How we’re advocating for you

We’ve been influencing the decisions affecting our sector and your profession.

Ongoing consultation has been informing how we support our sector, talking to members like you, undertaking research, collecting valuable feedback at our events, and listening closely to our Special Interest Groups.

This consultation shaped our position on three key issues facing the sector and its people: Skills, Inclusion, and Culture.

Our original research into the skills shortage facing councils helped us identify pathways to employment for Victoria’s diverse communities that LGPro has since been filling with Victorian Government support. We’ve been striving for practical change to support positive workplace cultures in our councils from the administration to elected representatives in an ongoing campaign.

Our executive and Board have been meeting with the key peak bodies in our sector, Local Government Victoria, and the Local Government Minister to make sure the issues affecting council professionals are being heard.

How we’re including you (whoever and wherever you are)

We’ve been improving our professional development opportunities, embedding inclusivity into the design of everything we do.

This has meant consciously diversifying who takes the stage and what is spoken about at events to foster greater learning opportunities, from engaging speakers from LGBTIQA+ communities and people with Indigenous backgrounds to those living with disability.

We’ve proactively diversified the planning committees behind our programs to ensure they represent the interests of more of the local government workforce.

The Local Pathways project has meanwhile been addressing the sector’s skills shortage by matching entry-level council vacancies and job seekers from distinct, diverse cohorts, spanning youth to veterans, with wraparound training and support.

We introduced new workshops to meet our sector’s diverse skills needs, including two new project management courses that have been bolstered with additional, recurring sessions to meet demand.

All of these offerings have been regularly reviewed with specific consideration of the sector’s future needs, assessed through research and council staff feedback.

How we’re making your membership valuable

We’ve been supporting our diverse and engaged membership through an improved member experience.

We’ve surveyed our members and non-members alike to ensure a wide range of voices are included in our understanding of what services you need, reaching out across every channel we have to find out how we can continually enhance the member experience.

Your feedback has been shaping what we deliver, from the content of webinars to the latest conferences and executive forums, and from program agendas to the format of networking opportunities.

While the Customer Service Conference became the CX Conference to support our members’ digital transformation journeys, the Aged and Disability Services Seminar was similarly rebadged and broadened as councils moved out of service provision and into wellbeing promotion.

We’ve since developed new resources in response too, from the WebinarHQ series to the member resource library.

We’ve also been listening out for what barriers are in the way of you getting the most out of being a member, introducing discounts to small rural councils and those far from the metro area to make our specialist events more accessible.

These smaller councils are now being recognised in the Small Rural Council Award, recognising the unique constraints on lessresourced teams.