Our Vision - Restoring Workplace Relations

Our Vision for Positive Change in New Zealand workplaces

Workplace Conferencing started in 2001, with a vision of bringing positive change to New Zealand workplaces that needed it.

And let’s face it, most workplaces feel tense and stressful at sometime – a situation often caused by inappropriate behaviours of various difficult personalities in the workplace.

Fiona Landon, principal of Workplace Conferencing, says her vision is around healthy workplace cultures that create openness and honesty, and deal with issues before they get out of hand.

“All workplaces, at some stage, would benefit from an independent intervention process to deal with unhealthy workplace dynamics. Without interventions, these tricky management issues can end up in major, avoidable problems. These problems include high staff turnover, increased downtime, excessive levels of sick days and absenteeism, unmotivated & unproductive staff, and dysfunctional teams. Often, with a little work, the difficulties can be resolved in a cost-effective way, creating long-term benefits to the organisation.

Fiona says: “How often do we all come home from work and talk to our partners about relationship difficulties in the workplaces. Often we transfer this stress to the home environment and feel unable to make any lasting positive changes, due to our position in the organisation. Some even go the trouble of getting a life coach or an executive coach, or seeing a counsellor or management consultant, to clarify issues.

“We’ve found that the Workplace Conferencing process can empower people to deal with workplace issues, by creating an opportunity to use a fair and balanced process of working through sticky situations. We enable companies to address all the issues, bringing them out into the open. Without attaching blame, we deal at a number of levels in the organisation, as part of our independent workplace assessment. Our findings are reported to key people committed to the process.

She adds: “This assessment process allows change to happen with both structural and social concerns, allowing solutions for positive change to come from all parties affected. Everyone has a part to play, and everyone has a role in fixing up the situation.

“Workplace Conferencing has become synonymous with helping resolve sticky personal issues in the workplace. We’re also becoming a useful tool for dealing with customer complaints, as we’re able to play the role of facilitator, counselor and advocate”, Fiona says.