Our People
Objectives
- Foster an encouraging, rewarding and productive work environment.
- Enhance organisational capability and capacity.
Performance
- Extent to which strategic human resource management plans and policies facilitate achievement of corporate objectives.
- Number and nature of professional development opportunities given to staff as identified in staff development plans.
- Nature of comments from staff surveys.
Highlights
- Staff Forum successfully concluded several important projects.
- Conducted a benchmark survey of staff views of their work environment.
- Developed a FSANZ Values and Capability Framework.
- Revised our Performance Enhancement Scheme.
- Reported against the FSANZ Workplace Harassment Policy for first time.
Overview
Standard-setting is a labour-intensive activity, with successful outcomes depending heavily on the skills, expertise and experience of the staff involved. Every progressive organisation regards its staff as its greatest resource – and FSANZ is no exception.
Our Staff Forum continued to work with the Executive on employment by initiating or responding to management requests, consulting and making recommendations. In particular, the forum initiated and helped to design questions for a staff survey conducted during the year. Results from the survey show that FSANZ does a lot of things well. More than 85% of respondents indicated that they enjoy their job, which is an excellent finding for any organisation.
The forum also recommended changes to the FSANZ Performance Enhancement Scheme and was a driver in the development of the Values and Capability Framework – a document intended to complement the Australian Public Services’APS Values.
In the past, figures in excess of $20,000 have been mentioned in the Australian Public Service as the costs of advertising, selecting, recruiting and training a person to operate effectively in a new position. On that basis, the recruitment of thirty people to FSANZ in 2005-06 represents a considerable direct financial and opportunity cost to the agency. While some turnover is inevitable, or even desirable, we are strengthening our strategies to retain staff.
It should be noted that our recruitment during the year involved a number of temporary (non-ongoing) staff who would not have incurred the $20,000 costs mentioned above. However, the processing and training of these employees is still a significant impost on a small agency such as ours.
We acknowledge that having almost 30% of our staff employed on a temporary basis, while allowing us flexibility at a time of increasing and changing workloads, can create uncertainty. This is undesirable in an agency that prides itself on its family-friendly values and a genuine concern for people working for us. Next year, we will be working to put FSANZ onto a more sustainable financial footing, enabling us to reassess our employment strategies.
We have extended 360 degree assessments of performance beyond the Senior Executive Service and have taken steps to make our Performance Enhancement Scheme a more effective management tool to guide and develop staff.
Staff survey 2006
We commissioned an external consultant to conduct a staff survey in February 2006, covering such topics as stakeholder relationships, strategic directions, management, work culture and professional development. About 65% of staff completed the survey. The inaugural survey revealed a high degree of satisfaction and commitment in the workplace, as shown by the following results:
Overall, the results of the survey were positive and compared favourably with the results of the Service-wide survey conducted each year by the Australian Public Service Commission. The survey showed that staff are generally highly motivated and find their job rewarding, challenging and meaningful. People enjoy working with their colleagues in supportive and collaborative teams, in a small organisation where people know one another.
The survey identified some issues of concern, particularly associated with internal communication, recruitment and selection processes, allocation of resources and the Performance Enhancement Scheme.
FSANZ’s management group, assisted by the Staff Forum, has drawn up a set of proposals for remedial action. Key areas include strengthening FSANZ’s processes for business planning and priority setting, developing a leadership program, reviewing the policies and procedures for recruitment and selection, and refining the PES. Some changes have already been implemented.