Organisation: City of Darebin
Job Title: Executive Coordinator and Councillor Liaison
Word Limit: Client requested around 3 pages
Location: Preston
Highly developed research, analytical and conceptual skills, and ability to present complex comprehensive reports and recommendations
Within my current role as Coordinator Business Planning and Risk, Parking and Traffic at the City of Melbourne, I am responsible for developing frameworks through research and analysis to assist in developing new processes and procedures for my branch. One such procedure was in relation to the driver nomination applications which council received for parking infringements, which weren’t being processed in a timely fashion due to over-processing and rework delays. The perceived reason for the delays was the poor handwriting upon the forms received. I investigated this issue, collecting and analysing data about the forms that came in and presented my findings, including a Pareto chart showing that the biggest problem was actually missing information due to lack of understanding of a badly designed form. Having identified the problem, I was able to submit some recommendations, including samples from other organisations such as Victoria Police. The recommendations were accepted and included pre-printing the name of the driver on the form to save them having to decipher where to put their name and the name of the nominated driver. By changing this, along with other design factors on the form, I have saved the organisation many hours of time and frustration as well as financially by mitigating these delays.
High level business acumen and political astuteness
My political astuteness stems from working with councillors and the mayor of the City of Melbourne and being aware of what is written and said that might be forwarded to the media. With a large amount of the decisions I make, I need to think ahead to the potential repercussions within the media and ensure I use words which don’t cause controversy.
My business acumen is best demonstrated through my role working with the leadership team to develop the annual business plan and the five year business plan for the Branch. This yearly task requires an excellent understanding of the business that is the City of Melbourne as well as business foresight, and my role is to facilitate the process to completion. I have standardised the strategic business planning process for efficiency, have lead the completion of numerous business improvement projects and have saved the business around $70,000 in reduced tangible waste across the last three years.
Sound governance principles and the ability to present professionally in a complex and diverse local government environment
The demonstration of my governance principles comes through my ability to analyse and review processes and procedures within a government environment. Processes and procedures I have successfully reviewed have included the strategic planning process, risk assessment and control, and internal quality auditing at the City of Melbourne as well as processes such as road and property numbering at shire councils.
Whilst I present and facilitate consistently within my current role as mentioned in the previous and following criteria, I demonstrated my external local government presentation skills whilst working rurally in a shire council. At the time, there was a push from emergency services to change the way rural properties were numbered. There was a complex mess of different numbering systems at the time which were confusing when emergency services were trying to find properties. After coming up with a system of numbering which used the number of kilometres down the road the property was located, we held public meetings to present the issue to locals. I presented the local government ideas and fielded many questions from challenging locals in order to implement the program. Families who have been living on properties for a long time are very reticent to change their official address and this was a challenging project. In addition, some properties were deemed under the new system to be in a different locality, another contentious issue for property owners. After presenting at community meetings, we were able to gain at least understanding from the local people and implemented the project successfully as a result.
High level report writing, oral communication and presentation skills to enable effective and pro-active communication both internally and externally in a range of political environments
I possess excellent oral and written communication skills, including presentation skills and have the ability to adapt my communication style to all levels. By far my greatest skill is in communicating with and between councillors, council staff and the residents within the area. During my previous role as PA to a Council Director, part of my role was to field calls from residents with issues surrounding roads, rubbish, local laws and animal management; areas which create a large amount of angst within councils at times. My communication skills come to the fore in this type of task and I am able to negotiate and assist people and groups who start off angry and upset, to an amicable solution. The major reason I seek this position is the opportunity to work directly with the general public and councillors and negotiate and solve problems.
Having worked at the City of Melbourne now for over 5 years, I have worked in a range of political environments and have been instrumental in the communication and implementation of numerous new strategies, particularly in my work with the leadership team in my branch to produce the yearly business plan.
My written communication skills are shown through writing the reports which go to council outlining major strategies the organisation would like to see in place. The council can then vote on these matters. In addition, I have written a range of planning documents, contributed to newsletters, contributed to the annual business plan documentation, as well as numerous every day communications and correspondence.
High level computer skills in social media and data base management systems
My computer and social media skills are proficient, including use of Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+, as well as the internal social media program Yammer within the City of Melbourne to communicate with staff. In addition, my role is to manage and administrate our branch’s website pages on our intranet and I am often the go to person for issues with Microsoft Word and Excel issues staff are having. I am aware of the risks in using my personal social media profiles as a council employee and take care with the types of information I am posting there.
I have significant experience in the use of database management systems, including providing training on newly implemented systems and contributing to a consultative panel for the introduction of a new document management system within the City of Melbourne. At one time, I was responsible for providing training to a whole region of Maternal and Child Health Nurses upon the introduction of a new database system to house their information. Prior to this, nurses would work from a cabinet and file cards for each of their patients. My role was to manage the transition of transferring all their current data into the system and then training them on how to use the system effectively. This project was very successful in ensuring each and every nurse in my area was electronic as a result.
Sound and demonstrated Conflict Resolution Skills – Capacity to manage conflict in a local government setting particularly as it relates to the provision of Council executive support services and the interface between the Chief Executive, Mayor, Councillors and the community
Across my career, I have demonstrated exceptional skills in the resolution of conflict within a government setting, including for the provision of support services and between council and the community. Particularly pertinent within my role as PA to a Director, I showed considerable skill in dealing with community concerns and individual issues called into our office. In fact, during my time in that role, I did not have a single call which needed to be escalated to the Director, in stark contrast to those performing that same role before me. Many people were irritated and angry by the time they called our office and my enjoyment in sorting this type of matter out along with my initiative to find solutions where all parties were happy was commended in this role.
One example of this was when I received a call from two ladies who had travelled into our municipality from the country to do some shopping. They had travelled some distance, however they had forgotten to bring the passenger’s disability sticker which she needed for parking and proximity to the shopping centre. Too far to return home to get the sticker, the ladies parked in a disability marked spot with no sticker and received a fine for parking there. They had spoken to the local law staff who had refused to withdraw the fine, then one lady called our office. After speaking to the lady, it became clear that technically they had done the wrong thing, however the passenger did really need to be in a disabled space due to her various conditions. I listened to the lady and told her I would contact her back and see what I could do. I then negotiated with the local law staff, showing empathy within their position and assuring them they had done nothing wrong, but asking whether we could make an exception for the women who needed this spot. After this communication, they agreed to withdraw the fine. The women were very pleased, and even had some flowers delivered to my office to say thank you. This is just one demonstration of my skills in the area of resolving conflict.
High Level Customer Focus – ability to proactively and constructively provide excellent customer service to all relevant stakeholders, including the public and external agencies
As mentioned in the previous criteria, my customer focus is one of my strengths within council, including residents, businesses and institutions within the council’s area. On one occasion, we were working on a new process to make dealing with the court more effective and efficient. I facilitated sessions with staff to agree on a process, identified our major stakeholders at each step, and then liaised with the court and our prosecutions team to develop agreement on the new payments process of court fees. This was a successful process which led to the implementation of the new process.
Another example is the decision to refund every single infringement fine issued for a two year period, after discovering that some of the staff issuing fines were not authorised officers. These staff were in the driver nominations area and were issuing the new fines when drivers nominated was actually in the car at the time of the offence. This decision was made to both be, and give the appearance of being, fair and reasonable in our processes and ensured there were no issues or ambiguities outstanding. I then set up both a new system and an audit process to ensure this issue did not happen again.
Excellent Communication Skills – including the ability to readily gain the confidence of others and set high standards of professionalism. Ability to listen, negotiate with and influence internal staff and people from external organisations and the community who contact the Office of the Chief Executive Officer with tact, diplomacy and integrity
In my current role, I facilitate regularly on both risk and procedure development, which requires superior negotiation skills and the ability to gain the confidence of others. In addition, I have developed some frameworks and methodologies around how we manage our business planning, policy and procedure development, risk planning and internal quality auditing. These frameworks have been born from consultation and negotiation with different parties within the council, along with research and work with our leadership team to agree on and roll out across the organisation.
The Internal Quality Auditing project was a challenging one, in which my role was to take direction from the leadership team about what aspects of the project were important in their areas, and then communicate this to their staff and have them implement the changes. Changes included collecting data to enable auditing processes and changing work methods in order to collect that data. This was quite confronting for some staff, however by using an empathetic and supportive approach, and finding out what staff were already aware of before our meetings, I was able to successfully implement the auditing processes in all areas.
Leadership – Demonstrated ability to lead, supervise, motivate, support and train other staff.
Currently a people manager of between two and four staff members, I have demonstrated leadership through example and am able to support and train staff competently. One staff member of mine who was working in a primarily technical data entry position needed to change to a facilitation role due to a change in priority of our branch. This staff member was a fairly timid person who came from a background of respect for authority which meant she wasn’t comfortable within the new role. I worked a lot with this staff member over four years to enhance her people and presentation skills, instilling confidence and motivation through small steps towards her goal. She is now facilitating sessions, running internal training sessions and presenting at staff meetings as a result. I have had numerous staff members who have gone on to more senior roles and believe this is a demonstration of my leadership and motivational skills.
Extensive experience in people management, project management, conflict resolution and/or communication
Almost my entire current role is based on project management and people management, including scoping projects, developing planning documents and schedules and delivering implementation within agreed timelines and budget. I have a green belt in Lean Six Sigma process improvement and have completed training with the program management office (PMO), in setting up a PMO to oversee a large amount of projects.
A specific project I worked on in a previous role was the complete refurbishment of our office, including the logistics of fitting significantly more staff into the same space. Within this process, I needed to manage a number of really upset staff who weren’t happy with the new arrangements or where they were placed and needed my conflict resolution skills to do so. This project was successfully completed within both timeline and budget.
