People development

Our people strategy is to implement leading people practices to create a high performing, capable and resilient workforce. Our goal is to ensure our workforce is inspiring, diverse and engaged to deliver outstanding results for our community and city.

Our learning and development and performance frameworks are guided by excellence instilling behaviours in our people to continuously strive to uphold corporate excellence, professional excellence, leadership excellence, personal excellence and performance excellence. Since amalgamation in 2016, several programs supporting our staff in their development and performance have been implemented and in 2021, these matured into our Learn Exceed Achieve and Progress (LEAP) learning framework. We are also set to launch our Performance Excellence Program (PEP).

LEAP encompasses all the organisational development opportunities that are made available to staff. It will be reviewed every two years.

LEAP promotes four streams of excellence and is underpinned by the 70:20:10 model to nurture an individual’s career journey at Council and promote a culture of learning through on-the-job learning, knowledge sharing, coaching and mentoring. Our four streams focus on:

Corporate excellence - foundational and compliance training for staff such as essential learning for new starters and mandated training that minimises the exposure of risks. It also captures organisation wide initiatives that contribute to our Vision, Mission and Values.

Professional excellence - addresses the learning demands that emerge from development plans and key organisational priorities. Development plans are critical to our PEP as they identify learning needs and capability and career development opportunities that align with our operational, delivery and community strategic plans.

Leadership excellence - provides emerging and current leaders with workshops and interactions to support them and to build high performing teams. We have continually supported leaders through leadership forums, development opportunities such as the Australasian Management Challenge, seminars and conferences and acting opportunities.

Personal excellence – while everyone’s career trajectories are unique, we cater to our diverse workforce by empowering people to undertake autonomous learning and connect with each other through common shared interests.

Some of the programs delivered under these streams include:

• 35 sessions in corporate programs focused on appreciating diversity in others, cultural awareness, disability awareness and code of conduct (continuing in 2021). This has also included 21 mental health awareness sessions which have supported 540 staff during these challenging times. • 56 work health and safety training sessions ensuring staff maintain up to date licences and accreditations and awareness in CPR, first aid, traffic control, child protection, chemical use, chainsaws and job specific manual handling. • 29 professional development training sessions building capabilities in leadership, critical conversations, de-escalating aggressive behaviours,

Microsoft Office 365, mindfulness and team dynamics. • 21 staff supported in their continuing professional development to maintain accreditations to professional bodies. • 71 staff completed business critical training, specialist courses relevant to their position. • 18 staff attended conferences or were panellists or guest speakers. • 26 staff were sponsored through Council to undertake further educational qualifications, with 10 staff completing their studies in areas ranging from diplomas in civil construction management and town planning to master of information studies and masters of curator and cultural leadership to doctorates in business administration. During this time, we also continued to provide selfpaced online learning through THRIVE! for all staff and people leaders and added our Lunch and Learn sessions to the program.

Our Lunch and Learn sessions put a creative lens on learning, leveraging the expertise of our people and encouraging them to share their knowledge and connect with other teams.

Since launching in April 2021, five Lunch and Learn sessions were attended by 23 staff learning about our free library resources and LinkedIn and how these can enhance professional networks and skills, basic maintenance of cars and the cultural richness of the food offerings from local businesses. Staff continue to provide feedback on the value of these interactions to learn more about our organisation, our services and our community.

In June 2021, THRIVE! was highly commended at the LG Professionals NSW Local Government Awards in the Special Project Initiative category.

Lunch and Learn: Basic maintenance of cars.