By Jenel Hunt
A new workforce strategy within the Southern Downs Regional Council sent a very loud message that the council needed to do better when it came to employing women, Mayor Melissa Hamilton said at the council meeting on 16 June.
Council CEO Dave Burges said that in developing the strategy plan – the first prepared since the council came into being after the amalgamation in 2008 – the aim was to build an inclusive and diverse workforce that was representative of the diverse community that it served.
“Our continued success is dependent on the quality, commitment and engagement of our employees,” he said.
“The data analysis aspect of this strategy clearly identifies that we need to work on various aspects of our workface composition in terms of gender, age, cultural diversity and others.”
Cr Hamilton said the information already gathered highlighted a number of issues for the council as an organisation.
“Particularly, it highlights a loud message that we need to do better when it comes to employing women and particularly if you look at the outdoor staff percentage at three per cent, it’s well below even the average across councils of 17 per cent,” she said.
“I think this strategy highlights some of those issues and gives you a target to work towards in improving the diversity across the organisation.”
Cr Hamilton also commented that although the council was not required to report its gender pay gap she believed there were benefits to publishing data annually ‘in the interests of transparency’.
The report showed that at the end of March, more than half the council workforce was 50 years or older. Less than 8 per cent of employees were 25 years or under.
Also, while the workforce was made up of 55 per cent women and nearly 45 per cent men, women were under-represented in outdoor roles and in senior leadership. Women made up 17 per cent in the executive leadership team, 27 per cent in the senior leadership team and in roles of co-ordinators, principal engineers and overseers they had 28 per cent of the count.
Mr Burges said the strategy would be a living document and would be reviewed later in the year with the help of a staff engagement program facilitated by an outside agency.
A new automated recruitment and selection system was scheduled to begin next month and would enhance the current data collection that was essential for identifying problems and measuring success in creating an engaged, responsive and resilient workforce.
Employee learning and development programs, an emphasis on health and wellbeing, attraction and retention of staff and organisational mobility were among the aspirations outlined in the strategy document.
