2022: the year of change in industrial relations and workplace relations

After two years and counting of pandemic-affected workplaces the nature of the employer and employee relations is changing and that is cause for a refresh of how you deal with workplace and employee relations.

The last two years have seen so many changes in the way we work. Working from home, flexible working hours, the labour shortage due to the pause on migration and international students and a general reassessment of life priorities have directly or indirectly challenged workplace norms. The balance of power right now has changed; employees have more choice and that means employers need to look to be more collaborative and strategic in the way they deal with employees

Adelhelm Australia has a strong belief that the adversarial style of workplace and employee relations is diminishing in relevance and the COVID-experience has hurried up that change. The need to engage with employees in a cooperative way on a day-to-day basis will be imperative to managing this power shift, rather than messy industrial battles.

The costs (both direct costs and productivity reductions) of not moving away from adversarial industrial relations are huge. In 2021 alone 65,000 working days were lost due to strike action, proving that the old method is an archaic way of resolving issues in the changing workplace.

The ‘great resignation’ of 2022 has already started and organisations that adapt first to this new collaborative method of managing workers will be the ones that retain or gain the best staff and prosper. If you don’t adapt, there is a risk of your business being left behind.

We work differently to most in the industry with the focus on proactive prevention of issues through ongoing training and strategic advice to achieve a collaborative management / worker relationship. Encouragingly, Australian business is awakening to this trend.

We’ve found over the last two years that the uptake in our training programs or day-to day advisory services has skewed towards that collaborative focus. Smart organisations know the environment has changed and they understand they can use that for positive engagement in an ongoing fashion that reduces the risk of messy disputes and improves productivity. In this climate those disputes could risk greater reputational damage than normal and seriously reduce the effectiveness of your workforce.

We’re working with some of those organisations now and already we’re seeing results that will set-up them up for the changing paradigm of 2022 and beyond.