Last week’s article outlined an estimated negotiation schedule (8– 10 meetings from ‘cradle to grave’, one week to 10 days between meetings, a 2-3 month process) and tips on how to plan for success. The next articles will provide some guidelines and advice concerning documenting progress throughout the bargaining process, drafting your proposed agreement and navigating through the Commission’s sometimes fraught approval processes to get your agreement rubber stamped.…

History has provided us with a very clear premise on which all great speakers have made their name.  Discovering their strategies for success and modeling the elements of excellence that we have consistently witnessed over so many years is the surest way to develop your own speaking skills.…

Employee Engagement is the buzz-word in the corporate world today. Organizations are spending millions of dollars on employee engagement initiatives like rewards and recognition, fun events, training programs, team off-sites, coffee talks, town halls etc. to engage with their workforce. However, the mute question is: are these dollars paying off? Is our workforce truly engaged?…

Activity based working, hot-desking and standing desks are all the rage for workplace design, but poor implementation may mean benefits such as team engagement are never realised, writes Marc Levin.

If you’ve ever scrolled through listicles like ’12 of the Coolest Offices in…

I recall many years back attending a class on IR negotiation as part of my professional development. One of the participants from the public service said it was pointless her arguing on behalf of employee rights against the ‘employer side’ in the role play. She said “the forces of capital always win”.

She might be right in some areas of the economy, but my experience is that life is definitely much more ‘pluralistic’ than that. Often it is employees and unions that have held…

If you’ve seen the movie ‘Field of Dreams’ you know that Ray Kinsella played by Kevin Costner builds a baseball field against all odds and some of the past greats of American baseball turn up to play. This could easily be a metaphor for how organisations should go about developing great leaders i.e. build a great organisation that has a leadership culture and leaders will…

Times change and so do the assumptions we use to inform the way we develop leaders. Whilst many organisations believe they are keeping up with the times, in my experience many are relying out outdated assumptions when it comes to developing their most important leadership assets: their frontline leaders.

I have identified 12 mistakes that organisations make in this area. Here are two:

The “Natural Talent Mantra” is the belief that those people who have leading in their DNA make…

In my previous blog I dived into an understanding of how language, more specifically verbs, are needed to support the left frontal cortex into taking action. In part two this week I want to share on how to illicit greater commitment within a leadership team toward taking action around culture changes.

It's disturbing that the anticipation of attending a presentation at work can be similar to the anxiety you feel just before calling your telecoms provider to tell them that your broadband doesn't work. 

Something inside you tells you it's…

Having spent most of my career, and life, in management and team meetings it seems to me that communication in these settings could do with a 21^st Century makeover.

In today’s fast paced corporate environment many of these meetings can be complex and demanding decision making arenas.  It is often the case…

Too many organisations throw people into the role of leader because they have a gap to fill, not because the person is right for the job. They go about selecting leaders based on the wrong criteria. Choosing the right people to nurture as your next crop of leaders requires some thought if you want to end up with a productive team who can lead your organisation to success.

If you have every tried to grow a favourite plant but didn’t have the…

Corinne Canter, Senior Consultant, Human Synergistics Australia

Mergers, acquisitions and other forms of strategic alliances generally have two dimensions which are crucial to their success¹. The operational dimension, that is the business case for considering the merger in the first place, and the cultural and people dimension.

The operational dimension is what tends to captivate the attention of leaders. The promise of improved efficiency, enhanced…

Summer holidays allow us to switch off and become refreshed, recuperated and re-energised. The time off can not only give us the opportunity to break any bad habits we have gained during the past year, it also gives us a chance to establish good habits and set new goals for the year ahead.

The return to work can be an obstacle to maintaining these goals as we no longer have the same free time for regular gym visits or…

10 years ago I spent 12 months exhaustively travelling around every City in the UK presenting a vision and a strategy to thousands of small business owners with the sole objective of trying to save and revive an ailing global brand.

Not only was this the most difficult and challenging time of my corporate career it was also the most important.…

In the light of recent political events concerning leadership and the deteriorating reputation of our leaders to effectively deal with the challenges of the modern world, I’m drawn to the conclusion that the current leadership paradigms (not just for political parties) are not only out of date, but in many ways detrimental to addressing the challenges that we face in the 21st century.

I subscribe to the view that our actions and behaviours, both individually and collectively,…

Watch my short video here and continue reading below...

Rant alert! I hate fighting for airtime in conversations. (Who’s with me??)…

Top 3 Tips to try before you even consider negotiating 

I’m amazed after my many years in IR and countless EBA negotiations, I still see managers and HR practitioners who don’t really ‘get’ how to bargain industrially. That it, they don’t apply the bargaining theory on the one hand, and balance industrial realities with the other. 

The bargaining table is a lonely place; I don’t say the above to criticise frazzled HR managers struggling with an…

Several decisions on bullying have been handed down in commissions and courts over the last couple of months, with the first anti-bullying order being revoked, and the Fair Work Commission clarifying what constitutes bullying "at work".

Here, I summarise just a few bullying-related stories that OHS Alert - the news service I write for and sister site to HR Daily - has covered recently.

In one of them, a commission…

The start of a new year is a natural opportunity to reset expectations and launch fresh initiatives in all areas of business. If you are tasked with developing frontline leaders in your organisation then you are no doubt looking for ways boost your success in 2015.

I believe there are three key factors you need to consider in your plans this year if you want to greatly increase your return on investment in leadership development, putting your organisation in a position to lead the…

Under the now 12 month old Federal anti-bullying legislation, section 789FD of the Fair Work Act 2009 (“FW Act”), provides that “A worker is bullied at work if:

(a)       while the worker is at work in a constitutionally-covered business:

(i)         an individual; or

(ii)        group of…