March 19, 2024
Lessons from my week of triple feedback: how to give and receive it
Amanda explains the science behind why we all dread negative feedback, and best-practice tips for both sides.
Strategy
Independent advisors on your most challenging culture, inclusion and people risk issues
Strategic workplace consultants
Our clients face people challenges that continue to increase in terms of their complexity, their range and the risk of exposure they raise.
The gap between employee and management expectations and needs, regulatory demands, making inclusion a reality, adjusting to productive work and work relationships in a hybrid world, adequate governance, attracting and retaining talent, harnessing technology and AI, collecting and utilising people data, external crises and dealing with macro events in a polarised world.
Keeping up across all of this and choosing right over easy can require support. We work with senior leaders in HR and in the business to create, maintain or develop their people strategies and help them deal effectively with whatever workplace challenges they face.
Consulting expertise
What we can help you with
Proactively addressing your culture
How wide is the gap between the expectations and needs of your management and your workers? How are you ensuring that all of your people feel included and able to work at or near their best? Are wellbeing initiatives having an impact? How safe do people feel talking about what’s happening to them? How oriented are people towards a common, aspirational purpose?
Perhaps there has been a destabilising event and you need to create something new. We are very used to advising in crisis situations and the immediate aftermath.
Do you have a management skills gap to address?
Leadership alignment
Cultural change initiatives may be driven by HR, but they need to be lived and embodied by your most senior leaders; this is what makes them a reality.
We are practised at working with these teams, at clarifying the why, your common aspirational purpose - something your people can coalesce around– at building a sense of accountability and helping understand the day-to-day role, the need for role modelling.
HR sounding board
We understand just how lonely the senior HR leaders’ job can be.
Sometimes you need a sounding board, sometimes advice on selling something into the business.
Sometimes you need an experienced, external voice to deliver a tough message.
Increasingly we see a role helping you to look at macro world events.
Ethical lapses
These happen in even the best run businesses. The way that you respond immediately is the key to success or otherwise. This is probably our bread and butter. We can help minimise the damage, working with the individual and any affected team(s).
Topical issues you might be facing right now
What does a positive duty to prevent workplace harassment actually mean?
How can you most effectively integrate two work forces or groups of workers?
Commenting on macro events in a polarised world – helping you with knowing when to comment and how to make it balanced.
Solutions
What you'll get
We deploy and adapt different methods depending on your organisation, your objectives and your budget. We have a diverse and impressive team of experts and match the people with the right skills and experience to work with you.
Any solution we recommend for you would be bespoke, but will include approaches from the following:
Listening exercises & exploration
Recommendation
Action
Working with you
How we partner with you
We are flexible to your needs. What matters to us is providing the results and support required. We have longstanding partnerships with clients who work with us indifferent ways at different times. We've never done two projects the same.
Project based
We help you clarify your objective and devise a path that works for you towards achieving it.
Retainer
You might have various needs across multiple initiatives and want to sound board with experts who have cross-industry exposure when you need them.
On demand
Inevitably, things happen or can go wrong in any organisation. You need to respond quickly…
Want to discuss the right approach for you?
Contact Us
Experience
Why work with us
- We always look at what’s most important: we blend an engagement lens with the risk lens (that comes naturally given our coalface backgrounds as employment lawyers).
- We’re at ease working with senior stakeholders and difficult subject matter or data. Decades of training and facilitation experience enable us to deliver messages that land. We make the complex simpler, relying both on the accessibility of our ideas and the calibre of our people.
- We’re independent - we say the things that HR can’t say.
- We’re trusted advisors – in the heat of the moment and in off-crisis mode situations too.
My experience with byrne·dean was excellent. They were professional, directed, cost conscious, and performed the tasks they were given with sensitivity and objectivity. Obviously, the nature of our engagement with Byrne Dean is, and must remain, confidential; however, I can say that they handled a challenging assignment in a timely fashion, within budget and produced a work product that exceeded our expectations.
General Counsel, Technology Firm
The latest thinking from the team
March 4, 2024
Workplace dynamics - Seven trends in 2024 employers need to address
As leaders and HR prep budgets for the new financial year, seven key workforce themes warrant attention.
February 22, 2024
Do wellbeing initiatives make a difference?
Rachael outlines an optimal two-pronged approach to wellbeing: balancing proactive initiatives on a bedrock of positive culture and structure.
Let’s get connected.
Our highly experienced team of workplace behaviour and wellbeing experts are here to help. Drop us a line for world class guidance and advice.
Other ways we help
We're at the heart of workplace people matters.
Training
World class sessions in mental health & wellbeing, equity, diversity & inclusion, workplace behaviour, legal & accountability, leadership and skills - delivered in person, virtually or via digital learning modules, to individuals and groups of any size.
Find out more
Resolution
Helping to resolve workplace behaviour concerns with investigations, mediations and independent partnering.
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