Randwick City Council has implemented an ongoing review and process improvement strategy that has put it well on its way to becoming a leading organisation.
Located in the southeastern suburbs of Sydney, Randwick has approximately 600 employees and has been recognised for its commitment to its community and staff in recent years with numerous awards, including the prestigious Bluett Award in 2006, and the New South Wales Local Government Managers Australia Gold Award for Management Excellence in 2008.
Council’s Manager Organisational Performance, Kerrie Walshaw, said the City commenced a major organisational reform process at the end of 2004. It adopted the Business Excellence Framework (BEF), providing a systematic and structured process to guide development and improvement of management and leadership systems over the next four years.
“The BEF helped to create an organisational environment that encourages continuous improvement,” Kerrie Walshaw said. “It fosters self assessment and ongoing review, leading to identification of what we need to do to achieve improvements in our processes, services and programs.”
As part of the BEF implementation program, targeted leadership and organisational development activities have been conducted.
Since 2005, ‘Working Together Workshops’ have enabled senior and middle management to undertake challenging skill development activities to strengthen their competencies in leadership, strategic planning, using data and knowledge and applying excellent customer focus.
“Consequently, we achieved a significant and positive change in Council’s culture,” Kerrie Walshaw said. “This improvement was acknowledged through winning the 2006 Bluett Award, but it was recognised that further improvement was required if we were to achieve our vision of being a leader in the industry and community.”
As such, in late 2007, Council undertook a desktop review of its core business processes using the Department of Local Government’s Promoting Better Practice (PBP) program tools. This review was conducted over four days by an internal team, led by a consultant with expertise in BEF and quality evaluations. The results found that Council did have a strong culture of good governance and ethical conduct, and that highly effective policies and practices were in place.
But in 2008 Randwick’s General Manager decided to undertake a more extensive, peer based review to challenge and confirm these findings.
“The 2008 review was expanded to include frontline service and program delivery as well as key factors, such as leadership, customer service, risk management and strategic focus,” Kerrie Walshaw said.
“Led by an experienced evaluator, two former Local Government General Managers and two internal staff conducted the review.
“They looked at the question, ‘Are they doing what they say they are doing?’.
“Results confirmed that Randwick was delivering services to its community at a standard exceeding many other councils, and that its core systems and processes were functioning efficiently and effectively, in some instances close to best practice levels.
“At the same time, the review also identified opportunities for improvement that would position the organisation to compete with other industry best practice entities as well as private sector high achievers.
“There were 12 major recommendations made, as well as 65 opportunities identified for improvement. At this stage, 50 per cent of the recommendations have been fully implemented, with others due to be implemented by 30 June 2009.”
A four year strategy for 2009–2012 has now been prepared to support the continuous improvement process. It includes further internal assessment, organisational risk assessment, peer based review; external evaluation by Business Excellence evaluators; and an application in the Australian Business Excellence Awards.
For further information contact Kerrie Walshaw on (02) 9399 0999.
