Freightways has come a long way from its modest start as a courier company with just six drivers. Now a dual-listed group operating across New Zealand and Australia, its businesses are all built around the core capability of “pick up, process, and deliver.” We had the privilege to chat with Nicola Silke, General Counsel, Company Secretary, and Privacy Officer, who joined three years ago, about navigating across markets and sectors, issuing their first Climate Statement, and the tech that's her new BFF.
Could you provide an overview of your role at Freightways and how you support the work of the organisation?
Freightways started as a six-driver courier company in 1964 and has grown into a dual-listed organisation operating businesses on both sides of the Tasman in industries that ‘pick up, process and deliver’ – in practice this means, for example, one of our courier brands may deliver your latest Temu order, our TIMG business might store records from your workplace, or our Shred-X business might recycle your old laptop.
While working in freight and logistics had never been on my career bingo card, being General Counsel, Company Secretary and Privacy Officer for the Freightways group gives me endless opportunities to work outside my comfort zone. I help ‘protect and enable’ the businesses and wider organisation, both as part of the Freightways Executive Team at a corporate level, and as a key partner to each individual business.
In addition to advising across multiple businesses and industries, Freightways is always on the look-out for acquisition opportunities, so it’s never a dull moment in my office helping the organisation ‘move you to a better place’ (the Freightways tag-line, rather than my personally-devised mission statement!).
With Freightways expanding its footprint across New Zealand and Australia, how do you navigate the complexities and risks of operating in diverse markets and sectors?
Even in the three years since I joined to start the Legal function, we’ve listed on the ASX, acquired our first sizeable Australian courier business, and purchased half a dozen smaller businesses. During the same period, the regulatory environments in both countries have also continued to grow more complex, with extensive new climate-reporting obligations, more stringent privacy obligations in Australia, and extensions of existing infrastructure regimes to some of our businesses.
To help Freightways best navigate this as a legal function of one, I’ve spent a lot of time building an appropriate armoury: I’ve focused on building quality relationships with our panel firms, so they know us, our environment and our risk appetite, as well as centralising access to knowledge and ensuring key compliance trainings are developed and rolled-out across the group. I’ve also bolstered our previously ad-hoc horizon-watching capabilities with subscriptions to legislative update tools in each country meaning we are better prepared for upcoming law changes. That multi-stranded safety-net plays a big part in helping me sleep at night.
Sustainability is a significant focus for Freightways, especially with its carbon reduction program. How do you integrate these values into your daily operations and advice to the organisation?
We issued our first Climate Statement under the new XRB regime last month and we’re already head-long into the work for FY25, so emissions reductions are definitely front of mind across the group! But for me ‘sustainability’ in a wider sense means applying the ‘good corporate citizen’ lens to every situation – being mindful of the impact Freightways’ approach or actions are likely to have on our people, workplaces and supply chain, the communities we service and operate in, our wider physical and social environment and what those stakeholders expect from us. Nothing we do is in a vacuum, whether it’s changes to our contractor agreements, making representations about the impact on the environment of our services, diligencing the hiring practices of an acquisition target or engaging a supplier who will access personal information of package receivers, I always do what I reasonably can to make sure we really are ‘moving [everyone] to a better place’ from that macro point of view. [And as a(n important) related point: toitū Te Tiriti, it benefits us all in Aotearoa.]
What new tools or techniques are you using or hoping to introduce to enhance your efficiency and productivity, and how are they impacting your work so far?
Co-pilot is my new work BFF – it’s dramatically cutting down the time and brain power I need to spend on things like initial research into an unfamiliar area of law (not uncommon given the complexity of Australia state laws), turning a blank piece of paper into a short guidance note on a common issue for the businesses or summarising lengthy documents when I’m short on reading time.
The Freightways Legal Portal which I’ve launched and built up over the last couple of years is really paying dividends now as manual self-service is available for the businesses in a variety of historically high volume, BAU areas. Although its only a basic internal Sharepoint site, together with the legal compliance training programme that’s been rolled out this year, it means the level of legal issue-spotting across the group has dramatically increased so I’m seeing earlier engagement on higher risk matters and the general level of legal education has been lifted. It’s really demonstrating that (accurate) knowledge is empowering, which – personally - is really satisfying to see.
Ngā mihi nui to Nicola for sharing with the in-house community.
If you know a team or individual with experiences to share, from any sector or stage of their in-house legal careers, we’d love to hear from you. We’re always looking to feature voices that inspire and inform the in-house legal community.