Page 1938 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 16 June 1993
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
from the opportunity to serve the ACT community, and I find that entirely creditable; 88 per cent agree that the community's perception of the ACT Government Service is important, and of course it is; 67 per cent are satisfied with their current position; 77 per cent rated highly the overall quality of work done in their work area - there was a high level of satisfaction there; 70 per cent of them have attended some training or development programs in the past year - that was a very good result; and 89 per cent were satisfied with the level of cooperation between colleagues within their immediate work area. Fellow staff are one of the major likes about working in the department. That is a good sign.
Over 70 per cent positively regarded the occupational health and safety conditions in their workplace; 61 per cent indicated that their immediate supervisor does his or her job well; 67 per cent indicated that their supervisor listens to what staff have to say; 69 per cent indicated that their supervisor shows confidence in them; 63 per cent indicated that they receive enough information to do their job well; and 65 per cent feel free to express their opinions on matters of importance to them. As I say, I have quoted selectively in an attempt to get some balance into the entirely bleak picture that has been painted by Mr Stevenson.
Because Mr Stevenson has given us only a very small part of the picture, I would like to spend quite a bit of time outlining the whole picture, outlining to members the process that has been undertaken to date and the steps that are still to be taken. I hope that members will then understand that this is not a subject on which the public servants, or even the Minister, should be criticised but rather one for which they ought to be praised as taking on a difficult issue and doing something about it. Personally, Mr Deputy Speaker, I commend my department for initiating and following through on an activity that is challenging and fraught with danger, one that is recognised these days as a modern management technique.
The management literature does indicate that staff attitude surveys can be an effective form of management improvement because they allow staff to express their views and to do so anonymously. They are free to say whatever they like. They therefore give management information about the views of staff that they would not otherwise be able to acquire. To state the obvious, management does need to know the views of their staff, and they recognise that they need to know those views. After all, the staff are the means by which programs are delivered and policies are executed, and the views of those staff are valuable. Too often in the past staff have not been involved or consulted, and I believe that that has been to the detriment of whichever area of the public service they worked in.
My department is charged with, amongst other things, the task of creating an excellent public service. That is one of their many tasks. One element of that is to develop a culture right across the ACT Government Service of participative management, where staff and managers work together to achieve outcomes. Accordingly, last year the department decided to pilot this staff attitude survey and to use the pilot to develop and then to market an effective management improvement scheme across the whole of the ACT Government Service.
It is probably also necessary for me to draw a distinction between management improvement and the purpose of creating a separate ACT public service, because Mrs Carnell drew attention to that. As I have said previously, the purpose of the latter exercise is to bring our public servants under the control of
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .