Senior HR and people leader based in Melbourne. Organisation design, employee relations, workforce risk and transformation, for businesses that have outgrown the way they were set up. Usually that's most of them.
Business problems first. HR is one of the tools.
Pick the problem closest to yours. Each one shows what I'd focus on and where I've done it before.
Make ownership visible, remove duplicated accountability and give leaders a model they can actually run.
Built current and future state options after integration, clarifying leadership accountabilities, governance and implementation risk.
Reduced reliance on single points of local knowledge and set a clear path to sustainable ANZ delivery.
Performance, misconduct, termination, restructure. I run the process so the decision is defensible and the business can live with the outcome.
Assessed which roles a business still needed, built the case for CEO sign-off and ran a compliant process. Most roles settled without prejudice, with no formal claims.
Took on a two-year performance problem nobody would touch. Built trust, found the real grievance, coached the manager in parallel and brokered a voluntary redundancy with the in-house employment lawyers. No escalation.
Pushed back on a business owner who wanted an employee terminated when it wasn't the right call, and held the line.
Coached leaders from "he's not proactive" to what happened, when, what good looks like and what it cost, so their decisions rest on evidence rather than frustration.
I translate the issue into cost, operational exposure and workforce dependency, then put clear options in front of the people who decide.
Built a tracker, briefed managers and made the monitoring visible, turning a passive balance sheet problem into one leaders own. Further reduction expected after the year-end break.
Used remuneration, succession and operating model data to test assumptions and support leadership decisions.
Find operating leverage before adding headcount: self-service, cleaner ownership, better content and fewer hand-offs.
Built an assistant now rolling out across Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore and Korea. 95% accuracy across all HR queries, and an estimated 20% of enquiry time handed back to each HR team. Anything out of scope goes to the HRBP, with an offer to draft the email for the employee.
Moved work back to the right owners and protected HR capacity for the work that needs judgement.
The technology is the easy part. The real work is data, ownership, local requirements, communication, sequencing and adoption.
On a five-country SuccessFactors rollout, the systems team was ready to push play. I got payroll teams across Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Malaysia and Japan talking to the implementation team, because each country had different holidays, pay rules and legacy systems.
Built the employee comms plan and training sessions leading into go-live, and I'm the local ANZ support once it lands.
HR should add judgement. It shouldn't become the substitute manager.
Moved work back to accountable leaders where HR had become an informal gatekeeper or workaround.
Coached my own team through ambiguity so they make sound calls without escalating every issue.
Running my own consultancy taught me not to install HR process for the sake of it. The right answer depends on the business.
Telco, infrastructure, engineering, software, manufacturing and consulting. Different businesses, a lot of the same organisational problems.
Start with the problem, find what's materially in the way, then do the least that genuinely changes the outcome.
Most of my roles started with a specific problem to fix. This is what each one was, and what I did about it.
OctaveSenior HR Business Partner, ANZ. 2026 to now.
Primary adviser to the ANZ leadership team through the integration. Cut a $3m leave liability by 12% in three months, built a live AI HR assistant across six countries, harmonised policy across both legacy businesses and lead a team of three.
Australian Private Networks / Activ8meSenior HR Consultant. 2025.
Redesigned the structure, built the case for CEO sign-off and ran a compliant process for 10% of the workforce. Most roles settled without prejudice, with no formal claims. Built an HR strategy on a page and a performance system tied to business KPIs, rebuilt more than 20 policies including whistleblower governance, and moved the business off ConnX onto Employment Hero. Then right-sized the ongoing HR role and selected the person to run it.
John Holland, North West Program AllianceSenior People Advisor. 2024 to 2025.
People lead inside an alliance with Metro Trains, V/Line and KBR. Ran calibration for 200+ employees, handled redeployment and redundancy, and negotiated a high-risk exit without escalation.
Thornton EngineeringHR Manager. 2023 to 2024.
Helped grow headcount 20% in nine months by building the employer brand and a proactive hiring pipeline on SmartRecruiters. Rebuilt conduct frameworks, pushed back on a termination that wasn't justified, and changed probation to keep a hard-won workshop manager.
ZetarisHead of Human Resources. 2021 to 2023.
Built the performance and OKR frameworks for a team spread across Australia and the US, so people knew what good looked like without sharing an office.
Logical Talent Management and independent engagementsCo-founder, 2018 to 2021. Outcome-based consulting, 2024.
Co-founded and ran an HR consultancy for tech and digital businesses: HR health checks and diagnostics, embedded HR, restructures, leadership 360s, HRIS workflow implementation and workforce planning. Two clients liked the work enough to hire our people in-house: one of my consultants at 500 Digital, and me at Zetaris when the pandemic closed the business. Later outcome-based work included a 20-policy suite and contractor risk review for Sparx Solutions. Clients only pay for what actually works.
The same four steps whether it's a single ER case or a regional restructure.
Work out whether the real problem is structure, leadership, capability, process or risk. It's rarely the one people name first.
Put options in terms leaders care about: cost, exposure, timing and impact on the people doing the work.
Run the process so it would survive a Fair Work Commission or ERA review, without burying the business in paperwork.
Leave ownership with accountable leaders, with the tools and capability to handle the next one themselves.
Opinions earned the hard way. If these make you uncomfortable, we're probably not a match, and that's fine.
I've cut six-month probations to three for strong performers. Making good people wait for certainty is a retention risk dressed up as caution.
If the process was fair and documented, asking for a release after the fact adds cost and invites the question of what you're worried about.
Activity monitoring tells you who looks busy. It tells you nothing about who's good, and it costs you the trust of everyone who is.
The moment HR becomes the substitute manager, accountability leaves the building and so does your capacity.
Whoever's asking. Saying it early in a meeting room is a lot cheaper than defending it later at the Commission.
Permanent, fractional or a defined piece of work. Same standard either way.
Head of People, Head of HR or People and Culture Director, for organisations that are integrating, scaling or redesigning.
Senior HR leadership a few days a week or for a fixed term. You get the judgement without carrying a full-time executive salary. I've run this model before through my own consultancy, embedded one to three days a week.
Everything you need to put me forward, in one place.
Jason is a commercially grounded people leader with deep employee relations experience across Australia and New Zealand. He's strongest where a business needs clearer structures, stronger leaders and people decisions that hold up.
I'm a senior HR business partner and people leader based in Melbourne, originally from Whanganui. I've worked across telco, infrastructure, software and manufacturing, and right now I'm advising a leadership team through a merger integration.
I co-founded a consultancy, Logical Talent Management, which taught me a useful habit: diagnose before prescribing. Most HR problems are business problems wearing a lanyard.
What I bring is commercial judgement, a strong grounding in Australian and New Zealand employment law, and a low tolerance for process that doesn't earn its place.
I've also sat on the employee side of the table, preparing people for Fair Work conciliation and reviewing separation deeds. It's made me very good at spotting where an employer's process will fall over, and building mine so it doesn't.
I sing in cover bands. It's where my best hiring analogy came from: a great singer behind the drum kit is still a bad hire.
Whether you're hiring, scoping a fractional role or need a specific piece of work done properly, I'm happy to have a straight conversation about it.