This supported living home is run by House with No Steps. It's one of a wide range of
disability support services that the leading not-for-profit organisation provides.
We have a single purpose - we exist to support people with disability. In all different ways
supporting people to live in the community. We also supply a whole lot of training and
support to people with a disability. We help people link into and engage with the community.
We run a whole lot of businesses that employ people with very significant disabilities.
Even though it's a not-for-profit, House with No Steps is a large business. It employs nearly
two and half thousand people, in a wide range of services and programs across New South
Wales, Queensland and the ACT. House with No Steps works closely with its employees
to deliver the best possible services to people with a disability.
We are in a rapidly changing environment with for example the National Disability Insurance
Scheme. If we're not working constructively and openly with our staff to work out how
to navigate our way to seize those opportunities and respond to those challenges then we're
just not in good shape.
So instead of waiting for there to be issues we're talking about proactive things that
we can change in the organisation to make it a better place for the workers and a
better organisation.
This very close collaborative relationship between the organisation, the Australian Services
Union and its workforce is new. It was formed with the help of the Fair Work Commission
through its 'New Approaches' program, after an industrial dispute that had rocked the
organisation.
It really was a very difficult, very nasty dispute.
Look it got very ugly. And I think if we look back we probably would have done it differently.
The dispute arose from an announcement of redundancies resulting from a restructure
of its Sydney residential support services.
Staff saying they weren't happy, they involved the union and within 48 hours there was a
notice of dispute filed and we were off to the Commission.
It was a really significant dispute for our membership because it was just moments before
Christmas, lots of people losing their jobs, lots of people losing their support in the
workplace.
Yes it was resolved there. It was, again, a reasonably adversarial process as dispute
resolution often is. But there were a couple of catalysts for change that actually flowed
out of that dispute resolution process.
Once the dispute was resolved though I approached the parties and said 'now, that was pretty
ugly wasn't it? Yes. Would you like to talk about relating to one another in a different
way? Are you interested in having a look at that?
No-one was particularly happy with the outcome of the dispute - not the organisation and
not the union members. And so that's what prompted the discussion about a new approaches
style of engagement.
And also Deputy President Booth of the Commission recommended that we pursue an interest-based,
more collaborative approach to reconciling our differences rather than the traditional
position-based adversarial approach. And we said 'yes - we'd love to do that'.
They were very upfront about wanting to have a positive engagement with their workforce.
And they did see that working with a unionised workforce in a new approaches style was a
way to achieve that.
The Fair Work Commission facilitated a number of interest-based discussions and workshops
between the organisation, union and staff at management and operational levels.
Our interests and our staff's interest and the union's interest actually align very substantially.
There will always be some differences, some disputes, hotspots, whatever. But we're 90
per cent aligned, not 90 per cent divergent.
And we talked about what it would take for all of us to embark on a new approaches engagement
in a confident way. And that meant that there needed to be a leap of faith from both of
us.
You can say leap of faith, you can say we buried the hatchet. However you put it, you've
got to take a risk. But in our view it was a risk that was absolutely worth taking.
Where we've really seen it in action is where issues have arisen and we've used it to resolve
that issue, where we've seen it at a local level because workers have said in a proactive
sense 'here's something we'd really like to see done better at the organisation and we've
had that discussion with the organisation and seen results. It has taken many hours
of the Fair Work Commission, it has, to attend and facilitate discussions at a regional and
local level and it's those discussions that are the most important in ensuring that we
have engagement at a local level.
We've seen better financial outcomes, we're seeing better outcomes for the people we support.
We're seeing improved staff engagement, lower staff attrition. So on lots of indicators
this has been a very successful process.
Yeah, I really believe it has been. Not without its hiccups along the way absolutely and still
we see disputes arise in workplaces. But they're being dealt with in a really collaborative
way at a local level.
This new, collaborative approach means that no disputes from House with No Steps have
reached the Fair Work Commission since this process began. But the Commission has been
very active in developing the new the relationship between the organisation and its workforce.
The Fair Work Commission's status and view in the community is really important. It's
legitimate, it's serious business - it's not kind of seen as fluffy and tinkering around
the edges.
I think Deputy President Booth's involvement was critical. I doubt very much that without
her we would have worked our way through the process and got the outcomes that we're now seeing.
It's their progress. The Commission has simply provided them with some space to think about
it, some models to assess and compare, some tools to use and then they have gone and done
the work themselves.
It's not so much new approaches it's just bleeding obvious common sense. If you value
your workforce, if you truly want to engage them and have them loyal to the organisation,
you need to include them, you need to respect them. We've come a long way I think in re-learning
that.