Workplace Relations & Safety
Sparke Helmore's workplace relations and safety lawyers are second to none.
In a changing and increasingly competitive marketplace, our clients value our expert knowledge and extensive experience across all workplace relations and safety matters.
We have integrated our employment, industrial, OH&S and environment experts into a single national team to ensure the comprehensive management of all workplace matters. This, combined with the firm's expertise in workers compensation, means that we offer end-to-end management of workplace issues.
With an integrated team that operates from seven offices in six states and territories, national employers benefit from a consistent, coordinated service. Our ability to draw from such an extensive national team also enables us to ensure the best allocation of resources, to provide an immediate response and to address urgent matters, regardless of location.
Expertise
As Australia's industrial relations system enters a new regime, the informed, strategic and proactive management of human resources is critical.
Sparke Helmore's workplace relations lawyers provide public and private sector employers with the advice and tools to maximise business opportunities. Our experience extends across all aspects of employment and industrial law and our successful defence of employer claims is second to none.
As several of our senior lawyers are former safety prosecutors, we have a unique insight into investigation strategy and the defence of prosecutions.
We are one of just a few law firms that has successfully argued before the courts not to record a conviction, even though the offence was proven.
We have even been able to achieve these results in cases where the offence involved a fatality. This is particularly significant given the stringent nature of the occupational health and safety legislation and the current focus on workplace fatalities.
Our combined expertise and commitment to understanding our client's business enables us to:
- deliver tailored strategies that meet changing legislative requirements;
- optimise our clients' strategic position and meet their commercial objectives;
- successfully protect our clients against dispute or prosecution; and
- provide services that are practical to implement and manage.
Key services
- Advocacy and dispute resolution
- Bullying harassment
- Approvals, licences, infringement notices
- Commercial agreements
- Compliance
- Contractor management
- Coronial inquests
- Discrimination claims
- Due diligence
- Enterprise bargaining
- Employment contracts, agreements and awards
- Human resources planning
- Industrial relations
- Investigations
- Policy and procedure development
- Privacy
- Prosecutions
- Risk assessment and management
- Strategic management - including incident and community response
- Training
- Unfair and unlawful dismissals
- Workplace culture and behaviour
Experience
In a leading decision regarding sexual harassment in the workplace, the Supreme Court of NSW upheld the decision to terminate an employee accused of sexually harassing a colleague. Significant to the case was the lack of witnesses to the alleged harassment. Sparke Helmore successfully ran the case before the Transport Appeals Board and the Supreme Court.
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