About

Strategic Context

Councils work hard to deliver the core services our community expects from ratepayers’ money. However, we are often required to deliver many of the federal and state government priorities with little or no funding to do so.

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As the level of government with the closest community interface, councils are held accountable for ever increasing community expectations – often for services which fall outside our level of government, authority and budget.

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Council staff shortages have been rising in recent years, as local government employment fails to keep up with population growth. Furthermore, Councils also face challenges in the attraction and retention of a skilled workforce, in particular on the leadership positions.

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Added with challenges on future financial sustainability and the use of technology, it is very important that investment is made for people leaders in Local Governments.

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Workforce Challenges in Local Government

Trends in the attraction and retention of a skilled workforce in the local government sector, including impacts of labour hire practices and structural impediments to security for local government workers and infrastructure and service delivery include:

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• Restrictive Enterprise Agreement terms and conditions built over years within the industry have led to rostering and wages entitlements being above those that the open market require. This results in a need to consider outsourcing arrangements when maximising limited Council budgets and rate payer value where services can be delivered cheaper and more efficiently by external providers. This impacts on job security for local government employees.

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• Revenue impacts from rate capping, along with expenditure pressures linked with cost shifting activities from state and federal governments have necessitated strategies to consider outsourced service arrangements. Multiple outsourced arrangements exist across a multitude of services where these services can be provided at a lower cost. Local government is an important employment source, particularly in small, regional and rural communities. Impact of rate capping on talent attraction & retention is a challenge, especially when compared with state government or like competitors that can pay at a much higher rate than local government in many instances. Impact of rate capping at the time that it was implemented to Councils who were already a low rating Council, has meant that austerity measures in Enterprise Agreement rates were required earlier resulting in competitiveness issues in salary benchmarking even with other local councils.

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• Lack of a more centralised approach to Enterprise Bargaining which is common in the state and federal governments, has meant an inequitable approach to salaries across local government. The more wealthy or growth suburbs are able to provide higher salaries than others, resulting in talent attraction and retention of a skilled workforce – particularly in areas of high demand and critical skill needs such as municipal building surveyors, engineering project managers, Information Technology specialists etc.