Head of Employment Relations at Apa

The Opportunity

At APA, our purpose is to secure Australia’s energy future. We’re not doing it alone. We’re doing it with our customers and communities as Australia’s energy infrastructure partner, a role our unique experience and expertise positions us to play.

We have an exciting opportunity for an experienced Head of Employment Relations to contribute to securing Australia’s energy future, based in Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney or Perth, on a permanent full-time basis.

Reporting to the General Manager - People & Culture Business Partnering, you will be playing a critical enterprise role ensuring our workforce, contractor partnerships and industrial frameworks are engaging, proactive, robust and aligned with APA’s long-term growth strategy.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development and execution of APA’s employee relations and industrial relations strategy, anticipating emerging risks and opportunities.

• Partner with senior executives and business leaders to proactively plan for legislative changes, industry trends and complex workforce dynamics.

• Provide leadership across major infrastructure projects, enterprise agreements, labour law compliance, and strategic dispute resolution, including management of external law firm partnerships.

• Shape ER/IR approaches that underpin APA’s major growth projects, ensuring risks are identified and managed end to end from project development through to operations.

• Support cultural transformation, ensuring practices are engaging, compliant, fair, and enable high performance across the enterprise.

• Lead a high-performing and small dynamic ER/IR team, building organisational capability and fostering constructive stakeholder relationships with unions, contractors, and regulators.

Your background

• Extensive experience in employee and industrial relations, including with EA negotiations, industrial disputes, and labour law compliance – including for major construction projects.

• Strong strategic and commercial acumen, with the ability to balance compliance obligations with business needs.

• Demonstrated ability to engage confidently with executives and external stakeholders to influence outcomes.

• Proven success in proactively managing ER/IR risks across large-scale projects and operational environments.

• Tertiary qualifications in Law (preferred), Human Resources, Business or a related discipline.

Working at APA

At APA we’re committed to fostering a safe and inclusive workplace where you can achieve your best. We’ll provide you with access to targeted career development programs, competitive remuneration, employee benefits, flexible working arrangements, and wellbeing programs. We also have an inclusive parental leave policy providing 18 weeks leave including superannuation to support parents at work and in life.

We employ more than 2700 people across Australia and are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive culture, where everyone feels safe, valued, and trusted to do their best every day.

We are APA

APA Group is a leading Australian energy infrastructure business.

We proudly own, operate and manage a diverse $26 billion portfolio of gas, electricity, solar and wind assets which deliver essential services to communities and customers across Australia. And we own more than 15,000 kilometres of gas pipelines which deliver energy to households and businesses across every corner of Australia.

As the partner of choice in delivering infrastructure solutions for the energy transition, we’re focused on bundled remote grid energy solutions, electricity and gas transmission, and future energy, including hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.

Our customer centric approach means we understand our customers and offer them reliable, innovative, and cost-effective energy solutions that support their decarbonisation ambitions.

We are committed to securing Australia’s energy future by delivering infrastructure solutions for Australia’s energy transition and supporting the decarbonisation ambitions of our customers and communities.

Join our team and be part of securing Australia’s energy future. We’d love to hear from you.

APA is an equal opportunity employer. The safety, health and wellbeing our people, community and environment a priority. We embrace diversity in our people to ensure our workforce is representative of the communities that we operate in.

Applicants must be eligible to work in Australia to be considered.

This vacancy works with critical APA data, systems or infrastructure and candidates are subject to background vetting (including Police checks) before & during employment.

APA Group will not accept unsolicited resumes from recruitment agencies.

We will contact successful candidates after the closing date.