– by Mary Cullen, Founder and Managing Director of Insight HR
What the Workplace Relations Commission has taught me about developing better managers
One of the privileges of my career has been seeing management decisions long after they were made.
Most organisations only experience those decisions in the moment. A difficult performance review. A workplace investigation. A disciplinary hearing. A dismissal. A grievance. Once the matter has concluded internally, everyone moves on.
Occasionally, however, those same decisions resurface months, or even years, later before the Workplace Relations Commission.
By then, memories have faded. Managers may have changed roles. People have left the organisation. What once felt like an ordinary management decision is examined in extraordinary detail.
Having acted as an expert witness and observed managers giving evidence from the witness box, I have often reflected on how differently organisations might invest in management development if they could witness what happens there.
The witness box has a way of exposing everything an organisation failed to teach its managers.
That observation is not intended as a criticism of managers. Quite the opposite.
Most of the managers I have seen giving evidence were conscientious people who genuinely believed they had acted fairly and in the best interests of their organisation. They were trying to deal with complex situations involving difficult personalities, competing business priorities, limited time and imperfect information.
The problem was rarely a lack of commitment. More often, it was a lack of preparation.
One of the most striking moments is when a manager is asked about a legal concept that has fundamentally influenced the case, only to reveal that they have never heard of it.
Reasonable accommodation is one example.
To an employment lawyer or an experienced HR professional, the duty to consider reasonable accommodation is well understood. Yet I have watched managers, entirely honestly, explain that nobody had ever discussed the concept with them, that they did not know they were expected to consider it and that they believed they were simply making a sensible management decision.
At that point, the discussion is no longer about whether the manager acted with good intentions. It becomes about whether the organisation equipped that manager with the knowledge required to discharge their responsibilities lawfully.
The answer is often uncomfortable.
The same pattern emerges in performance management.
Managers frequently describe long-standing concerns about an employee’s performance. They explain that expectations had been discussed on numerous occasions and that dismissal came only after considerable patience.
The difficulty is that the documentation tells a different story.
Performance review records make no reference to concerns. Notes from one-to-one meetings record operational discussions but contain no evidence that performance standards were challenged. Objectives are recorded as achieved. Feedback is generally positive. Then, seemingly without warning, the employee is dismissed for poor performance.
It is not difficult to understand why such inconsistencies attract attention.
The issue is rarely that the manager fabricated concerns. More often, they had difficult conversations but failed to document them properly. They believed their memory would be sufficient. They underestimated the importance of contemporaneous records. They assumed everyone understood where things stood.
Unfortunately, assumptions are rarely persuasive evidence.
I have also seen organisations rely upon investigation reports that contained factual inaccuracies, transcription errors or findings that were simply not supported by the evidence gathered during the investigation.
Sometimes the error appears minor when first identified. A poorly worded sentence. A misunderstanding of a witness’s evidence. An omission that changes the context of a finding.
Yet those reports often become the foundation upon which significant disciplinary decisions are made.
If the foundation is flawed, every decision built upon it becomes vulnerable.
This is one of the reasons I have always believed that workplace investigations require highly developed analytical, interviewing and report-writing skills. Producing an investigation report is not an administrative exercise. It is a process of analysing evidence, weighing competing accounts, reaching balanced findings and communicating those findings with precision.
Small drafting errors can have significant consequences.
Another recurring issue is procedural fairness.
Particularly within smaller organisations, I have seen the same individual investigate the allegations, conduct the disciplinary hearing, make the decision to dismiss and then hear the employee’s appeal.
From an operational perspective, the arrangement may appear entirely logical. Resources are limited. The manager knows the background. They have invested considerable time in understanding the issues.
The difficulty is that an appeal is intended to provide an independent review of the original decision.
It becomes very difficult to demonstrate independence when the same individual is effectively reviewing their own conclusions.
Again, this rarely arises because anyone intended to compromise fairness.
It arises because organisations have not fully appreciated why procedural safeguards exist in the first place.
Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned from observing these cases is that employment disputes are seldom determined by one catastrophic mistake.
More often, they are shaped by a series of relatively small decisions.
A conversation that was never documented.
A policy that was applied inconsistently.
A performance concern that was never addressed clearly.
An investigation report that lacked precision.
A manager who had never been trained to recognise a legal obligation.
Each decision appears manageable in isolation.
Collectively, they create significant organisational risk.
This is why I have become increasingly concerned by the growing reliance on generic compliance training as the primary method of developing managers.
Completing an online learning module does not prepare someone for the reality of interviewing a distressed employee, responding to allegations of bullying, managing a complex performance issue or leading a team through organisational change.
Those situations require judgement.
Judgement develops through experience, discussion, reflection and high-quality learning that allows managers to explore ambiguity rather than simply memorise policy.
At Insight HR, these experiences have fundamentally shaped our philosophy on management development.
We certainly recognise the value of digital learning. In fact, we regularly develop bespoke Learning Management System content for clients because it provides consistency and accessibility across geographically dispersed organisations.
However, we have moved away from viewing digital learning as an end in itself.
Instead, we use storytelling, podcast-style learning and scenario-based video content because people remember stories far longer than they remember legislation. Stories encourage managers to place themselves in the situation, consider competing perspectives and reflect on how they might respond.
More importantly, digital learning should form part of a broader development journey rather than replacing it.
Our facilitated management programmes encourage discussion rather than passive participation. Managers are invited to analyse real situations, challenge assumptions, explore alternative approaches and learn from one another’s experiences.
That learning continues through our Management Circles, where managers meet regularly to reflect on the challenges they are facing, discuss emerging issues and build confidence in handling increasingly complex situations.
We also integrate change management into our management development programmes because today’s managers are expected to do far more than manage employee relations.
They are expected to help people navigate uncertainty.
Whether an organisation is introducing new technology, restructuring services, integrating teams following an acquisition or responding to changing economic conditions, managers are the people who translate organisational strategy into everyday experience.
Employees rarely judge change by reading the Chief Executive’s announcement.
They judge it by the conversations they have with their manager.
That places an extraordinary responsibility on managers, yet many have never been taught how to lead people through uncertainty, resistance or change fatigue.
For that reason, we do not see employee relations, leadership development and change management as separate disciplines.
They are all part of the same profession.
Looking back over the many cases I have encountered throughout my career, I am convinced that organisations often ask the wrong question.
They ask whether management development is worth the investment.
I believe the more important question is this:
What is the cost of expecting managers to make increasingly complex decisions without ever preparing them to do so?
Every grievance.
Every failed change programme.
Every workplace investigation.
Every talented employee who quietly leaves.
Every unnecessary dispute.
Every preventable claim before the Workplace Relations Commission.
Somewhere behind many of those outcomes is a manager who was promoted into a role of enormous responsibility and expected to succeed through instinct alone.
Management deserves better than that.
So do the organisations that rely upon it.
And so do the people whose working lives are shaped by it every single day.
