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Local Government Recruitment and Retention Project

Tony Crane

Purpose

  • Employer of Choice for professional and managerial staff
  • A flexible sector-wide career pathway
  • Effective maximisation of leadership & development resources and talent
  • A strategic perspective on people

Project parameters

  • 2 year contract
  • Project costs levied on participating authorities (75 out of 85)
  • Managed by SOLGM for the Sector
  • Governance by a Steering Group consisting of the SOLGM Business School Advisory Board and 4 additional HR professionals (including Mary Sinclair Jones)
  • Project Sponsor - Jim Harland, CE, Dunedin CC

Project priorities (1)

  • Developed during a planning session of HR professionals in 2005
  • Response to Deloitte research
  • Modified and ratified by SOLGM Executive

Project priorities (2)

  1. A sector-wide employment identity
  2. A sector approach to developing strategic HR resources, especially in the area of a learning and development strategy
  3. A set of ‘toolkits’ for authorities to use in respect of HR matters

Employment identity

  • Value proposition: ‘Contribution to Community’
  • Haines Recruitment Advertising to assist
  • The identity must reflect diversity of sector (types of authority, roles, issues)
  • It must complement your own branding

Markets

  1. School students - to influence study choices
  2. University students - to influence study and career choices
  3. Mid to late career changers (incl. the ‘retired’) - to increase attractiveness of sector
  4. Migrant - to sell ‘lifestyle’
  5. Internal - to encourage ésprit de corps

Website

  • Information rich
  • Targeted pages for each audience
  • Links to other professional sites
  • Career management tools for some interactivity
  • Links to Career Services Rapuara
  • Profiles of actual employees
  • Job board
  • Marketing and promotion of brand

Job Board

  • Modelled on SEEK, but just for local authorities
  • Likely to have standard e-recruitment functionality (database capture, admin modules, searchability, candidate alerts etc)
  • Low cost per ad
  • May combine with LGNZ’s LGJobs facility (t.b.c.)

Aim of Job Board

I hope that you will automatically advertise in 3 places:

  1. Your website
  2. Your local paper
  3. The sector site

Add others as the specific campaign demands.

Sector Approach to Strategic HR (1)

  • Joint purchasing of resources, e.g. salary surveys
  • A strategic partnership between the LGITO and the SOLGM Business School, to enable greater co-operation and development in response to sector needs
  • Enhanced communication and experience or resource sharing

Sector Approach to Strategic HR (2)

  • Sector-wide deployment (bottom-up) of successful initiatives
  • Possibly development of an apex post-graduate qualification, for staff who might otherwise choose an MBA
  • Educating CE’s to the importance of a strategic approach to HR issues (noting that this is not the same as simply funding the HR Dept!)

Sector Approach to Strategic HR (3)

  • Focus on the ‘point of impact’ where staff member meets boss
  • Discover opportunities for new ways of working - job design, work patterns, performance management etc.
  • Engage non-traditional groups to enhance employment uptake in the longer term
  • Share resources in key shortage areas

Toolkits and Case Studies

  • Knowledge and experience transfer from larger to smaller
  • Priorities driven by the HR List Serve questions
  • Simple, generic and not overly ambitious
  • Library of external contacts

Overseas Recruitment Consortium

  • Shared costs of promotion
  • Possibly a Regional Council- specific approach
  • Generic promotion versus actual jobs
  • Follow up of candidates
  • If all 14 agreed, it would cost $4000 each.

Workshop

TALK TO ME!!!!!!

Questions

  • What are the key priorities for Regional Councils?
  • What would you like to see on a website?
  • What do you see as training and development priorities?
  • What strategic HR initiatives are you taking/would you like to take?
  • What would be useful for you or for others in an on-line HR toolkit?
  • Any other questions?

Antony Crane
Project Manager - Recruitment and Retention

SOLGM
PO Box 5538
Wellington
Ph 04 978 1288 or 021 426 289
acrane@solgm.org.nz

Last updated: 16 January 2009