Consultant probes council bullying claims

By Tim Howard

An independent investigation into staffing issues, including bullying, in Clarence Valley Council has been underway since the start of the year, it was revealed at the council’s latest meeting.

Mayor Peter Johnstone confirmed an independent Audit Risk Improvement Committee investigation into the reasons behind the staff turnover figures at council would include investigation of claims of bullying.

And during debate there were claims the investigation was looking into allegations of bullying from current and former council staff and councillors. The allegations came during debate on a notice of motion from Cr Debrah Novak that sought to show staff turnover figures at the council were similar or better than other councils in NSW.

Her NOM proposed: that council informs community how Clarence Valley Council staff turnover rates in recent years compares to those of other councils. Councillors voted 7-2 for it.

Mayor Peter Johnstone that the ARIC committee had engaged management consultants Centium to conduct the investigation which should wrap up in a few months.

He said the results of the investigation would be the subject of a report to council, which he expected to arrive before the council election in September.

Cr Johnstone said he and the general manager, Laura Black, kept themselves at “arms length” from the investigation, but he said it was likely its findings would be confidential.

He said the ARIC guidelines included this: “Information and documents pertaining to the committee are confidential and are not to be made publicly available.”

“Whether or not the terms of reference will be made public will be for others to decide, but I expect that decision will be made in accordance with the terms of reference,” Cr Johnstone said.

“The scope will have been agreed between the ARIC committee and Centium.”

Cr Johnstone said he did not know what the cost to the council would be and but expected the figure to become known later this month.

Cr Novak said the council needed to correct perceptions that the council’s staff turn over numbers were bad, when in truth they were better than many councils, including neighbours, such as Ballina.

In her comment in the report to councillors, Ms Black said claims on social media that staff turnover at council was worse than neighbouring councils were not correct.

“Data gathered from current workforce management plans and consultation with neighbouring councils indicates, Clarence Valley Council is not experiencing staff turnover any greater than that of other as neighbouring councils,” Ms Black wrote.

“Clarence Valley Council’s staff turnover as at December 30, 2023 was 12% and at March 14, 2024 was 14%.

“On any given day, staff turnover is calculated across the prior 365 days per below formula provided by the Australian Human Resource Institute, and therefore can change daily.

“For this reason, council’s generally report either the prior calendar or financial year to provide comparative data across years in Workforce Management Plans.”

Some councillors argued against Cr Novak’s NOM because the ARIC report addressing these issues would come to council in a few months.

Cr Ian Tiley described the NOM as “premature” and “window dressing”.

“It’s premature to support the suggested NOM, given that there is a report to be produced as we’ve just discovered,” he said.

“And that in all likelihood will contain will contain up to date and better information.

“I suggest that this NOM skirts around the primary issues and it’s a fairly ordinary attempt at window dressing.

“I believe it remains important for council to understand why our competent staff are exiting, and hence the need for complete exit interviews.”

Other councillors supported the need for it.

Cr Pickering, who is also the council’s ARIC “observer”, said it was “well timed”.

“Just to actually see real statistics that show that Clarence Valley Council is performing as well as our fellow LGAs in NSW or even better than our fellow LGAs in NSW was good to know.

“We’re talking about Ballina here and from 2023 and 18% staff turnover. In the Clarence Valley we’re looking at 15% which is 3% less.”

Cr Pickering said the figures should quiet claims circulating in the community about staffing issues at the council.

“I don’t know why it’s still a rumour that’s going around in our community,” he said.

Cr Pickering said he had spoken to former staff about working conditions at the council, but suspected these were exaggerated.

“I’ve also been contacted by staff that have left the organisation and I’ve asked them to document why they left the organisation so I could forward it to the ARIC review,” he said.

“And out of the the eight staff members that that have left the organisation. These are not just rumours.

“There are people that have approached councillors who have stories which are worrying and I believe the best outcome is to leave it to the ARIC report, which I’m hopeful we’ll be comprehensive.” contacted me about the allegations of bullying and harassment, not one of them has provided any information, not one of them has given me any documentation that I can actually forward to the ARIC review committee.”

Cr Novak said the high workforce turn over numbers reflected a trend in the community that had begun to reveal itself as the Covid pandemic subsided.

Cr Bill Day had concerns the NOM was another another attack on the community group, YambaCAN.

He said the report included in its background information a statement YambaCAN made to the recent NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal hearing.

“I believe that this NOM is more Clarence Valley Council versus YambaCAN,” he said.

Cr Novak made a point of order that this was not the case, but it was overruled.

Cr Day said the council should take no further action on this matter and wait for the ARIC committee’s report.

Cr Greg Clancy said the figures in the NOM reminded him of the expression that “there are lies, damned lies and statistics”.

“We had Cr Pickering say that the statistics were less than the 18% it I think it might have been Ballina Well, apparently in March 2023, our statistics were 17%,” he said.

“But I don’t want to get involved in debating statistics because what I’m really concerned about is the people, the flesh and blood behind these statistics. These are people we’re talking about.”

“People that are working for the organisation, or people

“It is a workers playground at the moment a brute force that is in transition from the digital from mechanical economy to the digital economy to AI,” she said.

“Of course there are going to be a lot of transitions. That is a no brainer.

“And the biggest thing out of all of this people who are leaving the workforce are people who are retiring. That is one of the biggest baby boomer issues happening at the moment.

“So if you can’t accept those reasons that we’ve been given in these reports, not written by us but written by other external agencies, god help us.”

The mayor said the council was ahead of the field when it came to creating an ARIC.

“From June 2024 all NSW councils are expected to have an ARIC committee that is compliant with the States ARIC framework, but CVC have already had a compliant ARIC for two years,” he said.

“The role of ARIC is to provide independent assurance to CVC and through that to the community that governance processes, compliance, risk management and control frameworks, external accountability obligations and overall performance are doing well through monitoring, reviewing and providing advice to the council executive and councillors.”

He said the committee was highly regarded by councillors.

“Most of the work of ARIC is looking at the operational policies and procedures of council which councillors are not normally involved in,” he said.

“ARIC meeting minutes are circulated to councillors as a confidential attachment to the business paper (for example in March 2024), and the chair has met with, and briefed councillors on several occasions.”

He defended the council accepting Cr Novak’s NOM, despite risking a conflict with future ARIC findings.

“Part of the role of a councillor is to ‘(e) to facilitate communication between the local community and the governing body,’ Local Government Act 1993 NSW section 232,” Cr Johnstone said.

“There have been some faulty figures being circulated on social media and I expect that Cr Novak was keen that the correct figures were obtained and made available to the public.

He said the erroneous figure that was quoted on social media was to take the number of staff who had left for any reason (including those on fixed term contracts that had come to the end of their contract) and divide this by the full time equivalent staff to get a figure of 17% turnover.

“The correct formula is given in the business paper and involves dividing by the total number of staff, not the FTE,” he said.

He said the figures reflected well on the performance of the general manager.

“It would therefore appear that as Laura has become established as the GM, staff turnover has dropped,” Cr Johnstone said.

“This is not quite the narrative that some have been pushing.”

He said, as the report said the “great resignation” that is widely reported as a global phenomenon following COVID was also apparent in Australian local councils, but didn’t affect CVC as much as other Victorian and NSW councils.

The Australian Local

Government Association has recognised the difficulties facing council’s, particularly in the regions.

IN 2022 ALGA president Linda Scott said around nine in ten Australian councils were now Ms Scott said there are a range of factors that made it harder for councils to recruit, train and retain suitably skilled workers.

“Housing affordability and availability is an ongoing issue, particularly for regional and rural councils looking to attract specialist staff from outside their local community,” Cr Scott said.

“Retaining the staff they already have is also a big challenge for many councils, given the current competition for skills within the private sector and also other levels of government.”

“Nationally the turnover rate in local government is about 15 percent, and it’s closer to 20 percent in rural areas.”

By Tim Howard

Yamba residents turned up the volume with their favourite chants when A Current Affair came calling last week.

The secretary of the Yamba Community Action Network, Lynne Cairns, said not even some wet weather could keep residents indoors.

“Yamba CAN sincerely thanks all those who could attend,” she said.

“It was such a fantastic effort, particularly, due to the inclement weather, we cannot thank you enough.

“This is how we can, and need to make a difference.”

Mrs Cairns said residents were encouraged to shout out their chants: “STOP

THE FILL” -- “DON’T DROWN OUR TOWN” for the cameras.

“It was so sincere,” she said. “This is something obviously close to the hearts of people in West Yamba.”

The segment aired on A Current Affair on Tuesday night, but anyone who missed it can catch up on A Current