Honesty and trustworthiness are among the key drivers of community satisfaction, according to a new diagnostic tool. Melbourne based consultancy Socom has been working with councils for almost 20 years to develop an innovative tool called Organisational Relationship Diagnostic Audit (ORDA) that allows a Council to gain an accurate insight into the relationship it has with its community.
The process results in a diagnostic audit of strengths and weaknesses, identifying the things that the community value the most and how satisfied they are with a council’s delivery of them.
Socom Chairman David Hawkins said it is the abstract things that have the greatest impact on the community.
“Councils are often surprised by the results of the survey, in relation to what people feel is important,” he said. “When asked this question, Local Governments point to planning decisions or to providing services such as rubbish collection as the things they believe the community value most,” he said.
“This couldn’t be further from the truth. What the tool shows that the most important thing to the community is honesty and trustworthiness, yet the highest levels of satisfaction relate to providing information about services and facilities and keeping the public spaces clean and tidy.
“Not only does ORDA provide an insight into the relationships with its community, it also scores the relationship so councils can benchmark their improvements in subsequent years.
“An industry standard is currently being generated for the Local Government sector.
“By diagnosing and addressing relationship issues with key stakeholders, an organisation can become much more effective in delivering on its business or operational goals.
“Once there is a clear understanding regarding stakeholder expectations and perceptions, a pathway for improvement can be easily identified.
“The benefit of determining levels of importance and satisfaction is that councils can prioritise where to focus their efforts for maximum return.
“Only looking at satisfaction scores can give a distorted view as it requires a subjective analysis to determine the areas of priority.”
