We help manage and find solutions to employee relations matters including managing performance, grievances and investigations. 
We use our know-how and experience to develop practical human resources solutions, strategies and programs.  Over the past 20 years, we have worked across all sectors and industries. There are very few people management challenges we haven’t seen before, yet we work closely with each client to understand their workplace challenges.

Every company CEO or small business owner has concurrent goals of growing into a highly profitable business and creating a vibrant and desirable workplace environment. If you turn a blind eye to misconduct at work, you create a toxic setting for all of your employees, and face high financial, reputational, and energy-sapping costs of dealing with a bullying or harassment allegation. The main way businesses can prevent harassment is to establish the right internal culture.

Simply appealing to managers to change behaviours, thinking, values, and beliefs rarely works. Culture is affected by other critical factors - incentives, structures, decision processes, behaviours, people, and controls all affect and shape culture. It's important to understand these dynamic interactions to fully comprehend culture, how to manage it, and how to avoid ineffective, knee-jerk reactions to change it.

Sexual harassment, workplace bullying claims and workplace grievances can have a significant impact on the business and employees. All employers should have a robust policy regarding bullying, harassment and discrimination in the workplace and investigate matters that may impact an employer’s duty to provide a safe and healthy work environment.

Savvy HR helps manage bullying complaints and minimise the risk of sexual harassment for businesses, managers and directors.

We work alongside the business to deliver customised training on sexual harassment, discrimination and bullying in your workplace.

Savvy HR provides independent workplace investigations and we use our HR know-how and investigation experience to support clients to deal with informal grievances through to conducting formal investigations. With a depth of practical experience in dealing with workplace grievances, senior HR and Workplace Relations professional, Craig McFadden, has conducted formal site-based workplace investigations to a high standard of procedural and substantive fairness, rigour and sensitivity.

"The client could not have asked for a better response from Craig in terms of process, timeliness and efficiency. His methodology was superb, and his final report was outstanding in terms of coverage of the issues and as a reference tool upon which the client could manage complaint outcomes. The client made it clear to me that they were very happy with the referral and the service provided by Craig throughout the investigation, indicated further by their ongoing retainer of him to provide additional HR services". Employment Partner – Hopgood Ganim.

As independent external investigators Savvy HR has conducted thorough and impartial investigations of sexual harassment claims, theft, assault, discrimination and bullying, as well as claims of misleading and deceptive conduct, and communicated the outcome of these investigations to the complainant and the respondent with sensitivity and tact.

Employers expose themselves to significant financial liabilities when failing to properly investigate complaints. Engaging an external investigator to conduct workplace investigations provides all participants in the investigation process with greater confidence in the process and its outcomes.

Bullying and harassing behaviours can happen at any level and, as an employer, you must takes steps to address it. There are a number of processes that you can implement in your business to help identify, and manage the risk of bullying, such as:

• Employers should ensure that they are adequately managing workplace culture and behaviours, and setting clear standards for appropriate behaviour at all levels - employers can’t expect to assert the right to take action against employees who they think have misbehaved, if they don’t set out rules on employee conduct in the first place.
• Employers need to be vigilant and actively manage the risks of such behaviour to protect their business, brand and their employees. They can do this by:
  • Ensuring that they have an adequate workplace behaviour policy and/or code of conduct in place, covering discrimination, bullying and harassment, as well as victimisation, grievance resolution (including investigation processes), and disciplinary action;
  • Ensuring their policies include a complaints handling procedure and a contact for employees to encourage complaints to be dealt with quickly and fairly.
  • Providing regular and refresher training to enforce how central workplace behaviour policies are to your business, and clearly set out the consequences for failure to comply;
  • Consulting with workers – this could include things such as toolbox meetings, staff forums or committees, or conducting an anonymous survey;
  • Conducting exit interviews when employees leave the business;
  • Monitoring absenteeism, sick leave, staff turnover and records of informal or formal grievances; and,
  • Investigating complaints or grievances about alleged bullying or harassing conduct.

Savvy has an established human resources consulting client base in Brisbane, Sydney and Ballina. We’ve learnt a lot over the years about delivering successful projects. Top of the list is that we can only be as good as the company we keep. That’s why we choose our clients as carefully as they choose us. And we're equally careful about the projects we take on.

From startups to large enterprises, from small employers to government agencies we have helped transform organisations to maximise their performance, deliver their strategy and achieve a competitive advantage through engaged and capable people who work within effective and aligned cultures, structures and processes. Click to read our case studies.

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