Organisation: Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Board
Position Director of Internal Audit
Word Limit: 2 pages in total
Location: Cairns
Demonstrated ability to provide effective leadership and management at a senior level within a complex service delivery environment
Within my current role as Team Leader Financial Accounting at Cairns and Hinterland Hospital and Health Services (CHHHS), I currently manage a multidisciplinary team of 5 staff members where I have demonstrated my ability to lead and manage successfully within the complex hospital and health care environment. As a hands-on, accessible manager, I provide a coordinated approach, including the significant achievement of results in financial and statutory reporting to the executive management team, researching complex projects, writing and reviewing of policy and procedure and ensuring that financial accounting legislation is complied with and adhered to.
My role requires my ability to provide a service to executive management, the System Manager and the Queensland Government and I pride myself on producing reliable, relevant and timely information for both internal and external reporting functions. I demonstrate leadership by example and work collaboratively across senior team members to gather information for reporting purposes and through ensuring that policies and procedures across CHHHS are in compliance with the Financial Management Practices Manual (FMPM).
In the management of my team, I have introduced job rotations to ensure that staff are gaining new skills in financial practices, enabling them to provide a more efficient service within the organisation. In addition, I am responsible to lead, coordinate and deliver financial training, workshops and presentations which align with CHHHS strategy, including cost centre manager training and support.
Demonstrated knowledge and skills in the conduct of internal audits and reviews
Both during my current role and across 13 years of experience as an Accountant, I have proven my ability to apply contemporary internal audit concepts based on professional standards within a Government environment. My current role as Team Leader Financial Accounting requires that a proper audit trail is maintained, the financial reporting information is in compliance with the AASB standards and the provision of advice upon incidents of non-compliance. One example of this used my extensive understanding of accounting concepts in providing advice to the financial management team on when to capitalise consultancy costs and when to expense it, during a project, in accordance with AASB138.
Having demonstrated my highly developed audit skills, I have conducted special investigations and I also manage a portfolio of assets worth $900 Million. This management includes identification of impairment of assets, revaluation processes and changes in accounting estimates. Recently in my current role, I have been successful in turning a $300 Million decrement into a $19 Million asset increment through the identification of anomalies, calculation of the revaluation process and amendment of accounting estimates. This has taken significant accounting knowledge and auditing ability to undertake successfully. In addition, I have streamlined functions and automated the reconciliation process within the revenue and accruals process, which has mitigated human error and resulted in stronger quality assurance.
Demonstrated skills and knowledge of the concepts and practices of strategic policy development, organisational analysis, and organisational improvement in meeting the regulatory requirements of a large, complex public sector organisation
Within my current role as Team Leader Financial Accounting, I have developed policy and procedure for CHHHS, and demonstrated my ability to contribute to organisational improvement and analysis. One such example is the review of the policy for patient trust and general trust in accordance with Department of Health. In addition, I am currently involved in developing this procedure for implementation across CHHHS, including consultation and liaison with senior management, further demonstrating my ability in this area.
My current role includes managing the month-end close process, including balance sheet reconciliations, management of the monthly revenue and expense accruals for provisions and associated month end compliance activities, such as comprehensive variance analysis against budget and other key performance indicators. These responsibilities as well as successfully ensuring that the general ledger is maintained, allows accurate statutory financial reports to be prepared in accordance with Australian Accounting standards.
In line with organisational improvement and efficiency, I recently undertook responsibility for streamlining a process where previously a team member from the revenue team was downloading an Excel spreadsheet with 60,000 line items and manually reviewing it. Understanding that this significantly increases the chance for human error, I streamlined the process, ensuring a happy staff member and significantly reduced errors.
High level of interpersonal skills, with the ability to negotiate and to establish and maintain effective communications and working relationships with a range of internal and external clients and stakeholders
In my current role, I have demonstrated my ability to negotiate and establish and maintain effective communications and productive working relationships both internally and externally. Recently, I have proven my negotiation abilities through agreeing on a new process of sharing information from another colleague; a successful outcome in challenging circumstances. Not only did I negotiate the new process, but have maintained and enhanced my professional relationship with my colleague as well. Also within my current role, I have experienced ongoing issues between two teams over responsibilities and job roles. Through the process of meetings between teams and the team leaders on a regular basis, I have negotiated a process to work together, provide ongoing improvement through job sharing between the team members, overcoming some of the outstanding issues as well.
On a regular basis, I communicate with clients and other stakeholder to provide professional advice, including a recent issue where an unreconciled transaction appeared on the bank statement which was difficult to identify. I initiated an investigation and through the audit trail, was able to trace the transaction back to the originator of the deposit. The deposit was from an ineligible, overseas visitor whose insurance company had paid on his behalf and had not tagged it sufficiently.
Demonstrated ability to develop and present strategic advice and to research, prepare and present complex reports in a diverse client service delivery environment
There are a number of my responsibilities which require my ability to prepare and present complex reports, including the preparation and submission of the quarterly tri-data reporting and annual whole of government reporting requirements. The tri-data reporting collects financial data at Whole of Government Financial Information Requirement (WOGFIR) and reports using a standard suite of accrual financial statements. To produce effective tri-data reporting, I ensure that quality data is provided, which is reliable, timely and relevant, including information on assets, liabilities, revenue and expenses. This reporting is sent on to the Queensland Treasury.
A recent example of my ability to present strategic advice and to research and prepare complex reports was my supervision of the production of the CHHHS 10 year Total Asset Management Plan, which we were able to successfully research, prepare and deliver to the Department of Health within a very short 2 week deadline. This extensive task required a strong understanding of the current economic environment and the ability to use the data and research to make recommendations on the future of the CHHHS service.
Ensure that supervisory and management practices are in line with quality human resource management practices, including employment and equity, anti-discrimination, occupational health and safety and ethical behaviour
I am aware and committed to current human resource management practices and have undertaken the recruitment and selection of most of my team members over the last year. I am responsible within my team to implement safe and ethical practices. On one occasion recently, I actually witnessed a team member accessing and printing emails from my work computer. This highly unethical behaviour, although it made me furious, was dealt with by me professionally and by discussing appropriate behaviour with the team member concerned. I have worked with and alongside a large diversity of people, all from different backgrounds and cultures and consistently advocate for fair and equitable treatment within the workplace, and indeed, life.
