I worked as HR Director in a unionised environment for a.number of years and Simon was the National Officer in the collective agreement negotiations and a large number of TUPE transfers with collective consultation.

We had many tough negotiations and discussions and I was always impressed and challenged by his knowledge, thoroughness, articulation, debating and negotiating skills.

 Throughout this period we worked well together and embraced a modern employee relations relationship of true working partnership – so much so that after the collective bargaining agreement had been overtaken by restructuring, we (the Company) employed  the now-freelance Simon as a consultant to brief and train employee representatives in skills,  protocol and legal requirements in large outsourced TUPE situations. This was well received and worked well for all stakeholders.  

The Royal College of Midwives engaged Simon to lead us through a strategic review of our membership networks. He undertook this with considerable diplomacy and provided us with a thorough report to guide future developments. As a critical friend, Simon was able to help us see what was going really well and to challenge us about what we needed to improve. He brought experience of other organisations, a professional manner and a deep understanding of what makes for effective membership engagement to this project.