Council a Strong Performer in Benchmarking Report

An independent assessment of Coffs Harbour City Council’s performance as an organisation – when benchmarked against 87 other local authorities in Australia and New Zealand – concludes that the workforce is diverse and highly engaged with the delivery of a varied range of services to the community.

The Australasian LG Performance Excellence Program was developed by PwC Australia and LG Professionals NSW to provide a tool against which individual councils can measure their performance. Specifically, it measures and provides insights into workforce, finance, operations, service delivery, corporate leadership and asset management. This latest report relates to the financial year 2019/2020.

“I’m glad to say that many of the indicators provide positive results for Coffs Harbour City Council, especially in light of the nature and breadth of our services and operations,” said Steve McGrath, Council’s General Manager.

“In particular, the data on our workforce gives us the opportunity to take a holistic view of our staff and their experience at Council.

“The overriding message from the survey is that there is a positive environment at Council and one that provides a solid platform to ensure high levels of engagement with a diverse workforce.”

Highlights include:

Far fewer work days lost to injury – 64 compared to an average of 86. This is evidence of our proactive approach to injury management and a strong focus on early intervention and return to work. The organisation also spends nearly 50% more on training staff than comparable councils. Coffs Harbour City Council is way ahead of the NSW average on the promotion of female staff and beyond with a 3025% higher performance than the benchmark. This indicates success in growing career opportunities for females compared to other NSW councils and ensuring emerging female leaders are able to embrace these opportunities. Council bucks the trend of numbers of staff employed in Customer Service roles with a much higher figure than the average. This is due to investment in a customer service model which aims to resolve 80% of customer queries at first contact. A high spend on waste management compared to other councils is the result of diverting extremely high rates of waste away from landfill. Coffs Harbour City Council also has a much higher spend on parks, gardens and sporting grounds than the NSW median. But a number of factors contribute to our higher operating expense per resident including the provision of world class sporting facilities at the C.ex Coffs International Stadium and surrounding Coffs Coast Sport and Leisure Park precinct and a greater number of hectares requiring maintenance than other participating councils.