Haley Sturgess

I have been occupying a dual role at Council as Employee Relations Lead for Council’s Business Partnering team as well as undertaking Senior HR Business Partner responsibilities within my own portfolio.

Employee Relations Lead Responsibilities:

• Demonstrated ability to provide effective employee relations guidance and leadership, managing complex employee grievances, disputes, injury management, and disciplinary matters, including workplace investigations on matters that may pose breaches to Council's Employee Code of Conduct.
• Ensuring fair treatment and compliance with organisational policies and employment laws, promoting an outstanding and inclusive work culture, while providing outcome-focused advice to senior leaders on process and organizational risk.
• Prepare accurate, informative, and concise briefs and advice to stakeholders, including senior executive leaders, and facilitate the delivery of grievance management, workplace investigation, disciplinary, performance, and fit-for-work related processes. This extends to representing Council, where required, at the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission.
• Since joining in January 2024, I have led a project to bring the number of open workplace cases involving disciplinary, dispute, grievance, and injury management down from 63 outstanding cases to 20.
• Effectively manage and conduct work design, analysis, and evaluation processes, ensuring alignment to the strategic direction of the organization, good governance and management to budget, fairness, and provision of market sound advice on remuneration strategies. Ensuring all position profile development and remuneration evaluation practices are compliant with the relevant Award and Council's recognized job evaluation methodology.
• Contribute to the research, co-design, and development of leading HR policies and procedures. Prepare executive briefs and facilitate team development workshops and focus groups.
• In Q1, I have successfully led Council's update to the following suite of Policy and Procedure documents: Disciplinary, Performance Improvement, Performance Management, and Grievance Policy. This suite had not been updated since 2018 and was overdue for modernisation to current legislation and best practice. This project, including my leadership in coordination of research, benchmarking, and writing the documents, was done in a contemporary, inclusive, and accessible way. Further, I have led the successful implementation of these procedure changes to Council employees through leading the facilitation of information workshops and focus groups with subject matter experts, key business stakeholders, and then the wider business.

Senior HR Business Partner responsibilities:

• Act as a principal HR Business Partner to assigned Group Executive and business portfolios, ensuring the provision of leadership coaching, human resources and workplace relations advice, and evidence-based workforce planning. I have been partnered with the Customer & Planning Services Group and Civic Governance Group, which has given me the opportunity to work with a large component of Council's community-facing workforce.
• Operate as part of the assigned business portfolio's leadership team, working directly with line management on the business agenda, creating shared ownership of business issues, and sharing strategic insights to inform the broader People & Culture Branch initiatives.
• Partner with Managers, Coordinators, and people leaders to connect the culture and values strategy to the business objectives, harnessing the full potential of the People & Culture Branch offerings, and building leadership capability to embed sustainable business performance outcomes.
• Play a key role in the prioritization and customization of HR solutions that are corporately aligned and address critical operational, performance, and attraction, and retention priorities for the business.

• Provided expert strategic and tactical HR advice to coach managers across the range of people-related business activities, building organisational leadership capability, and delivering business-focused HR solutions.
• Ensured HR strategies, policies and systems were effectively and consistently developed and deployed to support business outcomes.
• Provided reporting, strategic analysis and insights to predict workforce patterns and behaviours influencing senior managers to drive business performance and the deployment of strategic HR initiatives including performance appraisal, engagement, succession planning and talent management.
• Led the research, procurement and implementation of a new HRIS system for our organization, and successfully rolled this out across the organisation. This has resulted in streamlined and efficient HR processes for all staff.
• Proactively conducted HR compliance audits, identified gaps, and implemented corrective actions. This led to the implementation of an OH&S audit, inspection, and online annual training to be created for all staff to cover all major OH&S topics, including psychosocial hazards.
• Furthermore, in collaboration with our Fire Authority I spearheaded the creation and implementation of an online First Response, Warden and General Occupancy training and assessment platform this enabled us to ensure that our employees had access to correct information and training around making our workplace safe and further safeguarded the organisation from potential legal liabilities
• Conducted recruitment processes, including job postings, phone screens, and in-person interviews. Managed all HR-related administrative tasks related to the onboarding and offboarding of staff in a streamlined and compliant manner.
• Provided advice and guidance on the creation and implementation of people-focused processes and workplace policies, in line with best practice and legislative updates.
• Actively supported, guided, and advised operational management on recruitment processes, including onboarding, induction plans, and programs.
• Developed and implemented talent succession planning tools, processes, and training and development programs to facilitate staff development.
• Conducted workplace investigations and guided front-line leaders on performance management, grievance, and disciplinary processes.

• Effectively led a team of 23 administrators across 8 QLD locations
• I consistently met my individual and team yearly business targets
• Analysed team and individual strengths to build effective and capable teams, to reach and exceed team and business key performance metrics
• Work collaboratively with stakeholders to listen, understand their position, anticipate their needs, and proactively act to meet their expectations
• Through engagement and collaboration with IT and project team I was successfully able to bring in a process that halved the time my team took to process client paperwork. This process improvement had significant cost benefit for the business and improved client experience
• Across FY17/18 & 18/19 successfully drove a significant increase in performance levels across productivity, quality and engagement
• Effectively created a culture of innovation and continuous improvement which saw an overhaul of several processes used by my teams. One such change targeted error rate, reducing human errors on forms which lead to business compensation payouts
• The resulting reduction in error rate went from above 5% to less than 3% bringing within industry standard margins
• Successfully executed succession planning to attract and secure best talent within my teams and adept at onboarding and organising teams to align with competitive targets
• Used strong business acumen to successfully participate as subject matter expert in strategic projects which were key to the development and implementation of short and long-term strategies. Specifically, for work practice improvements, member enhancements and service delivery
• Led, coached, and supported my teams through periods of structural, technological and process changes within QSuper’s business transformation plan. Ensuring that, at all times, our team still continued to meet business objectives.
• 2016 QLD AusContact awards finalist.

• Within a fast-paced multi-faceted role, provided general advice to clients under the licence permitted based on their superannuation/advice need.