Cronulla Sharks Leagues Club

How An HR Partner Helped Guide The Sharks Through A 2-Year Refurbishment

With The Sharks Leagues Club closing its doors for a two-year refurbishment, merging with another club and needing an in-house HR Partner, they reached out to Employment Innovations for help.

INDUSTRY

Entertainment

SOLUTION

Outsourced HR
Employment Hero

YEAR JOINED

2019

โ€œI couldnโ€™t ask for anything more than what our HR Partner has been able to deliver to the Club. They are professional, always available and have been instrumental in transforming the HR processes of The Sharks Leagues Clubโ€

Elie Bassil

BACKGROUND

The Sharks League Club is a prominent employer in the Sutherland region of Sydney and is undergoing a two-year refurbishment and also merging with a smaller football club, with the two-year process due for completion in 2021. With over 32 full-time and 100 casual staff on the books they needed to make a series of redundancies while transferring some employees to other local businesses that the group owned. As the GM, Elie was looking for an HR Consultant who could operate in-house as one of his team advising on an approach that was employee focused while protecting the group by ensuring compliant decisions were being made across all businesses.

CHALLENGE

Elie required a three-step process of HR Consulting over a two year period. The first was to manage a series of redundancies and relocation of staff in a fashion that would limit the financial impact to the club, while retaining key staff members and ensuring the approach was employee focused. As The Sharks were merging with another club the next phase was to ensure a compliant HR foundation was in place in the new entity. Finally, a new professional and automated HR process was required to be in place for the reopening of the Leagues Club in 2021.

SOLUTION

As the local Sutherland HR Partner, Jess attended a number of meetings with Elie and other stakeholders to agree on the deliverables of the engagement and ensure that, as a key advisory, there a positive working relationship could be formed.
Jess was quickly able to take control of the redundancy process transferring the employment of key staff to other businesses within the group along with negotiating others to take a 2-year leave without pay. This enabled The Sharks to limit the budget impact of redundancies while ensuring that employees were being managed with a human touch.
The new club being merged with required an updated set of contracts, policies and HR processes which were put in place before any staff relocation thus providing a compliant HR foundation and establishment of processes that could be taken the wider Cronulla Sharks group.
Finally, Jess worked with Elie and the management team to transform the way the business approached HR process, laying the foundations for a new way to manage staff when the club reopens in 2021.

RESULT

The Sharks were able to successfully manage a series of redundancies throughout the refurbishment process while retaining key staff to return to the business when it reopens in 2021. Elie and the management team were able to have confidence that business decisions were being made with HR best practices while building a compliant, automated and streamlined foundation for the group moving into the future.

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