The outsourced HR team you need in your corner
We are the outsourced HR Professionals that bring full service HR in-house. We know all businesses have the need for HR but not the budget for a fulltime HR staff member. That’s where we come in, 24 hour HR and Recruitment support at your finger tips!
We help build resilient, compliant and high performing teams for your peace of mind.
We believe in transparent communication and candid feedback to build trust and integrity in all our relationships.
Working closely with you, we form strong partnerships to understand and meet your unique needs.
Our unwavering support ensures that you receive the guidance you need to thrive, with a ‘can do’ attitude driving our efforts.
Ethical practices and responsible decision-making guide our actions, prioritising our clients’ best interests.
We genuinely care about the people we serve, striving to make a positive impact on your professional journey.
Founded in 1995, by John and Lee-Ann Irwin, CW provided award-winning talent management and people solutions to the public and private sector for two decades.
2017 under new management, Melissa Powick steers the company focus towards ‘people first’ and focuses on collaboration with clients to achieve maximum return on investment for the long-term.
Michael became business partner.
Rebranded as ForgeHR to reflect the direction of the company and our SME clients.
We’re Professional Members of the AHRI
Our HR Partners
At ForgeHR, we believe in positive, can-do partnerships that help you achieve profitability and build a great team. Discover how we can support your HR and recruitment needs.
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At ForgeHR we provide Australian SME’s with essential business services: human resources, recruiting, compliance, performance coaching and more. Sydney, Central Coast, throughout NSW and beyond.
ForgeHR acknowledges and pays respect to the past, present and future Traditional Custodians and Elders of this nation and the continuation of cultural, spiritual and educational practices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
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1.What do you bring to ForgeHR?
30 years’ experience working with people, SMEs, large enterprises, start-ups and government agencies. I’ve always had the ability to develop strong relationships, and I love tapping into people’s passion for their business – I help them convert that into their people. I love nothing more than seeing people and businesses succeed.
2.What’s your super skill?
Being strategic. I can decipher what a business needs to achieve and then translate that into a people plan/ business plan, and implement it. I’m methodical so I make sure our services are easy for our clients to navigate and understand.
3. Tell us about a memorable work experience?
Opening a new Club. I helped design and run the assessment centres and worked with the management team to choose the opening staff of the new venue. It was great fun working with the team and to see the new team come together. We created an atmosphere where people could be themselves and it was a great success.
4. What do you like about SMEs?
Ability to make a difference. Working with decision makers across the business, they’re not constrained by departmental processes, which means we can see change and influence change quickly. SMEs are all very different which I also enjoy.
5. What are the current trends you’re keeping your eye on?
Updates to the Fair Work Act. The psycho-social space, how managers respond to and support mental health in the work place. I’m also monitoring how society influences how we work. How we work now is pushed more by society than in the past few decades and it’s moving quickly, and we need to keep up to date.
6. What does the next 5-10 years look like for HR and recruitment?
Bigger focus on employee wellbeing. At some point a focus on pay and conditions. It’s becoming difficult for business owners to run profitable businesses, and there needs to be a change to the fair work act that reflects how businesses are run and the current challenges they face today, especially SMEs.
7. What’s your go-to karaoke song?
Khe Sanh – Cold Chisel
1.What do you bring to ForgeHR?
15 plus years of recruitment experience across varied sectors from multi-nationals to SMEs, from blue collar labour hire to qualified senior executives. I specialise in SME customers.
2.What’s your super skill?
I have an ability to tap into the skills and experience of individuals matched to the role. Conversely, I have a colourful career with diverse life experiences, which helps me see how a candidate’s skills are transferable across sectors.
3. Tell us about a memorable work experience?
I did a bulk hire for Treasury NSW and recruited 7 Director level roles. It was challenging and required a great deal of belief in my ability to deliver. What was most rewarding is that the new roles hadn’t existed previously so I had to find parallel skills that could fit the positions, and the client trusted me to do this because of my reputation in the industry. I’m happy to say that I didn’t have to refill any of the positions within the guarantee period.
4. What do you like about SMEs?
They require more challenging roles to be filled, which calls for a more varied skill set and varying experiences, so it’s a more interesting puzzle for me to solve. I also get to deal with the owners of the business and gain a deeper understanding of their strategies and goals, so it helps me feel more aspirational in what I’m looking for in the best candidate for them.
5. What are the current trends you’re keeping your eye on?
Increasing emergence of technology. A lot of companies are using AI to source candidates, but without the human touch it’s not accurate. Personality is essential in the hiring business.
6. What does the next 5-10 years look like for HR and recruitment?
Come back to identifying personality traits when hiring, the human touch. Emergence of new roles and the redundancy of current ones, such as automation in the manufacturing industry.
7. What’s your go-to karaoke song?
Islands in the Stream – Dolly Partner and Kenny Rodgers
1.What do you bring to ForgeHR?
30 years of unconventional HR experience and knowledge across a range of industries, both in Australia and the broader APAC Region. While HR have always been my passion, I have dabbled in other disciplines such as finance, accounting, corporate governance, internal comms & marketing, corporate & social responsibility…etc., feeding into my penchant for fostering collaborative relationships across teams and departments, creating value by focusing on people, process and tools at the same time.
2.What’s your super skill?
Shopping! If it was a sport I’d be competing in the Olympics! Jokes aside, I’m very analytical, and able to see patterns in data quickly, make sense of seemingly unrelated information to come up with a solution.
3. Tell us about a memorable work experience.
I’ve spent over 6 years working for the NSW Fire Brigades in HR during a very challenging but rewarding time. Being a non-uniform woman from a non-English speaking background, it was both challenging and a great learning experience. It took a lot of hard work but also gave me a first-hand experience of what amazing teamwork can look like, and when I left, I was given the ultimate token of acceptance as a member of team – being presented with a signed uniform T-Shirt which still sits in my wardrobe.
4. What do you like about SMEs?
Flexibility, and how quickly things can happen, without the layers of bureaucracy. You can affect changes a lot quicker and get to know people better.
5. What are the current trends you’re keeping your eye on?
I’m currently keeping an eye on casual employee conditions which impact a lot of our clients. Another one is mental health in the workplace which affects all of us. There’s a greater awareness and acceptance around mental ill-health in our broader environment, and recognition that it’s a challenge we all face from time-to-time. New generations coming into the work place are different to us older ones, wellbeing is very important to them and we need to be equipped to better manage the generational differences.
6. What does the next 5-10 years look like for HR and recruitment?
Exciting times, how AI will impact our work is still unfolding, technology changes so quickly nowadays. We’re also becoming a lot more global from a workforce perspective, a lot of work can now be performed anywhere in world, in any time zone. Who knows what excitement the next decade will bring.
7. What’s your go-to karaoke song?
Hero by Mariah Carey.
1.What do you bring to ForgeHR?
First and foremost, I bring flexibility! My broad experience across HR, finance, and recruitment enables me to adapt to various situations and challenges. Australia’s multicultural landscape interest me, having lived and worked in five different countries, I’ve refined my ability to build relationships with diverse groups of people. I find it easy to relate to individuals from various backgrounds, which helps me connect and communicate effectively in our globalised world.
2.What’s your super skill?
My super skill is collaborating with people and stakeholder management. I excel at building and keeping strong relationships, I often stay connected with candidates for over a decade and follow their
growth and development. Additionally, I have a knack for reading between the lines, whether it’s analysing CVs or responses during interviews, allowing me to identify potential that might not be immediately apparent.
3. Tell us about a memorable work experience?
One memorable experience was guiding a client to hire a candidate they were initially unsure about. I believed strongly in the candidate’s fit for the role and the organisation. I asked the client to trust my judgment, and they did. A couple of years later, both the candidate and the company were thriving. It was incredibly satisfying to see the positive impact of that decision and to know that I played a role in helping both the individual and the organisation succeed.
4. What do you like about SMEs?
In SMEs, you get to build close relationships and can make a real difference. It’s challenging for SMEs to have all the skills in-house, and they often can’t afford a full-time HR department. I enjoy helping them develop their company culture and ensuring compliance. Being involved in their growth journey is rewarding, as we get to see the tangible impact of our contributions and grow alongside the company.
5. What are the current trends you’re keeping your eye on?
I’m focused on making jobs more appealing for the current generation. People today value life outside of work and want a better work-life balance. Many don’t stick to the traditional path of climbing the career ladder in one company. They have higher expectations from their jobs and are more likely to switch careers quickly. There’s also more legislation to keep up with, and helping companies adapt to these changes and generational shifts is a big part of our work.
7. What’s your go-to karaoke song?
“Mamma Mia” by ABBA! As a true Swede, I can only support this song. My karaoke loyalty lies with ABBA. It’s a song that everyone knows, and you get the whole room singing along every time.
