About MIGAS

Our behaviours and actions embody the character of mateship. What you see is what you get.

We act as one and offer each other unconditional support. We treat others with fairness and trust each other to keep our word. We are adventurous, open-minded and appreciate that our differences are part of what makes us great.

We are sincere, ask for help when we need it, admit to our mistakes, and work to put things right. We don’t make false friends and we mean what we say.

We value our co-workers’ time and effort, and so we always offer our best work, first time. We build open and honest relationships through communicating.

Together we celebrate each other’s successes with understated pride. We give credit where it’s due, celebrate diversity and critique ideas, not people. We take personal responsibility for achieving our objectives.

We act professionally and with conviction in our words and actions.

Safety is at the heart of our business and shapes the decisions we make. We talk meaningfully about safe practices and attitudes at every level of the organisation. We give clarity and context to work health and safety to ensure it stays relevant in each of our roles.

For us, safety is not just “ticking a box”. We personalise safety outcomes and intimately understand our role in preventing and eliminating risks and hazards, every day.

We keep ourselves, each other, our apprentices, trainees and customers safe.

Our customers are our host employers. We are accountable for the actions we take to create positive and memorable customer experiences, just as our customers expect us to be accountable to their needs. We approach customer interactions with both physical and mental energy in a way that shows optimism, usefulness and authenticity.

When problems arise, we think about things from the customer’s perspective. We act quickly and without blame to resolve issues, find compromise, and create solutions.

We work hard at earning our customer’s trust and loyalty.

Our reason for being is to create jobs for apprentices and trainees. Together with our host employers, they sit at the heart of our business. We stand side by side with our apprentices and trainees from commencement to completion.

We take great pride in our knowledge of the Australian Apprenticeships sector, and draw on our expertise to educate, guide and delight our clients, peers, staff and stakeholders.

We leverage our know-how to position ourselves as the leading employer of apprentices and trainees in traditional trades and complementary industries.

Carolyn Barker AM has been a MIGAS board member for the past six years and is the current Chairperson. Prior to becoming a full-time Company Director in 2018, she held CEO positions for 25 years in private education and commercial services. Similarly, her Company Director experience has spanned two decades during which time she sat on publicly listed, private company, government and not for profit boards.

Carolyn is an experienced independent director and chairperson and brings focus to strategic planning and corporate culture as well as utilising her general commercial and digital governance skills. She has served on boards in the areas of education, legal services, public transport, complementary medicine regulation, the arts and local government. Carolyn currently consults to organisations in the areas of leadership development and capability frameworks, in addition to offering executive coaching and workplace mediation services.

She is Chair of the Transport for Brisbane Board, Chair of MiTraining Pty Ltd, and most recently completed eight years as a board member of Shine Corporate Ltd. Carolyn is a Member in the Order of Australia (AM) awarded for her service to management and education organisations and the arts, and is a QUT School of Business Alumni Award winner. She is also a nationally accredited Mediator.

James Slade-Symons is the Founder & Managing Partner of Macarthur Human Capital (MHC), a proudly Australian, privately owned advisory service with offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. James specialises in human resources and organisational development consulting for executives and boards for some of Australia’s leading brands through to rapidly growing tech start-ups.

James is renowned for his unique use of business and people analytics, which provide insights to optimise organisational impact, efficiency and commercial performance. He has built a range of proprietary psychometric and analytical products, including the launch of the rQ App in 2023 to capture previously unused data sources, revolutionising performance analysis and decision-based insights for organisations.

During his career, James has held board and HR leadership positions with Vodafone, Coles Myer and Chandler Macleod, where he has also consulted to clients across the mining, agritech, biotech and professional service sectors. During this time James has led a number of successful start-ups and re-aligned ASX listed organisations to achieve significant commercial success.

Rod Margetts is a Chartered Accountant by profession and a member of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand.

Rod is Principal Consultant and the co-founder of Oxford Associates, a consultancy firm specialising in a range of innovative business improvement solutions and management advice to clients in the public and private sectors across Australia and New Zealand. 

He is a respected leader, analyst and strategist with extensive experience at the senior executive level across multiple service industries including education and training.