About Olivia

Olivia is a Partner in the Maddocks Employment, Safety and People team.

With extensive private practice experience combined with the unique insight gained from in-house experience with one of Australia’s largest employers, Olivia believes that exceptional results to legal issues are achieved through a collaborative approach, with a focus on solutions that align with organisational values and commercial and operational objectives, while being innovative, practical and technically sound. 

In addition to providing a full-service advisory and contentious employment and labour offering, Olivia has specialist experience in workforce reorganisations, employment issues in mergers and acquisitions and workforce reorganisation, work health and safety and equal opportunity and discrimination, as well as advice and representation in contractual and industrial relations matters.

Olivia assists her clients to navigate complex and high-stakes situations, including workplace investigations and employment related whistleblower disclosures as well as regulator prosecutions, while also partnering with clients to deliver tailored, practical and engaging training to Boards, management teams and employees on workplace relations and safety matters, with a particular focus on Respect@Work, director and officer WHS duties and managing complaints and investigations.

With a range of corporate clients (both public and private), Olivia regularly represents domestic and international corporations across a broad range of sectors including financial services, higher education, healthcare, development, consumer markets, energy, transport and telecommunications.

Experience

• General employment law
  • Advised on all aspects of working relationships including performance management, disciplinary issues, underpayment claims, flexible work arrangements, confidentiality, restrictive covenants, independent contracting arrangements.
  • Appeared as advocate in a jurisdictional objection in the Fair Work Commission for a client in the mining sector (with the objection upheld).
  • Advised on unfair dismissal, adverse action, breach of contract, discrimination and sexual harassment proceedings.
  • Advised on enforcement of post-employment restrictive covenants, including enforcement proceedings.
  • Advised on regulator underpayment investigations and prosecutions, including self-reporting, remediation and communications with the regulator, staff and unions, and management of ill and injured workers.
  • Advised employers and boards on executive employment matters including advising on remuneration arrangements for former and current directors and ensuring compliance with remuneration governance arrangements.
• Industrial relations
  • Advised on successful urgent application by Qube Holdings in the Federal Court in Victoria for an injunction to stop a secondary boycott by the Maritime Union of Australia.
  • Advised on and assisted with the drafting of major university’s new ‘simplified’ enterprise agreement.
  • Advised on transactions involving target businesses with complex underpayment and industrial relations compliance issues, including a target business subject to union activity concerning multi-employer bargaining.
• Work health and safety
  • Advised on various WHS incidents and compliance issues, including advising on incidents (including fatalities) and resulting compliance activity, including notices and prosecutions.
  • Advised corporations in a range of industries, including energy, gas, rail and construction, on WHS obligations, including reviewing and auditing safety management systems and advising on contractual obligations and interaction of obligations of multiple duty holders (including in respect of psychosocial hazards).
• M&A, reorganisations and restructurings
  • Advised on the employment and industrial relations aspects of the divestment of various Commonwealth Bank managed businesses including the sale of the Colonial First State Global Asset Management business to Mitsubishi UFJ Trust and Banking Corporation; the sale of Colonial First State to global investment firm KKR; the sale of the CBA General Insurance business to Hollard and the sale of the AUSIEX business to Nomura Research Institute, as well as the partial transfer of the Commonwealth Financial Planning business to the AIA Group.
  • Advised on various large scale corporate reorganisations across a range of industries including the simplification of the Commonwealth Bank Group employing entities with the consequential transfer of a large number of staff between entities and addressing complex industrial relations, payroll and operational issues.