Our People and Organisational Capability
Objectives
- Foster a safe, encouraging, rewarding and productive working environment.
- Enhance our organisation capability and capacity.
- Increase the effectiveness of our organisational processes.
Performance
- Extent to which the learning and development strategy facilitates the achievement of corporate objectives.
- Volume of uptake and the nature of professional development opportunities given to staff as identified in staff development plans.
- Level of staff satisfaction reported through staff surveys and the effectiveness of the Staff Forum.
- Effect of prioritisation and enhanced project management capabilities on the implementation of the FSANZ work plan.
Highlights
- Successfully negotiated a Collective Agreement for 2007-10.
- Initiated a FSANZ Wellness Program.
- Recruitment and Selection Policy amended to enhance transparency and career opportunities.
- Staff Forum continued to engage actively with management.
Overview
Throughout this report, we have described work done during the year as having been carried out by ‘we’ and ‘FSANZ’. These descriptors, however, mask the individual efforts of men and women of considerable ability who provide the intellectual and human capital which drives the agency.
At present, we are in a tight labour market, competing with the private sector, tertiary institutions, research organisations and government bodies for scientific, legal, communication and management expertise. Our aim is to maintain FSANZ as a centre of excellence in food regulation – a reputation best viewed from the international perspective. But within the agency, in recent times, we have struggled to meet the expectations of our stakeholders, especially for the timeliness of our work.
Additional funding from the Australian Government over the next four years will enable us to convert a number of non-ongoing positions to ongoing. That will help remove uncertainty within the staff and, reduce staff turnover and help reduce loss of corporate knowledge. They will also have a greater incentive to avail themselves of the professional development opportunities provided at all levels of the agency.
Although we value staff members who have outstanding technical skills, we also recognise the need for scientists with people skills, lawyers who can write in plain English and senior managers who are adept at negotiation. We accept responsibility for adding these additional competencies to the people working with us. The training is time-consuming and expensive, but it is necessary in an organisation that values people with a variety of skills, because we must maintain the flexibility to deal with emerging issues and unexpected scenarios.
For example, what expertise will we require if nanotechnology becomes a major food issue? Or if food intolerance and children’s behaviour assume a greater priority in FSANZ? We do not know in detail and with certainty.
What we do know is that we will be better prepared if we are in a position to pull together project teams that contain an appropriate mix of technical, communication and management capabilities.
This is one reason why we continue to put considerable effort into the retention of staff, in contrast to recruitment. Corporate knowledge is another attribute that is vital to a regulatory agency and we are developing ways in which we can retain this knowledge, particularly in our older employees. Our Staff Forum has been very active in improving the working conditions of staff, including the inauguration of a Wellness Program during the year.
Organisational capability and capacity
Staff Forum
Our staff consultative committee – the Staff Forum – continued to operate successfully during the year, providing an important communication link between employees and senior management and increasing the level of engagement of staff in key issues such as the staff survey, policy reviews and human resource matters.
This year, the Forum focused on employees’ health and wellbeing, with the introduction of a FSANZ Wellness Program. This initiative, developed and implemented by a Forum sub-committee, was launched in March with a Workplace Wellness Week. Under the theme of ‘Getting Moving’, the week’s program incorporated a wide range of activities and information sessions for staff in both Canberra and Wellington.
Confidential, voluntary health tests were conducted on-site during and after the week to provide interested employees with information and advice about key measures such as blood pressure, cholesterol levels and flexibility. The provider advised that, as a group, our staff rated very highly on the tests compared with other organisations tested and, unsurprisingly, showed a high level of awareness and attention to healthy diets and nutrition.
The Forum developed a plan for a staff survey in early 2008, a review of FSANZ’s Values and Capability Framework and workforce planning, and agreed on priority areas for 2007-08.
Workplace Giving Program
FSANZ launched its voluntary Workplace Giving Program in May. An initiative of the Prime Minister’s Community Business Partnership scheme, the program enables employees to make donations to selected charities via deductions from their pre-tax pay.
Staff selected four organisations to support: RSPCA (ACT), Médecins sans Frontières, Eden-Monaro Cancer Support Group and the Australian Cancer Research Foundation. We will review the list of organisations every two years and will consider the inclusion of further charities in the program at the request of our staff.
Staff survey
We responded to issues that were raised in the 2006 staff survey . These issues primarily concerned our business planning and priority setting, the learning and development program, and the performance management scheme.
The initiatives included the development of a revised set of performance indicators in the 2006-09 Corporate Plan, a framework for prioritising our work on standards proposals, and a learning and development strategy with a schedule of planned activities for 2006-07. We issued a revised policy and guidelines for the operation of the performance evaluation scheme, following consultation with the Staff Forum. We agreed to rename the scheme as the Performance Management and Development (PMD) scheme and on a new rating scale.
We plan to conduct a follow-up staff survey in February/March 2008. The questionnaire, to be developed in consultation with the Staff Forum, will be designed to gauge shifts in staff opinion since the last survey as well as benchmark the results against the annual APS-wide staff survey conducted by the Australian Public Service Commission.
Recruitment and selection
The staff survey results also showed that FSANZ’s recruitment and selection processes were of concern to staff. Specific concerns related to the limited opportunities for career development (particularly for EL staff) and the information provided to staff about selection procedures and outcomes.
Under the revised policy, employees have a broader range of opportunities to apply for and move to other jobs. The documentation, which has been substantially reduced and simplified, explains the merit principle more clearly and includes a table summarising the various options that are available for filling a vacant job. We have provided information about the process leading up to a job vacancy being filled to all staff.
Attraction, development and retention of a skilled workforce
Staff numbers and profile
At 30 June 2007, FSANZ employed 146 people (131 in Canberra, 14 in Wellington, 1 in Tasmania), compared with the same number last year. Of these, 40 are employed on a non-ongoing basis. Table 8 shows the distribution of staff members by classification and gender.
Note: included in the above figures are 4 employees on long-term leave or undertaking non-ongoing movement to another agency.
As shown in Table 9, the male-to-female mix in our workforce has remained fairly constant over the past five years. The median age of our staff was 41.6 years. Because we are a labour-intensive agency, staff numbers tend to be pegged to our funding. The additional funding for FSANZ in the Australian Budget for 2007-08 will enable us to maintain our present staff numbers.
Table 10 contains information on our commencements and cessations. A high proportion of cessations arose from people reaching the end of their contracts. Many of them found employment elsewhere in the food regulatory system.
Of the 146 people employed in FSANZ at 30 June 2007, 27.4% were non-ongoing. The ratio of non-ongoing to ongoing employees is relatively unchanged from the previous year and is significantly higher than the APS average of 8.2% at 30 June 2006. This situation has arisen because of the need to manage one-off projects and short-term increases in workload, as well as to maintain flexibility in our operations at a time when our future appropriation allocation was uncertain. With the budget position now clearer, we will be moving to advertise a range of jobs for filling on an ongoing basis.
Our retention rate in 2006-07 was 82.7%, representing the percentage of those ongoing people who were employed by the agency at the beginning of the financial year and were still with us at the end of the year. Table 11 compares retention rates in FSANZ with those in the Australian Public Service for the last five years.
Source: Australian Public Service Commissioner’s annual APS Statistical Bulletins 2002-03 to 2005-06
Our retention rate improved considerably on the 74.3% for the previous year. However, it is still below the APS average of 86.5% for the previous four years, although closer to the average of around 84% for small agencies of a comparable size (i.e. fewer than 200 staff).
An explanation lies partly in the number of employees who move to FSANZ temporarily to undertake a project and then return to their host agency, and partly in the relatively fewer career opportunities that have been available to staff, for reasons noted above. We expect this situation to improve in 2007-08.
As shown in Table 12, we do not employ anyone of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander background. Twelve of our employees have non-English speaking backgrounds. The statistics were compiled from Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) data for Australia.
(1) includes people born overseas whose first language was not English and who came to Australia after the age of five years
(2) includes people born overseas who came to Australia before the age of five years and whose first language was not English, or people born in Australia with one or both parents born overseas and whose first language was not English.
Figures do not include data on employees on loan from other agencies.
Workforce planning
As noted in last year’s report, the relatively small size of our agency makes it difficult for us to provide the same career opportunities for our employees that may exist in larger agencies. We have therefore adopted various approaches to attracting and retaining high quality staff.
For example, this year we supported one of our managers to work with the World Health Organization in Geneva and another to work with Health Canada in Ottawa. We have also looked at ways in which we can provide opportunities for staff to participate in major cross-agency projects, including taking on management roles at a higher level for specified periods.
The ageing of our workforce presents us with certain challenges, in common with other agencies. In 2007-08, we will be developing a strategy for mature-aged employees, as part of a broader approach to workforce planning. In the interim, we have been able to retain the knowledge and expertise of several recently retired APS employees by employing them on short-term contracts for specific projects.
Learning and development
We instituted a comprehensive learning and development program to meet priorities identified in the staff survey, as well as through consultation with managers and the Staff Forum and analysis of the development plans of individual employees. For 2006-07, we concentrated on financial management, developing individual performance agreements, giving and receiving feedback, and communication and negotiation skills.
We also conducted sessions to inform staff about the FSANZ Act amendments and their implications and to provide information on specific topics such as freedom of information, commercial confidentiality and contracting with consultants.