As a business you invest a considerable amount of time, money and effort in order to build a strong brand and maintain its status. Commercial reputation takes years to develop but can be destroyed with a few poor decisions and bad luck. Enterprise bargaining presents a situation that can at worst damage your brand beyond repair and at best offer a chance to solidify the hard work put into creating goodwill. Most businesses recognise the possible risks associated with enterprise bargaining and work to merely manage it throughout the process. Others avoid them altogether and rely solely on modern awards and individual contracts to govern their employment relationships. Instead, we encourage businesses to embrace the opportunity of entering into an enterprise agreement as a way to strengthen and protect their brand.

For example, an enterprise agreement can form an important part of the recruitment, selection and retention strategy by showcasing the terms and conditions of employment offered by your business, especially if it contains innovative clauses. Not only do such terms potentially attract talented employees to come and work for your business, they also provide a competitive advantage over competitors who may be seeking to entice your employees away from your business.

While enterprise agreements do offer an opportunity for creativity, the Fair Work Commission (“FWC”) must approve them before they become operational. The FWC’s annual report shows that while only a relatively small number of enterprise agreement were not approved last year, there was still a two-thirds increase in the number of applications that were not approved. This highlights the need to understand all of the requirements under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) (“FW Act”) before beginning negotiations.

In addition to the stipulations around the content of an enterprise agreement contained in the FW Act there are several important rules that must be adhered to during the bargaining process. There is nothing more potentially detrimental to a business’ brand than when it appears that the employer does not, or is perceived to not, understand their own rights and obligations or respect the rights and obligations of other bargaining parties in that process. Issues such as employers giving employees notice of their representational rights, following good faith bargaining requirements and providing a proper access period and voting procedure can stall negotiations and reflect poorly on the employer even after an agreement is reached.

If bargaining does hit a standstill, employers face the further risk of industrial action being taken by the employees which can be very public and very costly to the organisation, particularly if that industrial action is ongoing. Preventing protected industrial action largely depends on effectively managing the stakeholders involved in the process.

The best way to ensure that your business is in a position to appropriately manage the stakeholders throughout the process is to know and understand your own position inside and out. There are a number of practical mechanisms that your business can also adopt, including through establishing bargaining protocols at the outset of the bargaining processes. These protocols are particularly important if there are a number of bargaining parties at the negotiating table.

We often advise clients to consider and document their expectations about how negotiations will progress, including whether the parties are to exchange written logs of claims setting out their respective positions, whether draft enterprise agreements will be prepared from which the parties are to work from, how matters discussed at meetings are to be recorded (notes and/or transcription), expectations around timeliness of responses and how responses will be delivered. A further way of managing stakeholders is to develop an expansive communications strategy that is flexible, precise, concise and transparent.

Enterprise agreements not only reduce administrative complexity and add commercial certainty to a business. They also represent a clear strategy for a business to improve its brand and to differentiate itself from its competitors. At PCS we work everyday to achieve these goals for our clients, and we would be happy to assist your business with implementing an enterprise agreement.