask the chair and the committee chair for frank feedback, and agree which areas of knowledge, particularly finance and disclosure, I needed to strengthen.
Conflicts and their management
My employer hosts systems for state agencies, health networks, mining companies and defence suppliers, and buys from equipment, software and labour-hire suppliers. A board seat at any of those organisations, or at a competitor, would need careful review and might be impossible. I would list those relationships before the first conversation with a nominations committee and ask my chief executive to approve any appointment in writing. Pindarrow Skills Trust places trainees with technology employers, including potentially the company I would join; I would declare that and leave any decision involving placements. I would not use information about customers, pay rates or bids from Quenwarra in another boardroom, or bring another company's information back. If a conflict arose that would require me to leave the room for the board's most important decisions, I would raise with the chair whether I should remain a director at all.
My independence statement
My view of my own independence is only a starting point. Before accepting any seat I would set out my executive position, my not-for-profit directorship, any shareholding and every commercial connection between Quenwarra Data Services and the prospective company, and ask the board to reach its own conclusion with its advisers.
Capacity and preferences
- Time available
- 24 days per year
- Current directorships
- 1
- Sectors
- Technology and IT services · Data infrastructure · Defence-industry suppliers · Vocational training
- Company type
- Listed small or mid-cap company, or a larger private or investor-backed company with an established board
- Company stage
- Growing a workforce faster than its hiring, vetting or training can comfortably support
The seat I am pursuing
I am seeking a non-executive seat on a board whose company employs people around the clock or in security-sensitive roles, and whose growth depends on finding, vetting and keeping them. Technology services, data infrastructure and defence-industry suppliers are the obvious fit, though I would consider a larger vocational training provider. I would prefer to join a people and remuneration or safety committee under an experienced chair, and to serve a full term before considering any committee chair role. I would want a board that discusses workforce risk alongside financial and operating risk, and a chair willing to spend time helping a first-time listed-company director learn. I am not seeking a seat as a route into another executive role, and I would not accept one that my current employer's commitments would prevent me from serving properly.
Committee contribution
Chair and member readiness| Capacity | Committees |
|---|
| Ready to join | People and remuneration · Work health and safety · Risk |
|---|
Governance learning and readiness
IICA Independent Directors’ Databank: Not yet registered
The IICA Independent Directors' Databank is an Indian requirement and does not apply to Australian appointments. I have not registered and would review that requirement only if an Indian company approached me.
- Completed a company directors' course in 2023, covering directors' duties under the Corporations Act, financial statements and risk oversight.
- Studying the ASX Corporate Governance Council's Principles and Recommendations, particularly on remuneration committees and board renewal.
- Learning committee practice as a member of the Pindarrow Skills Trust finance, audit and risk committee.
Board and committee exposure
Presented to the Board or a committee
Quenwarra Data Services
Board people and remuneration committee
July 2022–present
Prepare and present papers on executive pay, workforce risk, clearances, psychosocial safety and the gender pay gap; not a director.
Served as a director
Pindarrow Skills Trust
Board; member of the finance, audit and risk committee
March 2021–present
Non-executive director of a not-for-profit company placing regional young people in IT traineeships; unpaid.