For the past 18 months, the Meritorious Empowerment Principle has been evolving at Alice Springs Town Council, having a positive impact on staff relations and the implementation of works. The principle, which is based on the four cornerstones of transparency, empathy, ability and measurement, has already led to a number of successes in Council’s Works Department.
One example of a success was the speed at which Council was able to recover following an unfortunate vandalism incident in July 2006. The entire fleet at one of Council’s Depots was damaged and covered with graffiti.
Alice Springs CEO, Rex Mooney, engaged depot staff to make good the repair in the shortest time possible and all 33 vehicles were declared road worthy within 10 hours.
Council’s Manager Projects, Tony Cheng, explains the Meritorious Employment Principle in detail…
Not unlike other cities, Alice Springs has its own set of challenges and every day is a learning experience. Like most local authorities, we strive for continuous improvement and have evolved new strategies to meet public expectations.
The Meritorious Empowerment Principle is based on the philosophy that most people like to make informed decisions and the more open and transparent the decision making processes are, the more informed people will be. Through the principle, we are fostering an environment of trust, understanding, empowerment and respect.
Transparency
In today’s climate of private equity funds and free market mentality, it is hard sometimes for those in public office to differentiate themselves from their private sector counter parts. Public organisations are predominantly budget driven and not profit driven, they typically have openly competitive recruitment and procurement policies and procedures and transparent decision making processes, even at the strategic level.
One of the most important ideologies a person in a leadership position can aspire to is the trust of their colleagues. If you can facilitate a mechanism where your colleagues trust you implicitly, the rest is relatively straightforward and very often, one can literally move swimming pools, large trees and roundabouts. Transparency is an answer to fostering trust in a working environment.
Alice Springs Town Council has facilitated its transparency in a day to day operational manner by enabling access to all levels of management, improving the transparent information flow and by making the decision making process transparent at all levels.
If you allow people to get hold of you whenever you are needed, you will be able to get hold of people when you need them. This allows for transparency and accountability in the decision making process. The more transparent the decision making processes are, the less the likelihood of misunderstanding between staff members and the easier it is for the team to gel as a single unit.
For example, at Council’s merit based ‘Beyond Call of Duty’ Award presentation ceremony, a detailed account of the person’s selfless deeds is given in detail by the Supervisor at a full yard meeting. To date, no one has challenged or questioned the suitability of the candidate due to the transparent process of selection.
Empathy
The core value of empathy is the ability to pre empt a person’s reaction to a given set of information or circumstances. In the science of management, this concept is also known as Emotional Intelligence.
Council’s Kempeana Park is a good example of how empathising with what your clients and staff value can create a pathway for a win-win situation.
The residents surrounding Kempeana Park have high environmental values, so a water saving park concept was used, with environmental measures including the installation of hardy arid plants, minimisation of lawn areas and irrigation requirements. As a result, the response from residents has been overwhelmingly positive.
Empathy value projection in a work environment can be based on empathy for your staff, empathy for your clients and empathy for yourself.
You need to understand your staff and why they are working for you. Think of a particular person in your team and ask yourself why are they working for you in your team; what are their strengths and weaknesses; and what outcomes would they like for a certain project?
Ask yourself simlar questions about your client and try to understand them; the restrictions they are facing and how you can value add for them.
Empathy for yourself should be based on knowing your own capacities. Never promise capacities you cannot deliver on or they will come back and bite you.
The triangle of empathy for yourself, your staff and your clients determines to a large extent the success and effectiveness of what you do.
Ability
A Finnish study found that promoting work ability in the workforce can improve organisational productivity and individual wellbeing.
Alice Springs Town Council management maximise the work ability of the workforce by recognising that employees have more skills than is required for the job, which would otherwise lie dormant.
The multi skilled workforce is further enhanced by a comprehensive training regime that encourages staff to build on their skills with a lifetime career focus and to implement them for the benefit of Council and their own development.
The multi skills of staff are capitalised on by their movement to fill daily vacancies, for programs and projects, mentoring of inexperienced staff and for an opportunity for staff to extend themselves and demonstrate their capabilities.
Staff are encouraged to be creative, take ownership of their work and empowered to make decisions within their competencies. Our Depot management team has weekly meetings to brainstorm and share creative thoughts on complex problems and this leads to better decisions.
While a high percentage of the town population is seasonally transient, which is also reflected in the high turnover of our workforce, Council has staff who have been at the Depot for up to 30 years. More than 15 per cent of the workforce have exceeded the traditional working age and are working beyond 60 years of age.
A global phenomena has emerged from recent medical enhancements has resulted in people living longer, but working shorter. The challenge for all societies in the future is to promote healthy lifestyles and longevity, while reducing the dependency ratios for future generations. The only way to do that is to keep people working longer and being self reliant.
Alice Springs recognises that many more of its staff are approaching the traditional retirement age of 60 years and has begun work on succession planning, looking at phased retirement patterns, flexible and part time working hours and other innovative options that might fit in with Council’s service obligations. We are also providing skills and career change training, superannuation and financial planning seminars for staff, flexible work practices and other novel methods.
Measurement
For effective skills/job matching to take place there must be credible measurement techniques and Council relies on a few.
Measurement of applicants for job matching begins at the earliest stage of the recruitment process and applies throughout until the selection of the successful applicant.
On commencement of employment, the qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience of each employee is noted. This identifies for managers/supervisors the available resources they can draw on and identifies any skill gaps that can be targeted for training and development.
For further information contact Tony Cheng on (08) 8950 0500.
