Advice & Strategy
Senior, independent reviews for boards and executives navigating the positive duty, a regulatory inquiry or a contested cultural moment. Findings that hold up externally and internally, with a credible plan for what happens next.
Commission a reviewCulture Plus method
Independent. Evidence-led. Board-defensible.
Build trust & certainty
The Respect@Work positive duty, sector-specific conduct frameworks and rising stakeholder expectations have raised the bar on what a credible review looks like. Internal review is no longer sufficient where the question is contested, the stakes are public, or the regulator is watching.
An independent review re-establishes trust with the workforce, satisfies the evidentiary bar for regulators and gives the board a defensible foundation for what comes next.
"The Australian Human Rights Commission can investigate compliance and, where appropriate, compel action."
"Where culture is contested, an independent review is the most direct evidence of seriousness."
Cultural reform, delivered at the heart of government.
NSW Parliament
Culture Plus Consulting was engaged by NSW Parliament to design and deliver Respect at Work and Trauma Informed Response training across its workforce, a flagship reform initiative responding to the Broderick Review of bullying, sexual harassment and sexual misconduct in NSW parliamentary workplaces. This engagement represents a proud achievement in delivering reform-grade Respect at Work training in high-scrutiny environments.
NSW Premier's Department
In an ongoing engagement, Culture Plus Consulting delivers Respect at Work training to the Premier, Ministers and Ministerial staff, a key recommendation of the Goward Review aimed at building respectful, safe and accountable workplaces at the heart of government.
Review snapshot
For organizations requiring ongoing support beyond a review, Culture Plus also offers Strategic Advice & Governance services to help embed long-term cultural change.
Boards, CEOs and executive teams navigating the Positive Duty, WHS psychosocial obligations, WGEA reporting, regulatory scrutiny, or a contested cultural moment where internal review is insufficient.
Root-cause clarity on the cultural and behavioural drivers behind conduct, board-defensible evidence, insight into leadership effectiveness, and a prioritised remediation roadmap that re-establishes trust.
Senior, first-chair experience advising ASX boards, combined with organisational psychology and trauma-informed practice. Independent by design: no prior advisory entanglement or contingent commercial interests.
Reviews can be sized to the whole organisation, a single business unit, function, location or team. We scope to the question, not to a template.
Positive Duty / Respect@Work compliance, WHS psychosocial obligations, WGEA reporting, DEI strategy, governance, organisational performance and risk management.
A board-fluent findings report with prioritised recommendations, a remediation roadmap the board can adopt, and optional implementation support. A shorter executive or workforce-facing summary can be produced where required.
Interview and focus-group feedback is anonymised and reported in aggregate. The engagement operates under strict confidentiality and data-security protocols, and can be conducted under Legal Professional Privilege when commissioned via legal counsel.
Typically 8 to 14 weeks from terms of reference sign-off to delivered findings, depending on workforce size and consultation depth.
Selected work
Trusted partners
Felicity Menzies has been a valued long-term partner to CAANZ, delivering outstanding work across diagnostic, capability building, and strategy. As a complex organisation wearing multiple hats — employer, educator, member-based organisation, and professional standards body — we needed someone who could grasp that complexity. Felicity did exactly that, customising every engagement to reflect our unique context across Australia and New Zealand. Her deep facilitation skills rate highly among our leaders and staff, and her advisory support is trusted and practical. We highly recommend her.
When to commission a review
Reviews can be scoped to the whole organisation, or targeted to a specific site, function or team. Knowing when to commission one is itself a governance discipline: these are the moments boards and executives most often act.
Allegations of bullying, harassment, discrimination or misconduct, particularly where patterns suggest a systemic, not isolated, issue.
Persistent attrition, low engagement scores, exit interview themes or rising absenteeism in a team, function or site.
Mergers, acquisitions, leadership change or significant restructure where two cultures must integrate or where a reset is needed.
Evidence of poor psychological safety, team dysfunction, fear of speaking up, or unreported psychosocial hazards.
Active investigation, increased regulator interest, or a public moment where the board needs independent evidence, not internal assurance.
A board or executive decision to test culture against the Positive Duty, WHS and WGEA obligations before an issue forces the question.
The Australian regulatory context
Australian organisations now operate under three overlapping frameworks that all require evidence of proactive cultural work. Our reviews are designed to satisfy each in a single, coordinated engagement, rather than running three separate exercises.
Positive Duty
Organisations have a positive, proactive duty to prevent sexual harassment, sex discrimination and related conduct. The AHRC can investigate compliance and, where appropriate, compel action. An independent culture review is one of the clearest evidentiary signals the duty is being taken seriously at board level.
WHS
Work Health and Safety law requires employers to manage psychosocial risks (bullying, harassment, poor support, role conflict and exposure to traumatic content) through systematic risk assessment, worker consultation and effective controls. A culture review surfaces these hazards before they materialise as injury or claim.
WGEA
WGEA-reporting organisations must demonstrate measurable progress on gender equality and engage workforces to identify structural barriers. A culture review provides the qualitative evidence that complements published gender equality metrics and pay gap data.
Diagnostic framework
Triangulated evidence is only as useful as the framework that organises it. The dimensions below are a starting structure we adapt by adding, weighting or combining lenses based on your sector, structure, risk profile and the specific questions your board or executive need answered. The terms of reference set the scope; the framework keeps the findings comparable, defensible and actionable.
Whether people can raise concerns, dissent or admit error without fear of penalty.
How information flows up, down and across: what is said, what is unsaid, what is filtered.
How leaders model, reinforce or undermine the stated culture in daily decisions.
Who holds informal authority, how influence is exercised, and where it is concentrated.
Workforce confidence in complaints, performance, promotion and consequence systems.
Whether dissent, feedback and disclosure are genuinely welcomed and acted on.
Consistency of how standards are upheld and whether outcomes match stated values.
Lived experience of diversity, equity and inclusion across roles, levels and identities.
How performance, contribution and behaviour are valued, rewarded or overlooked.
How the organisation responds to mistakes, complaints and disclosures: repair or repeat.
Optional focus area
Where terms of reference call for it, we run a dedicated workstream on bullying, harassment and sexual harassment, measuring both prevalence (how often, to whom, by whom, where) and nature (form, severity, response, aftermath). The output is the evidence base your board needs to discharge the Positive Duty and identify psychosocial hazards under WHS law.
A confidential, validated instrument measuring twelve-month prevalence of bullying, sexual harassment, discrimination and related conduct, disaggregated by gender and other identity characteristics, level, function, location and tenure to surface where and to whom harm concentrates. Also captures perpetrator details (role, level, relationship to target and repeat-offender patterns) to identify accountability gaps.
One-to-one, consent-based interviews with people who have lived experience of harm, paced, supported and structured to prevent re-traumatisation while capturing pattern, severity, response and aftermath.
A secure channel for written accounts (including from former employees, contractors and bystanders) for those who prefer not to speak but want their experience on the record.
Endorsed capability partner
Culture Plus Consulting is proud to design and deliver flagship DEI programs for the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) (Australia's peak HR professional body), supporting HR leaders and practitioners to build capability for inclusive leadership and organisational change.
Connect with us to explore how evidence-based DEI training can help your organisation build capability, strengthen culture, and deliver meaningful, measurable change.
Our Process
We follow a rigorous, board-fluent methodology grounded in organisational psychology and trauma-informed practice. Every participant can speak freely without fear of reprisal and every finding is corroborated, not anecdotal. Each review is tailored to the regulatory and cultural context of your organisation.
Defining clear terms of reference, signed off by the board or chair, covering what is in, what is out, who speaks and who reports.
Building a robust evidence base through documentary review, trauma-informed interviews and focus groups, and survey data, ensuring findings are corroborated rather than anecdotal, and that participants are supported throughout.
Operating under strict protocols for legally privileged material, witness protection, and data security throughout the engagement. Where engaged via counsel, work can be conducted under Legal Professional Privilege.
Developing objective findings without prior advisory entanglement, ensuring the report holds up under regulatory or public scrutiny.
Delivering a strategic roadmap and remediation plan that the board can adopt in full, with clear accountability for what happens next.
How we engage your workforce
The quality of a culture review is determined by the quality of the consultation. If people do not feel safe to speak, the evidence is thin and the recommendations miss. Every Culture Plus engagement is built on six design principles that protect participants and produce honest evidence.
All interviews and ideation sessions are facilitated by Felicity directly, never by anyone with a line of accountability inside your organisation.
Participation is voluntary. Employees opt in via a private channel and can withdraw at any point without notice to their manager or HR.
Sessions are paced, consent-based and structured to prevent re-traumatisation, with clear support pathways for participants who disclose harm.
Beyond surfacing concerns, we run structured ideation with frontline employees so the eventual roadmap reflects what the workforce believes will actually work.
Findings are reported in aggregate. Quotes are stripped of identifying detail. No individual is identifiable to leadership, to the board, or to the regulator.
All recordings, transcripts and notes are held under documented data-security protocols, with retention and destruction terms agreed in the terms of reference.
What you receive
A review is only valuable if it changes something. Each engagement produces four named outputs, sequenced so findings move from evidence, to leadership alignment, to embedded action.
Deliverable 01
A board-fluent written report with triangulated evidence, themes, root-cause analysis and prioritised recommendations written to withstand external scrutiny.
Deliverable 02
A private session with the chair, CEO or board sub-committee to walk through findings, test interpretation and prepare for difficult conversations before broader release.
Deliverable 03
A practical, sequenced remediation plan built with your leadership team, with named accountability, success measures and an honest view of what change requires.
Deliverable 04
Optional standing-advisor support through implementation, pressure-testing decisions, briefing the board on progress and adjusting the plan as conditions change.
What changes after a review
Move beyond symptoms like attrition, disengagement or isolated complaints to pinpoint the systemic drivers in leadership, communication, policies and behaviours that are actually shaping conduct.
Our methodology
Every Culture Plus review is built on the same evidence-based methodology. Hover any step for detail:
Diagnostic, not investigation
"A culture review is not an investigation. It does not adjudicate specific allegations or apportion blame to named individuals. It examines the system that shaped the conduct (the patterns, drivers and structural risks) and builds the evidence base for what changes next."
Investigations and reviews answer different questions. Where allegations require adjudication, we will say so and refer to appropriately qualified investigators. Where the question is cultural, a review is the right instrument.
Your consultant
CEO, Author and Principal Consultant
Every Culture Plus engagement is delivered with behavioural rigour and practical relevance by Felicity Menzies, organisational psychology specialist, author, and expert consultant.
Frequently asked questions
If you have a question we haven't covered, write to us. A real human responds within one working day.
All feedback from interviews and focus groups is anonymised and reported in aggregate. No individual is identifiable in the findings. Consent, document handling, data security and storage are governed by strict protocols agreed in the terms of reference, creating a genuinely safe space for honest sharing.
It means designing every participant interaction around psychological safety: clear consent, control over what is shared, predictable structure, supportive facilitation and active prevention of re-traumatisation. Combined with organisational psychology expertise, it produces honest, nuanced evidence, particularly in environments where trust has already been damaged.
Yes. When the review is commissioned by legal counsel for the dominant purpose of legal advice, the process and findings can be conducted under Legal Professional Privilege. We work alongside your in-house or external counsel to structure the engagement appropriately from the terms of reference forward.
We deliver a board-fluent findings report with prioritised, practical recommendations, then work with your leadership to convert findings into a strategic action plan. We can continue as a standing advisor through the remediation phase, or hand over for internal implementation, whichever the board prefers.
Investigations adjudicate specific allegations against specific individuals. A culture review examines the system that produced them: patterns, drivers and structural risks. Different purpose, different method, different output.
Eight to fourteen weeks from terms of reference to delivered findings, depending on workforce size, scope and consultation depth.
Yes. Findings are presented to the board or relevant subcommittee. We can also act as a standing advisor through the remediation phase.
That is decided in the terms of reference. Most boards commission a private findings report and a shorter document for executive or workforce release.
While you're here
Independently facilitated, trauma-informed listening on respect, safety and inclusion.
Employee Listening & Focus Groups →Senior, independent counsel to boards and executives on culture, equity and respect.
Advice & Strategy →Meet the Sex Discrimination Act positive duty with evidence, controls and assurance.
Positive Duty Advisory →Further reading
Build a better working culture
A 45-minute confidential conversation with a senior reviewer to scope what an independent review could look like for your organisation, your sector and the question at hand.
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