Our job is to help employers, employees and their representatives build and sustain great workplaces. To establish a competitive edge, employers need to be able to draw fully on the skills, ideas and commitment of their employees. To be motivated, employees need be treated with respect, given opportunities, acknowledged and rewarded for their efforts. To be workplace contributors and not only defenders of their members, unions need to be fully recognized for both their historic and developing roles.

What's makes for great workplaces?

This is no longer a mystery: great workplaces are those characterised by high levels of trust and respect radiating in all directions. Between employer and employees, between peers, between the organisation and its customers, suppliers, employee representatives and community.

What's makes for high-performance workplaces?

The performing workplaces are those that combine the full suite of best employment practices - in recruitment; in induction, training and development; in workplace equality; in occupational health, safety and well-being, in business education, in reward systems, in work-life balance, in employee participation, in appropriate dispute resolution, etc - and then deploy them in pursuit of organisational goals and shared interests. It helps, of course, if the organisation has good products and services, and strategies to keep things that way.

How do we help?

Our principal role is that of facilitator. As such, we prefer to act in an independent capacity, and on the joint brief of all stakeholders, typically employers, employees and unions. The combination of our credibility, expertise and experience helps everyone deliver the outcomes they are looking for. Sometimes we are retained by one or some of the stakeholders only to give advice or assistance, but the ethos behind that help remains the same.

Why use a facilitator?

We are essentially a resource to the parties in contexts where stakeholder consent is needed to achieve outcomes. If the parties are able to get agreement on the way forward through direct discussions, consultations or negotiations, well and good. In doing so, individual parties commonly draw on the advice of their own legal, human resource or business strategy consultants.

However, where issues are complex, stakes high or baggage troublesome, it's often sensible for the parties to go further and engage a joint resource - a facilitator whose job is not to give partisan advice but to promote the prospects of an agreed outcome or pathway. A skilled facilitator can take the parties where they cannot go in unmediated exchanges.

Using a facilitator does not mean abdicating responsibility; rather resourcing a process with appropriate support measures where circumstances warrant this.