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All our highly experienced consultants have worked as HR and IR practitioners in senior roles in the private and public sectors before joining HBA Consulting.
This means that we understand how the advice and assistance that we give can be implemented in the workplace, and what the employer needs to consider to realise the best possible outcome while managing any associated risks.
Enterprise bargaining in the Commonwealth public sector is no longer the agency-led exercise it once was.
The current framework places a much stronger emphasis on service-wide consistency, common conditions and centralised outcomes. For APS agencies, this means many matters that were previously negotiated locally, including pay, core conditions and key employment standards, now sit largely within a broader service-wide process.
That shift has changed the role of agencies, but it has not removed it.
Agencies still need to understand where they have room to move, identify local operational issues that may still need to be considered, manage internal risk, support decision-making, and translate final outcomes into practical workplace arrangements.
The bargaining agenda may be more centralised, but agencies remain responsible for making the outcome work in their own operating environment.
Centralised bargaining can deliver greater consistency, but it does not make every agency the same.
Agencies still operate with different functions, workforces, locations, service pressures, systems and levels of internal capability. Those differences matter, particularly where local operational requirements need to be understood, evidenced or managed within the bargaining framework
The challenge is that agency-specific detail can be harder to see in a more centralised process.
Strong HR and IR capability helps agencies stay aligned with Government policy while ensuring their operational realities are not lost in the machinery of service-wide bargaining.
Has bargaining reached a stalemate?
The current bargaining environment places different demands on agency HR and industrial relations teams.
Agencies should expect their internal functions to provide clear advice on the bargaining framework, the agency's room to move, emerging risks, internal governance, and communication and implementation planning. This requires both technical expertise and practical capacity.
Not all agencies have these capabilities in-house, nor do all HR teams have the capacity to dedicate resources to bargaining while maintaining day-to-day service delivery. In these circumstances, targeted external support can help agencies access the specialist expertise and additional capacity required.
The areas outlined below are those where agencies most commonly seek support.
Agencies still need a disciplined internal process to manage bargaining effectively, even where many of the major settings are determined centrally. This requires the capability to:
The agency should clearly identify who is responsible for key inputs and decisions, how issues will be assessed, when matters need to be escalated, and how advice will be provided to senior leaders.
Where this structure is not in place, agencies can quickly find themselves reacting to issues rather than managing them. This can lead to:
Effective governance gives the agency a clear line of sight across the process. It helps ensure bargaining-related work is coordinated, defensible, and aligned with both Government policy settings and the agency’s operational needs.
Agencies need the capability to identify and test issues that remain genuinely agency-specific.
In the current bargaining environment, it is not enough to point to historical practice or local preference. When an agency-specific condition is under consideration, there must be a clear connection between the proposed arrangement and the agency’s operating environment, workforce needs or service delivery obligations.
This means assessing whether the issue is supported by a genuine operational case, whether the evidence is sufficient, and whether the matter is suitable for enterprise agreement treatment or better managed through policy, guidance or implementation.
This discipline helps agencies focus their efforts on issues that can be properly justified, while avoiding unnecessary complexity, unrealistic expectations or positions that may not be supported within the broader bargaining framework.
Bargaining claims still need to be received, understood and managed carefully.
In the current environment, agencies need a clear triage approach to distinguish between claims that fall within the broader service-wide process, those that may raise genuine agency-specific issues, and matters better addressed through policy, guidance or implementation.
Effective triage is not simply an administrative sorting exercise. Some claims may require further exploration, operational input, stakeholder engagement, escalation or specialist advice before the agency can form a position or determine the appropriate pathway.
A disciplined triage approach helps agencies focus their time and resources where they can have the most impact. It reduces the risk of spending effort on matters outside the agency’s control while ensuring that issues within the agency’s influence are properly identified, tested and managed.
It also supports more consistent decision-making, clearer communication and better management of bargaining-related risk.
Communication and expectation management are critical to maintaining confidence during bargaining. In a more centralised environment, employees may still expect their agency to have direct influence over pay, conditions and local priorities, as it may have had in previous bargaining rounds. Managers may also be uncertain about which matters are managed centrally, which remain open at agency level, and what they should or should not say in response to employee questions.
Agencies, therefore, need the capability to communicate clearly, consistently and with appropriate discipline throughout the process. This includes helping executives, managers, employees, and bargaining representatives understand the agency’s role, the limits of its discretion, and the avenues available for raising and considering issues.
Effective communication is not simply about keeping people informed. It is an important risk control measure. Clear and consistent messaging helps preserve trust, reduce uncertainty and avoid creating expectations the agency may not be able to meet.
Implementation is often the most underestimated phase of bargaining.
Once an enterprise agreement is made, agencies need to translate the agreed terms into practical workplace application. This is where common conditions meet local systems, established practices, manager capability and the day-to-day realities of the workforce.
Agencies need to prepare for this work early. The people responsible for approving leave, managing flexible work requests, rostering staff, applying allowances, handling disputes and advising employees need to understand not only what the agreement says, but also how it is to be applied in practice.
This requires more than administrative updating. It requires practical operational translation, supported by clear policy, guidance, communication and manager support.
Implementation is where the bargaining outcome becomes real for the workforce. Agencies that plan for this phase are better placed to apply new arrangements consistently, reduce confusion and manage post-approval risks.
In the current bargaining environment, we work with agencies in a targeted and practical way:
We help agencies control what they can control. That includes:
This work is particularly important where an agency has unique operational needs, a dispersed or specialised workforce, recent machinery-of-government changes, a small HR function, or limited recent experience in managing bargaining within a centralised framework.
Our support may include:
We are careful not to overestimate the room agencies have to move on many bargaining issues. Instead, we help agencies to identify and make the best use of the remaining space.
That means distinguishing between matters that are fixed by the broader bargaining framework, matters that may need to be addressed through service-wide processes, and matters where the agency may still need to explain, justify or implement arrangements in a way that reflects its own operating environment.
For agencies, the value of this support is practical. It helps:
Managing Risk
HBA have expert human resource and industrial relations practitioners, many having worked in senior executive roles across the public sector. We find this experience, coupled with our ability to understand, analyse and develop organisational specific approaches that take into account the strategic, tactical and operational level (so not just what to do and when but also how) sets us apart from most other HR/IR firms
Contact Us to discuss your individual needs and how we can help.