The City of Nedlands in Western Australia has pulled off a David versus Goliath achievement to win the Australian Business Excellence Awards. The awards, regarded as Australian’s most prestigious business awards, recognise excellence in business practice and organisational efficiency.
Nedlands competed against many of Australia’s largest and most successful companies. Past winners include Boeing Australia, Honeywell, divisions of BHP, Kodak and Toyota Australia. It is the first time a Western Australian company or organisation has taken out the top excellence medal in the 16 years the awards have been running.
Last year Nedlands won the Western Australian Local Government Association award as the State’s best Local Government. The City of Nedlands is about 6.4 km from Perth, and includes the suburbs of Nedlands, Dalkeith, Hollywood, Mt Claremont, Swanbourne, parts of Shenton Park and Floreat and it is home to 21,000 residents.
City of Nedland’s Chief Executive Officer, Shayne Silcox, said it was an overwhelming experience to be part of a relatively small Local Government organisation being judged against some of Australia’s major corporations.
“In terms of best business practice, the Australian Business Excellence Awards are widely recognised as Australia’s most prestigious and this is why so many major companies and organisations enter each year – it is an opportunity to benchmark performances against the very best,” Dr Silcox said. “The business awards programs has helped us to create a sustainable city and has seen us reach a customer satisfaction in the top one per cent of all councils across the country. The awards have helped us measure our progress across economic, social and environmental indicators that serve to foster community wellbeing.
“To win at this level is testimony to the quality and the commitment of the staff at the City of Nedlands. Regardless of the administrative structure that is in place, no business or organisation can be successful without a dedicated and highly efficient workforce,” Shayne Silcox said.
As part of its general approach to business excellence with staff, Nedlands approaches training in a variety of ways.
- The City’s performance review process is important to identify training requirements for employees.
- Employee performance plans also encompass identifying training and resource requirements that each employee may need to ensure the greatest possibility of success against their individual performance targets.
- During performance reviews the performance of an employee against the position requirements are also assessed. This assessment helps to determine skill and competency gaps against position requirements. Once identified, appropriate training is sourced and delivered to close those gaps.
- Corporate or strategic programs and projects incorporate an assessment of possible training requirements, which once identified are incorporated into the implementation schedule.
- Employees are invited to discuss possible training needs with supervisors and managers where other systems have not identified the need.
- All employees have an annual training plan written for them using the above channels as sources of information. The training plan includes sourcing possible providers, availability and costs for the identified training requirements.
The City of Nedlands finds that this approach aligns training requirements and expenditure with the strategic direction of the City. For more details contact Shayne Silcox on (08) 9386 6900.
