ANNUAL REPORT 2007-2008 CITY OF GREATER GEELONG

THEME 2: BEST VALUE
Objective
Achievements
Future Directions
CITY OF GREATER GEELONG ANNUAL REPORT 2007-2008
To effectively deliver a range of
sustainable services that meet the
needs of the community.
Highlights
In order to measure Customer Service performance and
identify opportunities for continued improvement, the City
of Greater Geelong engaged Customer Service
Benchmarking Australia to conduct independent mystery
shopping research throughout 2007-2008. In the past
12 months, the City of Greater Geelong has consistently
achieved results above the industry benchmark in many
areas, placing us amongst the best of the 150 Councils
evaluated Australia wide. The results indicate our
Customer Service Commitments have gone a long way in
developing a culture built on listening, understanding and
pro-actively responding to internal and external customer
needs.
The City’s Centre Based Long Day Care department
recently conducted Occupational Health and Safety Audits
in conjunction with Work Safe Victoria. The excellent
results have led to this children’s services project being
used as a benchmark for industry standards. The City
also scored very well in the recent Civic Mutual Plus
Public Liability Insurance Audit with a rating of 91 per
cent, demonstrating the City’s commitment to risk
management.
Providing staff with training and development
opportunities is very important for their future growth and
also for the continuous improvement of Council
operations. In 2007-2008 more than 1,700 training and
development opportunities were undertaken, on topics
such as Occupational Health and Safety, Bullying and
Harassment, traineeships, recognised qualification
courses and many other department and job-specific
training courses. An example of a department taking part
in specified training was our Local Laws officers
participating in tourism training. As these officers spend a
lot of time in the public eye, they are now able to provide
broader levels of service to tourists and residents during
their day to day operations.
The installation of a Corporate Project Management
Reporting System will provide project managers with one
tool that allows them to plan all stages of a project and
report against staged milestones. With so many projects
underway or planned to commence, this will greatly assist
Council with keeping track of progress on all projects and
improve project management as a whole.
Council’s commitment to performance accountability and
reporting transparency has continued with the stage two
roll out of the Performance Management Reporting
processes. Department plans and scorecards have
provided managers with a snapshot of their department’s
progress toward meeting objectives, and has also assisted
them with future department planning.
The City will introduce an online employee self service
system which will allow staff to perform the following
human resource functions using Council’s intranet:
> View and change personal and contact details.
> View current leave balances and view leave history.
It will also include access to online leave requests,
pending leave requests and current bookings.
> View payslip information, eliminating the need to
provide pay advice in hard copy form to those
employees with access to a computer.
Council will hold its third Employee Opinion Survey in
2009. The survey seeks to obtain information on
employee perceptions on a wide range of organisational
issues including organisational values, job satisfaction,
motivational factors and to provide employees with the
chance to identify opportunities for improvement.
The internal Management and Leadership program will
continue to grow. The existing 360 Degree program has
aided in establishing training and developmental
programs to enhance strengths and bridge skills gaps.
The next phase will involve the establishment of a
succession program which will entail the further
development and training of our co-ordinators,
particularly in the people skills areas of Emotional
Intelligence. An Emerging Leaders' program is also
planned, where future 'leaders' of the City are identified,
trained and developed over an 18-month period.
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