Built on the tough stuff.
Nearly five decades in human resources, most of it spent on complex workforce problems in heavily unionised, heavy industry. It is the kind of work where strategy meets people.
Tom McAtee
My career began in human resources in 1977 and moved into senior leadership in 1989. I founded Peoplemix Consulting in 2014.
Most of the work has been in highly unionised, capital-intensive industries: mining, oil and gas, renewable energy, aluminium smelting, industrial gases, and, at one point, milk and ice cream manufacturing. I have worked with Shell, Wesfarmers, Yancoal, BOC Gases, Sohar Aluminium and Norco, in Australia and on expatriate assignments in the Middle East and the United Kingdom.
I was a start-up human resources leader at Yancoal Australia and at CleanCo Queensland, building the function from nothing in both. I have been Chief People Officer for several industrial organisations, which means I have led the function at executive and board level rather than advised it from outside.
I am not afraid to challenge the status quo to find the best-balanced solution. That phrase does some work: the outcome has to hold for the business, for the workforce, and for whoever inherits the agreement in three years.
The work is about tailored people and organisational solutions that align with what the business is actually trying to do. Mostly that means guiding leadership teams through major organisational change, and negotiating enterprise bargaining agreements.
It is not only about getting through the hard part. It is about coming out of it with something better than you had going in.
At the end of the day, I am here to make shift happen.
Working across that many industries means drawing on ideas from one world to solve a problem in another. A remuneration structure that worked in industrial gases is rarely the answer in coal, but the reasoning behind it often is.
I have advised executive teams and boards, balanced competing priorities, managed large budgets, and worked under the kind of pressure that sits on a chief executive during a protracted dispute. Whether the organisation is a global corporation or a much smaller one, the aim does not change: a workplace where the business and its people both do well.
Since 2014 I have worked with private and public sector organisations on:
- Union negotiations and enterprise agreements
- Workforce transformation and change management
- Executive remuneration and benefits strategy
- Compliance with industrial instruments and employment law
Three engagements are set out on the case studies page.
Since February 2026 I have been a PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD Program at Monash University, in the Faculty of Business and Economics. The research asks what enables and disables senior leaders' engagement with artificial intelligence in their decision-making.
It is a separate concern from this practice and lives at tommcatee.com.