Case study: Fair Work Commission 

We worked extensively with the Commission helping it to simplify its language, explain its processes and report its work

The Commission faced many critical challenges when individual workers and employers became the main users of its legal services, as they represented themselves in unfair dismissal and workplace bullying cases. Most are not lawyers and very few have any knowledge of how these jurisdictions operate.

But the Commission's language and processes were highly complex and legalistic. This had not been such a issue when most of the people appearing were lawyers representing unions or employers in collective actions — it is their job to work in that domain. But people whose everyday job was not the law were finding it hard to use the system and effectively represent themselves. 

The Commission recognised that it needed to change and began a three-year change program called ‘Future Directions’.  Over five major projects we told the stories of the Commission’s jurisdictions, processes and success stories in an easily understood language and style.

Annual reports

We wrote content and created video case studies for two of the Fair Work Commission's annual reports. Both won public-sector reporting awards, with one named as the best federal government annual report of the year.

Unfair dismissal guides

The unfair dismissal guides and videos we created are a great example of how communications tools can answer questions with useful information. These step-by-step guides have been used more than 60,000 times.

Courtroom & website tours