City of Swan commended for workplace program

Published on 24 June 2019

City of Swan and the Shire of East Pilbara have been commended at the recent National Awards for Local Government, for their joint project Resource Sharing in the Resources Capital.

The innovative project, which was awarded in the Attracting and Retaining Tomorrow's Workforce category, involves a human resource sharing agreement in which young professional engineers from the City undertake a five month secondment in Western Australia's North-West.

This project is the first of its kind in Australia.

It came about following discussions between the local governments, in which they both recognised the difficulty in attracting young professionals into the local government sector and in particular, attracting young engineers to regional and rural local governments within WA.

In this working agreement between the City and the Shire, the Shire covers wages and provides housing for the seconded City employees, and allows them to participate in major regional projects, gaining skills and experience to bring back to the City. 

The agreement is already acting to strengthen and enhance both career development and regional capacity-building between the local government authorities. 

Resource Sharing in the Resources Capital makes the most of the City’s large workforce and also the unique challenges of the East Pilbara’s geography, isolation and massive-scale projects.

The flow-on benefits of this agreement include both local governments developing a stronger workforce, attracting young professionals and females to regional areas and providing diverse opportunities for training and retention.

By sharing resources across the local government sector, City ratepayers and community members receive a higher quality of expertise at a lower cost, and employees find new opportunities to expand their horizons and to continue to develop their skills in a local government career.

You can find out more about the 2019 National Awards for Local Government online.