Rochfort, Associates Pty Ltd
Rochfort, Associates is a Sydney-based workplace relations consultancy operating across Australia. We are registered and indentified in all industrial jurisdictions in each State as well as with Fair Work Australia, the Fair Work Ombudsman and the Australian Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission.
We have been providing our services for over 35 years, specialising in:
- Employment Contracts
- Workplace Agreements and Certified Agreements
- Strategic Industrial Relations/Employment Advice
- Award Interpretation
- Award Negotiation
- Mediation & Arbitration including with the Fair Work Ombudsman
- Unfair Dismissal/Adverse Action Claims
- Performance Management
- Human Resources Management
- OH&S
- Anti-Discrimination and Equal Opportunity Advice & Advocacy
- Human Rights and Equal Opportunity negotiation and advocacy
Our philosophy is that there is a solution to every problem. Over the years we can boast that we have achieved outcomes in some of the more difficult tasks in Australian industrial relations context, including national wage cases, the "38-hour week", award rates, occupational demarcations and flexible working hours.
Associated Companies
HR Savvy is a subsidiary of Rochfort, Associates and refers matters requiring particular human resources expertise to that company. The principal of HR Savvy, Lesley Evans, has extensive experience in human resource management with major Australian companies and, since 2004, in providing advisory services under contract to a number of companies and business entities. Until 2008, Lesley was a director of a company providing services in occupational health and risk management and in workplace risk management. Lesley continues to provide those services through HR Savvy
The specific areas in which services are provided by HR Savvy are:
- Human Resource Management and
- Occupational Health and Safety and Risk Management
Advisory and Advocacy Services
Why Specialisation?
Two recent decisions have underlined the need for Companies to have expert Human Resource and Industrial Relations resources. The first of these was a warning from the Fair Work Ombudsman to Employers who face "risks" if they under-resource their HR or IR functions. This "warning" is especially critical when entering into effective employment contracts and contracts for services and particularly when negotiating and making applications to Fair Work Australia for ratification of Certified Agreements. Errors in form and content can have major (and costly) repercussions for Companies.
The second decision was a judgment in the Federal Magistrate's Court in which the Magistrate commented on the poor standard of IR representation when finding that the Company's HR Manager was "either incompetent or lacked the ability to deal with difficult workplace issues".
Rochfort, Associates can assist companies to overcome this deficiency by providing an IR service backed by expertise arising from over 30 years of practice in most industrial jurisdictions.
In other recent decisions; a substantial fine has been imposed on a major national hamburger chain for breaches of the Fair Work Act after it was criticised for not having an effective franchised IR or HR resource, whilst, in a Victorian decision, a penalty of $150 000 was imposed on a national food chain and franchise which likewise did not have a dedicated HR/IR resource or access to one. In the latter case, the magistrate pointed out that compliance with Industrial Relations Laws was not just a responsibility for large employers with HR specialists.
In other words, "become an expert, or hire one"