Staff at the Huon Valley Council have expressed their desperation to have their voices heard in the appointment of their new General Manager, Jason Browne.
A one day strike has been considered however staff are fearful of any repercussions. The union has stepped in and is undertaking a confidential staff survey. It is not known if the results of the survey will be available in time before councillors decide whether to confirm Browne’s full time appointment as GM.
A motion at a recent Public Meeting asking the council to engage an external HR consultant to anonymously survey all council staff was rejected by councillors in a Closed Meeting of council 23 February 2022. This motion was put in place to allow council staff to have a voice in the flawed GM recruitment process following community awareness of staff discontent over the process.
Tasmanian Times have been advised some staff are actively seeking alternative employment. Staff morale, according to inside sources, is at an all time low after almost 6 months of having a conflicted GM on board.
In November 2021 some 1400 residents and ratepayers signed a petition over a three week period calling for the council to enable a public discussion of the process undertaken by the council for the appointment of the new General Manager, to consider the implications of the conflict(s) of interest involved, and to discuss what action(s) the council should undertake to rectify the situation.
Public Meeting 4 February at the Franklin Palais to discuss the flawed GM recruitment process.
At a Special Meeting on 4 January 2022, Huon Valley Council resolved to hold and record the public meeting on 4 February 2022 at the Huonville Town Hall, because the number of signatures was greater than 5% of the population. Following requests from the community for a larger venue the meeting was moved to the Franklin Palais to allow a slightly larger COVID restricted audience of 130 people to attend. Despite it being a ‘public’ meeting, the council took control of the proceedings and stipulated the format of the meeting. All motions had to be provided to the council 7 days prior and there were no motions allowed from the floor.
Questions from the floor were also not permitted and all councillors – apart from the Mayor – were prohibited from speaking at the public meeting.
Thirty five submissions were received from 27 members of the public, and on the night 14 motions were put forward with almost unanimous support of every motion in favour of the motions proceeding. Council was under no obligation to honour the motions.
Despite a motion requesting that all discussions around the Public Meeting, and the submissions and motions be in Open Council, Huon Valley Council ignored the wishes of the community and discussed everything in Closed Council on 23 February 2022.
In a media release 3 March 2022, Mayor Bec Enders states:
“At our last council meeting, we spent a great deal of time considering each motion that was carried and our goal was to provide responses to the motions and matters raised.
“Based on qualified advice from independent advisors, all the information we have been able to release we have made public. We have given the matter a great deal of time and attention and it is now time to draw a line in the sand on the recruitment process and focus on the probation review of the General Manager.
“I acknowledge that we may continue to receive questions from the community regarding the process, that is, even after we have responded comprehensively to the community concerns to date.
“However, in future, all those asking questions about the process will be referred to our dedicated page on our website where the new information will be uploaded.”
The only motion the council supported, in part, was a motion asking Huon Valley Council to contract an external consultant to conduct an Employee Satisfaction Survey of all the 160+ council staff with the confidential information to feed into the GM probation review 21 March 2022.
The motion asked that the survey include job satisfaction, employee confidence in the current GM, employee opinion on the flawed recruitment process and whether the GM recruitment process should start again.
The motion moved and unanimously agreed was:
THAT:
The Huon Valley Council engage an independent staff survey firm, (ideally mainland based), to conduct an Employee Satisfaction survey of ALL Council staff.
The survey to be completely anonymous with all the raw results to reside with the appointed market research firm.
The GM, Mayor, Deputy Mayor and Cr Newell are to be completely excluded from any involvement in the creation and administering of the survey.
The results of the survey are to be presented to all councillors confidentially in closed council and fed into the 6-month probation GM Review process, therefore the timing of the survey is urgent.
The survey to include job satisfaction, employee confidence in the current GM, employee opinion on the flawed recruitment process and whether the GM recruitment process should start again.
The Council’s HR Manager to liaise and coordinate this survey with the agency who will maintain confidentiality between the agency and the collection of any sealed envelopes.
No Councillors or staff are to open the sealed envelopes.
Huon Valley Council disregarded the intent and the requests of the motion, and instead advised that just the four directors (the heads of departments – Infrastructure and Planning, Finance, Community Services, Legal and Governance) along with the nine councillors were all that were allowed to participate.
Tasmanian Times has been confidentially advised that survey results from merely four directors and nine Councillors constitutes a very poor review of Jason Browne the General Manager, and of the flawed recruitment process.
Whether this survey information feeds into the decision at the Special Meeting of Closed Council 16 March 2022 and has any bearing on the decision of the council is yet to be seen.
There is some community concern that if the GM slips through the process with his appointment confirmed, his relationships with key leaders and staff within the Huon Valley Council will nevertheless be untenable.
Jason Browne GM Huon Valley Council pending his probation review 21 March 2022.
https://www.tasmaniantimes.com/2021/08/flawed-general-manager-recruitment-process/
https://tasmaniantimes.com/2021/10/is-this-the-end-of-enders/
Declaration of Interest
Since 2015 Geoffrey Swan has been actively involved in following the activities of the Huon Valley Council as a resident and ratepayer of the Huon Valley.
Swan has attended most of the HVC Ordinary Meetings of Council until COVID which has been via online streaming of the meetings. When contacting Council Swan delineates between being a ratepayer and being a reporter for Tasmanian Times. Swan made a submission to the Public Meeting and moved a series of motions as a Ratepayer, to include the motion for an Employee Satisfaction Survey
Bob Hawkins
March 15, 2022 at 19:47
It is interesting to note that the Huon Valley Council media release re the GM hiring process that was published in The Cygnet Classifieds last week did not reveal that the council was dealing with an issue that involved motions from a public meeting calling for the resignations of both the mayor and the GM.How convenient for council!
A question arises here: is The Classifieds contracted by council to print its often inadequate media releases (which sometimes include what I see as dishonesty by omission), or is it that The Classifieds takes it upon itself to parrot HVC releases without question?
In a time when the Huon Valley is dealing with an issue of great importance — that is, the integrity of the HVC — one would expect the well established local information sheet would apply, to its limit, the best standards of journalism, namely to present articles with as much information as is available to enable readers to draw their own conclusions.
In this case, the council’s media release tells much less than half the story, thereby leaving readers in almost total ignorance that something that I see as distasteful has occurred in the business of the council. It is not surprising that the council would wish to make it hard for the public out there to understand what is going on, but surely The Classifieds must see that it has a duty to its readership to provide as much information as possible.
Gerrya
March 16, 2022 at 06:35
There may be much more that’s impacting staff morale at the HVC over the past few months, for example the significant budget reductions in rural road maintenance.
Contact with staff regarding poor and unsafe conditions on gravel roads resulted in the timid response that ‘there is no money in the budget’. This is from employees who have in the past shown considerable pride in their work.
Anecdotally, it seems that workers have been instructed to scrape gravel off roads, thereby resulting in significant, unsafe, corrugations. Gravel is apparently taken away from rural roads, rather than added, to ensure that this Council meets a common duty of care to rate payers and visitors.