Our people

With continued improvements in technology enabling chat and video conferencing, we saw a further expansion of our working from home arrangements prior to COVID-19.

Since the end of March, our entire workforce across our three locations have successfully worked remotely.

Previously, our dispute resolution team used their time working from home to review casework and undertake professional development, however, our complete range of services are now able to be delivered remotely.

After a successful period of transition and knowledge transfer, two phased retirement arrangements have resulted in the team members leaving EWOQ.

We continue to support part-time arrangements and to champion additional flexible working arrangements such as condensed hours, purchased leave and paid maternity leave. The majority of our workforce benefit from accessing accrued time, and this arrangement has continued during our period of working remotely.

Leadership development included formal training in performance planning, people management and reasonable management action in 2019-2020.

Opportunities for higher duties has provided some team members the opportunity to take on leadership roles and for EWOQ to ensure succession plans are actioned.

Our leadership team took part in a strategy planning workshop and mapped our strategic activities to 2023.

They also unpacked our employee opinion survey results, determined priority actions and examined our measures of success.

The State Government Entities Certified Agreement (the Core Agreement) was certified by the Queensland Industrial Relations Commission on 9 June 2020.

We are committed to developing our people to ensure our services are delivered efficiently and effectively. All team members are encouraged to learn and develop their skills and knowledge through on-the-job training and self-directed learning.

During 2019-2020, our team progressed learning and development needs to meet performance objectives identified through the performance development framework. We provided technical, compliance and role-specific training and professional development activities on a range of topics, including:

• a training course in managing unreasonable conduct
• an online workshop about Aboriginal cultural awareness and understanding
• a two-day team conference themed ‘Challenge Yourself’.

We launched an online induction program to provide our new team members insight and information they can navigate at their own pace as part of the onboarding process.

EWOQ encourages and supports our people to grow and develop by providing a safe, collaborative yet challenging environment. We have continued to enhance capability and skill development through a new learning and development framework and a performance development system which incorporates induction, probation and regular routine monthly one-on-one meetings.

We have also developed a coaching framework which will enhance our leaders’ ability to support and mentor their team members, along with embedding a coaching culture within EWOQ.

We respect and support diversity and inclusion in the workplace and the community we serve. We continue to work with our team to ensure they interact respectfully and competently with people from all cultural backgrounds and are proud to be delivering our second Reconciliation Action Plan, our Innovate RAP.

We are an Equal Employment Opportunity employer and aim to employ a workforce more representative of the wider community.

During 2019-2020 we reviewed our applicant information and recruitment practices to ensure these were not barriers to our inclusion agenda.

We are proud of our results in the Working for Queensland employee opinion survey, which indicated an 82 per cent positive response to the anti-discrimination factor, a result 17 centiles higher than the Queensland public sector overall rate, and we will continue to strive to improve on this measure.

The mental and physical wellbeing of our team is of the utmost importance at EWOQ, and we strived to maintain our workplace health and safety standards during the COVID-19 period, along with a healthy work-life blend.

Our new intranet provided an opportunity to enhance our safety and wellbeing resources, and a health and wellbeing calendar endorsed by our Workplace Health and Safety Committee will ensure a continued focus on specific initiatives, such as ergonomics and mentally healthy workplaces, into the future.

During 2019-2020, we recognised and celebrated the achievements of our team members with our employee achievement and recognition program called the EWOQ All Stars.

An initiative of the Celebration of Success working group, the awards cover several categories and timeframes:

• All Star Award – a bi-annual award recognising a team member for their overall contribution, ongoing commitment and demonstration of the EWOQ values
• Bright Star Award – a quarterly award for innovation, leadership, enthusiasm and problem solving
• Rising Star Award – a quarterly award for improvement and development of ideas and actions.

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.