The City of Ballarat is hoping to undertake a cultural shift following an independent review which highlighted significant problems within council.
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The culture change program, called The Way Forward, comes after a governance and culture review, conducted by Susan Halliday, was made public in January.
The program recently started with a series of workshops and engagement sessions with council staff to outline ideas and suggestions about how council can move forward as an organisation.
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Also included in program is a workforce plan to look at issues such as resourcing, training and gender balance.
City of Ballarat chief executive Evan King said he hoped the program would also help council earn back the community's trust.
"[The governance and culture review] identified concerns around leadership, it identified concerns around training, it identified concerns around a proper complaints system and concerns around an environment that made people feel safe in being able to raise complaints and knowing that they would be confidential and that they would be addressed," he said.
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"[The Way Forward] is about what we do to create an employer of choice, how do we create an organisation that people want to be part of, that are proud to be part of and that attracts people to want to come and work here, and one the community respects as well?"
Through the program, council has sought external consultation while also attempting to look inwards and install a series of checks and balances to gauge council's performance in the long term.
"If you take the leadership training, we've got someone in to help with the leadership training. Going to the organisation and getting feedback, we're going to do that ourselves because we want to create an environment where people feel safe to be able to talk about what are the ways of addressing these concerns," Mr King said.
"We're looking at putting in place regular staff surveys to gauge how we're going along this journey and how the culture is changing."
Mr King said it was important to have a fresh set of eyes on council during the program, but also to use the knowledge and experience of longer-term employees in the process.
"We have a completely new management team, new executive, new CEO, so it is a new set of fresh eyes coming into the organisation and working with the organisation to create the program and deliver it," he said.
"It's imperative for us, to deliver for the community, we need to become a high-performing organisation with a really good, healthy culture."
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