Case studies
Tanya Cambey's story
Tanya Cambey started with WorkCover Queensland as a claims assessor in the Operations division. She completed a graduate certificate in professional legal studies, which Tanya believes has helped her career progress with WorkCover. ‘Since completing the graduate certificate, I have been able to lead and manage teams in our claims determination centre and I am now a customer relations manager in our Brisbane North CSC.’
Tanya is currently participating in a management development training program, which she believes will further enhance her skills as an effective manager.
We invest in our people by developing their personal and professional skills, so that they can perform to the best of their ability and provide excellent service to our customers.
Engaged people
At WorkCover we believe that in order to succeed in caring for our customers, we must also take care of our own people.
Our people are critical to the success of our business. We strive to ensure that our people are focussed on our goals, are committed to excellence, and they have the skills, knowledge, resources, and support to successfully deliver excellent service to our customers.
Our workforce
WorkCover Queensland currently employs 840 people in metropolitan and regional Queensland, 72% of these are female. We have 77 permanent part-time people, which represents 9% of our workforce.
Our annual turnover rate is 14.5% compared with 13.1% in the previous year. The average number of service years is 6.36 years. Our permanent retention rate is 82.4% and our permanent separation rate is 19.3%. Over 44% of our workforce is in our Customer Services division.
Engaged, not just satisfied
This year, WorkCover Queensland moved to an employee engagement platform and conducted its first employee engagement survey.
Employee engagement differs from employee satisfaction, in that it measures the connection an employee has to the organisation and its objectives. An engaged employee is more productive and loyal and more likely to stay with an organisation.
89% of our people responded to the online survey and we compare favourably to both Australian and Queensland workforces, on an overall profile. This score is particularly positive for a first time engagement survey within an organisation and gives us a strong base to build strong engagement.
We have embarked on a program to increase employee engagement. Using the survey results and feedback from our people, we have made plans for our future. Employee engagement is one of our corporate goals and we remain committed to improving the engagement of all our people. This not only benefits all our people, but improves the productivity of the organisation as a whole and the services we provide to our customers.
Our next engagement survey will be conducted in early 2010.
We’ve got our people covered
In our industry, we know first hand the importance of providing a safe work environment—and we have our people covered.
This year, we finalised our new workplace health and safety strategy, with a strong focus on injury prevention. Our managers were made more accountable and received refresher training and additional tools to support a safe workplace.
Our injury prevention and management committee was formed to monitor our workplace health and safety performance and provide executive management with strategic recommendations. We have a live database for recording all health and safety incidents, allowing us to identify potential issues and implement solutions in a timelier manner. We also introduced toolbox talks—monthly themed safety awareness messages that target potential risk areas. These strategies have allowed us to reduce our own workers’ compensation claims by 13%. In 2009–2010, we aim to continue this downward trend of claims and ensure our people are safe at work.
Commitment to our people
We are dedicated to developing our people both personally and professionally, to ensure they have the skills to deliver outstanding service in their role.
We continued to offer study assistance to give our people the opportunity to further their education. We provide financial and leave assistance options from graduate diplomas to masters programs and professional registration. This year, 25 people successfully graduated, with 56 people currently studying—this means we assisted over 8% of our people with career development through tertiary education.
We want to support our people to become leaders and advance their career internally. Our ‘link’ management contact program has been very successful in leadership coaching and networking, giving our senior managers opportunity to share strategies and discuss organisation-wide issues.
Our cross divisional leadership development program ‘insight’ has also been very successful. This program helps increase knowledge of our different business areas, as well as the requirements and expectations of being a manager. It prepares and supports new managers and is targeted at individuals who demonstrate potential, aptitude, and a keen interest in a management career with WorkCover Queensland.
Support to be happy and healthy
We want our people to be happy and healthy, so they can perform to the best of their ability. This year, we reviewed our wellness strategy to improve the outcomes and benefits for our people.
We want to make sure we are giving our people the maximum opportunity to be healthy, therefore we introduced a new staff wellness program—82% of our people have taken a step to becoming fitter and healthier. We also provided 295 of our people with free flu vaccinations.
We recognise the need to provide support for people experiencing personal or work-related problems. Through our employee assistance program, our people have the opportunity to discuss any personal or work-related concerns with a professional counsellor.
We know there is more to life than work—that is why we provide a good work life balance. We offer flexible working arrangements, including banked time and purchased leave.
Commitment to industrial relations
The WorkCover Employing Office (WEO) reached agreement with the Queensland Public Sector Union (QPSU) on the terms of a new Enterprise Bargaining Agreement this year.
Both the WEO and the QPSU approached the negotiations process with the shared intention of creating an agreement that would provide benefit to all our people as well as to support the achievement of business objectives and organisational sustainability.
Once agreement in principle was reached with the QPSU, the terms of the proposed agreement were submitted for acceptance by the award based staff of the WEO. Approximately 82% of eligible employees then voted on the proposed agreement. Of those employees that voted, 99% supported the terms of that proposed agreement.
The agreement was ratified by the Industrial Relations Commission on 5 December 2008, and backdated to be effective from 1 October 2008 for three years.