Our people

Workforce profile

At a glance

On 30 June 2022, 43 officers were employed on a full or part-time basis. We have embraced flexible working arrangements with all team members benefiting from the flexibility provided by telecommuting.

Work continued with our strategic workforce planning agenda. Workshops with our leadership team and a range of team members were held to collect and prioritise current and future organisational capabilities with the aim of developing a future-focused capability framework and strategic workforce plan.

A deliberate focus on culture, values, and health and wellbeing was our proactive response to COVID-19 impacts. Our transition back to the office was stop-start, though open and consistent communication and flexibility allowed us to manage through this uncertainty.

We continue to prioritise learning, with human-centred design and communication skills a priority to support our customer experience and continuous improvement agendas. Project management and change management training also served us well when undertaking these bodies of work.

Key data

41.25 Total FTE for EWOQ

* < 5 has been used to ensure privacy where there are less than 5 respondents in a category

† Women in leadership roles are considered those positions that are Senior Officer and equivalent and above

In detail

Flexible working arrangements

EWOQ has embraced the Public Service Commission’s flexible by design framework. Our team members access a range of flexible work arrangements, including:

• telecommuting
• compressed hours
• flexible start and finish times
• alternative place of work
• part-time arrangements.

We are committed to an agile and flexible workforce, and our flexible working arrangements help support the wellbeing, productivity and performance of employees. These qualities are key to creating an innovative and diverse workforce, capable of responsive service delivery.

A continued focus on team building has occurred across 2021-22 to address the impact of ongoing and impromptu working from home requirements. Resources to support team members and leaders adapt to remote working and its impact on teams has been made available and a number of leaders have attended sessions about mental health, psychological safety and leading cultures with a focus on hybrid work environments.

All team members are benefiting from the flexibility available through telecommuting, with the majority working at least 3 days per week in the office.

Leadership development

During 2021-22, our leadership team undertook a number of development activities that resulted in outcomes directly related to our focus on culture and strategy. This included broader involvement and responsibility in strategic and workforce planning; participation in ombudsman-led innovation and ideation sessions as a way of addressing key areas identified from our employee opinion survey results; budgeting and finance; and recruitment.

Work identifying critical successors continued and knowledge management was prioritised to ensure ongoing transfer of knowledge through coaching and mentoring.

Early retirement, redundancy and retrenchment

No redundancy, early retirement or retrenchment packages were paid during the period.

Employee relations

The EWOQ consultative committee co-chaired with Together Union continued to facilitate consultation around matters such as workload management, organisational change and restructuring, training and work/life balance.

Learning and development

We are committed to developing our people to ensure our services are delivered efficiently and effectively.

All team members are encouraged to develop their skills and knowledge through on-the-job training and self- directed learning.

During 2021-22, the impacts of working from home then returning to the office provided new challenges to our learning and development needs and delivery methods. We provided technical, compliance, role- specific and professional development activities on a range of topics, including:

• coaching and mentoring for our leadership team
• human-centred design and customer experience
• business process mapping and automation
• data reporting and interpretation
• managing virtual teams and COVID-related compliance.

Performance management framework

Our performance management framework provides our employees with the opportunity to fulfil their potential through an understanding of expectations, a focus on continuous improvement and feedback and their development for current and future needs. Through this, we can deliver the best possible outcomes for our customers, community and stakeholders. The framework aims to develop personal leadership, vision, innovation, goals and achievements that support our strategic plan and business plans.

Further enhancement to our online performance and development plan saw the introduction of a performance self-assessment as well as ongoing alignment and consistency of our performance objectives and measures of success. Active participation and engagement with our monthly one-on-one process continued and further alignment of this process with our culture and values focus is underway.

Workforce diversity

EWOQ is committed to diversity of thought, experience, perspective and gender. Some of our initiatives include unconscious bias, diversity and inclusion training.

In 2021-22, we improved our diversity and inclusion capability by:

• completing the inaugural Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander traineeship based in our Cairns office and partnership with an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander-owned group training organisation through this initiative
• providing team members with access to an Employee Assistance Program with specialist support  for minority groups
• reflecting on and embedding actions from our second Reconciliation Action Plan, the Innovate RAP
• outreach and engagement to strengthen and grow our networks and partnerships within the communities we serve
• reviewing our human rights, discrimination, and inclusion and diversity support material on our  intranet.

Anti-discrimination results from the Working for Queensland employee opinion survey are encouraging, with an 85% positive response to this factor. This result is 20 centiles higher than the Queensland public sector overall rate. With the development of a Diversity and Inclusion Plan in 2022-23, we hope to make further improvements in this area.

Workplace health and safety

The mental and physical wellbeing of our team is of the utmost importance and has proven particularly critical to allow our successful navigation through COVID-19.

Resilience, team support, open communication of decision-making and hygiene have been high on the agenda throughout the year. Strategies to minimise risk of exposure and spread of COVID-19 have been actioned

across our executive management group, leadership team, and workplace health and safety committee.

Our workplace health and safety committee meet every 3 months and, in addition to emergent COVID-19 issues, have focused on:

• continuing our wellness program, ensuring employees have access to flu vaccinations, nutritional information, mental health and wellbeing seminars, domestic and family violence programs, and corporate memberships for health insurance and fitness centres
• implementing and encouraging the BeUpstanding program, with the aim to encourage movement throughout the work day given a sedentary lifestyle can increase health risks
• remote worker safety with the exploration of apps and a process to ensure check-ins and location finding for those undertaking travel.

The committee also reviewed workplace health and safety policies and procedures to support legislative compliance.

Employee achievement and recognition program

During 2021-22, we relaunched our employee achievement and recognition program called the EWOQ All Stars.

An initiative of the celebration of success working group, the awards were updated to cover the following categories and timeframes.

• All Star Award – a bi-annual award recognising a team member for their overall contribution, ongoing commitment and demonstration of our values
• Bright Star Award – a quarterly award for innovation, leadership, enthusiasm and problem solving
• Constellation Award – a quarterly award recognising a high performing team.

There are also two informal awards: the Shining Star Award, for going above and beyond; and the Rock Star Award, which celebrates team members making a difference, paying it forward or simply making the team laugh.

See the official copy of the 2021-22 annual report, as tabled in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, on the Queensland Parliament's tabled papers website.