ENTERPRISE BARGAINING

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WORKFORCE CHANGE

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LEADERSHIP TRANSITION

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ESG DISCLOSURE

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ENTERPRISE BARGAINING | WORKFORCE CHANGE | LEADERSHIP TRANSITION | ESG DISCLOSURE |

ENTERPRISE BARGAINING

Enterprise bargaining communications strategy

Legal advice covers the process. HR covers the people. Highett Partners is a specialist firm and industrial relations communications consultant that provides what neither covers: the communications strategy that determines whether the organisation comes through the negotiation with its credibility and relationships intact.

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The communications gap in enterprise bargaining negotiations.

Enterprise agreements are won and lost at the bargaining table. But what happens outside that room — what employees hear, what unions say publicly, what the market infers — shapes the outcome just as much as the terms themselves.

Most organisations enter bargaining with strong legal representation and a clear negotiating position. Few have given equivalent thought to the communications architecture that needs to sit alongside it. The result is reactive: statements drafted under pressure, inconsistent messaging across sites, or — most damaging — a silence that employees and unions fill with their own narrative.

Highett Partners provides the enterprise bargaining communications strategy that runs parallel to the legal strategy from the moment bargaining is notified. We build the framework for what to say, what not to say, and how to maintain a consistent position across every channel and audience throughout the process.

Melbourne-based, we work with organisations navigating EBA processes across Australia.

WHAT WE DO

Our role in your EBA process.

We work with your legal advisers, HR leadership, and CEO to build the communications framework that runs from opening notification to settlement. Our work covers three areas.

NARRATIVE ARCHITECTURE

We establish the core position — what the organisation stands for in this negotiation, what it is genuinely offering, and how that story holds under pressure. This becomes the reference point for every communication throughout the process.

LANGUAGE AND MESSAGING

We advise on how to communicate enterprise bargaining to employees. We write the specific communications — employee briefings, manager talking points, written statements, and responses to union claims — in language that is honest, consistent, and defensible. We also advise on what should not be committed to writing.

SEQUENCING AND TIMING

Communications timing during bargaining is as important as content. We advise on when to communicate, to whom, and in what order — including how to manage significant developments such as a protected action ballot, a Fair Work Commission conciliation, or a final offer.

"When employees don't trust what they're hearing from management, they stop listening to it. That is where industrial action begins."

HIGHETT PARTNERS · EBA COMMUNICATIONS CONSULTANTS AUSTRALIA

WHAT IS AT STAKE

The cost of getting EBA communications wrong is real and well documented.

Poor communications during bargaining doesn't just make the process harder — it changes the outcome.

Industrial escalation

In providing communications strategy for protected industrial action, we provide Protected action that could have been avoided, or that lasts longer than it should, is almost always preceded by a communications breakdown. When employees don't trust what they're hearing from management, they stop listening to it.

Reputational exposure

EBA disputes are public events. What leaders say — and how they say it — is reported, screenshotted, and shared. A single poorly worded statement can define an organisation's position in the market for years.

Settlement quality

Organisations with a clear, consistent communications position throughout bargaining tend to reach better settlements. When employees understand the genuine constraints and reasoning, they are more likely to accept outcomes they might otherwise contest.

Who engages us for EBA work.

The primary referral and collaboration partners of enterprise bargaining communications counsel are General Counsel and CHRO — the two roles most directly accountable for the outcome of a negotiation. We are typically introduced through an employment lawyer or HR advisory firm who recognises that communications strategy is outside their scope but essential to the result.

The organisations we work with are ASX 200 to ASX 300 companies, large private companies, and government-owned enterprises. They have the complexity — multiple sites, multiple unions, significant employee numbers — that makes communications strategy genuinely consequential rather than merely procedural.

We work across financial services, healthcare, energy and resources, transport and logistics, retail, and higher education — the sectors where enterprise bargaining is a recurring feature of corporate life rather than an occasional event.