In November last year, Whyalla Council won the South Australian Local Government Association’s Regional Occupational Health Safety and Welfare Best Practice Award for implementation of their Integrated Business System.
“As with most modern Local Government organisations, we find ourselves under pressure to do more with less,” said Council’s City Manager, David Knox.“Indeed, this has become a mantra for most Councils and we are constantly seeking to continuously improve the productivity, service outcome standards and overall performance of our business units.”
The approach undertaken by Whyalla was for Council management, employees and their representative unions to commit to implementing an Integrated Business System as part of their third Enterprise Agreement. This included achieving the Australian Standards for Occupational Health Safety and Welfare, Environment, Quality and Risk Management at Council’s various workplaces, via a coordinated and integrated management system.
An analysis indicated Council already had various systems in place to conform with legislation compliance requirements. Coordination and integration of these would advantage the organisation. Gaps were identified and a program was put in place to address these.
Consultants were initially brought in to assist, but from the beginning the OHS & Welfare Joint Consultative Committees and Senior Management Team recognised that such a system would develop best from the grass roots level if Council, management and employees built the Integrated Business System (IBS) themselves. Employees have embraced the continuous improvement culture and philosophy at Whyalla Council as indicated by the high levels of usage of the ‘Opportunity for Improvement’, or OI system.
Now computerised, this tracks all complaints, requests for action and suggestions for improvement. “Feedback from employees is that they feel they have opportunity to identify hazards and improvement opportunities across a range of issues, many of which relate to each other,” said Human Resource Manager, Carmel Westbrook.“They also feel empowered by a system, which then indicates that action has been taken to ‘close the loop” .
Reduction in complexity has been achieved as forms and documentation have been integrated and minimised. Employees have also found it easier to be trained on a single integrated system than be confronted by several different systems.
This culture of continuous improvement has been enhanced by establishing cross functional teams to look at various ‘big ticket’ productivity improvements in five key areas including plant utilisation and energy savings. Savings of nearly a million dollars are targeted for the life of the new, fourth Enterprise Agreement.
For further information, contact Carmel Westbrook on (08) 8640 3444.
