Olga Klimczak
Olga is a strategic thinker, helping clients navigate their most complex work-related issues.
Olga has almost 20 years’ experience and is a trusted advisor on all matters relating to workplace and worker issues.
Her practice spans the entire gamut of employment, industrial relations, work health and safety, diversity and inclusion and whistleblowing. She has deep expertise across all these areas, having been involved in a number of high profile disputes, regulatory matters and advice work across these issues, which are becoming increasingly connected in the current legal and political environment.
This breadth of knowledge enables Olga to spot key issues early and provide practical and tailored advice and representation in tribunals and courts, in order to help her clients navigate their most complex work-related and safety issues.
Olga works with boards and senior leaders across a wide range of industries, including resources (mining, energy), utilities and infrastructure, defence, and universities.
Examples of her work include strategic advisory work on workforce issues, including workforce engagement, compliance and governance (employment and safety), changes to workforce and workforce planning and restructures (industrial relations and safety), and representation in disputes and regulatory investigations and prosecutions (employment and safety). She also conducts and advises on complex workplace investigations involving business conduct issues such as sexual harassment, bullying, conflicts of interest, discrimination and safety breaches.
Above all, Olga can help clients with any issue that comes across their desk with calm, focussed advice that helps them achieve their objectives and maintain strong relationships with key stakeholders.
Experience & capabilities
Selected matters
- a range of day to day issues, ranging from recruitment, through employment and to termination of employment. This has included drafting, enforcing and managing post-employment restraints, and assisting with executive contracts and remuneration issues
- strategic issues, including managing industrial relations issues, change management and complex workplace issues such as workplace investigations, performance and discipline
- document management, including drafting and reviewing employment contracts and policies and procedures
- compliance issues, including in relation to employment, equal opportunity and diversity, and occupational health and safety, bullying, injury management and rehabilitation, and regulatory investigations and prosecutions
Olga has also worked on a number of high profile disputes in industrial relations and employment:
- assisted a contractor in the energy sector to successfully enforce a restraint of trade
- advised and represented clients in the mining sector in relation to safety prosecutions
- assisted multiple clients in relation to employment claims, including unfair dismissals and general protections claims
- assisted a client in the mining sector in relation to change management advice when it was considering a number of options to improve efficiency and productivity
Background
Olga holds a Bachelor of Laws & Arts (Honours) from the University of Western Australia, and a Master of Laws from the University of Melbourne.
Olga worked as an Associate to the Honourable Justice McLure of the Western Australian Court of Appeal in 2006.
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