Culture undermines efficiencies

Report criticises planning processes

Workplace culture has been blamed for undermining the productivity of Baw Baw Shire’s planning department, leading to workload stress, loss of staff and inefficient processes.

These were the key findings of a review conducted by Andrew Wegener Consulting last year into the shire’s planning woes and below par performance.

Until The Gazette lodged a Freedom of Information application, the review had remained confidential. Councillors were last year “briefed” on the findings but were not given the full report because it was “operational.”

While The Gazette’s FOI application was granted, the shire chose to release the report publicly at last week’s council meeting, where planning and development director Leanne Hurst said it could be tabled with an accompanying report to “minimise misunderstanding and misinterpretation.”

Insights outlined in the Wegener report included:

Challenging service performance since 2016;

Underlying workplace culture issue;

Adversarial relationship between customers and council;

Council behaviour disempowering planning staff;

Decisions made on personal opinion not council policy;

Genuine sense of workload stress; and,

Service demand exceeding funding capacity.

Fifty per cent of respondents indicated they would prefer to invest in other municipalities because of Baw Baw’s approach of saying no.

The review showed 12 staff had left the organisation between 2019 and 2021. Figures released by council last week confirmed 45 staff had left in the past five years, of which 14 were leadership roles.

After conducting 35 interviews, the consultant confirmed there was a “genuine sense of workload stress across council teams.”

“Service demand exceeds funding capacity, meaning Baw Baw must deliver three per cent plus efficiency every year,” the report said.

The Wegener report identified that since 2018, performance had declined due to poor staff continuity and services were at risk if the culture did not improve.

The review recommended a change in workplace culture to improve staff retention and called for a relationship reset with developers and community members.

Insights from developers and community members called for more timely responses, transparency and “no surprises” with last minute conditions.

The report recommended council adopt a “partnership” model with developers to overcome poor process consistency and a “culture of avoidance with customers/applicants.”

But, despite staff perceptions, the report said planning performance was not linked to resource capacity.

The report showed planning application growth at 2.4 per cent was consistent with population growth.

A comparison with peer councils - Moorabool, Surf Coast, Golden Plains, Cardinia, Bass Coast and Mitchell municipalities - indicated staffing was consistent with current demand, based on 55 applications per month and was aligned with other regional councils

Baw Baw takes on average 16 days longer to decide on planning applications compared to peer councils, and 62 days longer than benchmark councils.

The review also found, if council improved throughput, revenue could increase 53 per cent.

“There is a 211 application difference between the actual applications and the target applications. This gap means that there is a total of $184,625 combined fee unrealised by council,” the report said.

Recommendations:

Reset the relationship with developers to focus on council’s commitment to performance (time)

48 hour response to all correspondence

Review the TechOne (planning assessment technology) workflow

Adopt a solution based culture for customers

Focus on changes that ensure improvements to staff retention

Sections of the review were redacted to protect the privacy of people who participated in the review process. Names and comments were redacted.

The report to council said the review was intended for internal use only but it was agreed to release the review after receiving FOI requests. The report did not name The Gazette as being the FOI applicant.

The Gazette lodged its FOI application in July. A response to that application was received on September 27, the same day that Warragul resident Don McLean also lodged an FOI application for the report.