The City of Wodonga’s Manager Risk, Dianne Ferguson recently won the ARIMA 2000 Public Sector Risk Manager for the Year award. This award recognises professional excellence in risk management.
ARIMA (Association of Risk & Insurance Managers of Australia) recognise candidates who… through a process of education and improvement in knowledge and skills, can prove they have applied the multi facets of risk management to their organisation throughout their career.
Under the guidance of Dianne Ferguson, Council has introduced a culture of risk management, which has been integrated into its daily operations.
“By focusing on increasing organisational awareness of risk management we have been able to improve performance in operational activities throughout the organisation,” she said.
Staff have been educated on risk management practices and risk management has been included as part of the City of Wodonga’s Corporate Plan.
The development of Council’s risk management program has included risk assessments being undertaken across all of its services.
Implementation of risk treatment strategies and embracing the risk management culture has achieved financial savings through risk minimisation.
“We have developed and integrated a number of systems and databases that facilitate proactive rather than reactive risk management,” Dianne Ferguson said.
She said a holistic view to risk management adopted by Council has resulted in risk management being extended into the community through its community safety program.
For any Local Government, the loss of growth opportunity and disenfranchisement of its community is a high risk.
Council has formed strategic partnerships with other government and community agencies, to identify and minimise risks to community safety and well being.
As far as Council is concerned, there is an internally structured risk management strategy that has been running for four years.
Assessments are conducted on many areas of Council operations.
There is an active Occupational Health and Safety committee at Council.
The Occupational Health and Safety committee is using the initial level of SafetyMap to evaluate compliance with OH&S legislative requirements.
The incident reporting system includes near misses, thereby providing an opportunity to investigate and prevent injuries from occurring.
Emergency preparedness and emergency response in all service areas are provided in the OH&S program.
Emergency preparedness and emergency response in all service areas are provided in the OH&S program.
As part of her ARIMA Award, Dianne Ferguson will be attending either the PRIMA Conference in Chicago USA or the ALARM Conference in Warwick, United Kingdom, and will undertake a short study tour following the conference.
