Council Insights Blog

Tailored specifically for Australian councils, we share relevant insights and expert tips on enhancing community engagement, driving efficiency, and leading with innovation.

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The Trust Deficit: Why Councils Must Treat Trust Like a Resource

The reality councils live with everyday For most residents, their opinion of local government isn’t glowing. They notice the bin missed at collection, the pothole unfilled, or the consultation that...

It's Not the Coffee, It's The Queue: Why Perception Matters

The coffee sale tells you something. But not everything. Picture this: You stop at the same café you’ve loved for years. The flat white still tastes great, but lately the line snakes out the door and...

Understanding Your Community: 5 Things Every Council Should Know

Understanding your community is more than just good governance - it’s the foundation of trust, inclusion and effective service delivery. And yet, many councils rely heavily on KPIs, submissions, and...

A Smarter Approach to Digital Transformation in Councils

Let’s be real - working in local government isn’t easy. You’re constantly juggling competing priorities, from compliance and governance obligations to delivering essential services for your...

How to build a case for change in local government

If you’ve ever tried to introduce a new technology solution in local government, you know the challenge: securing executive-level buy-in. While you and your team recognise the potential of new...

Growing community trust through continuous feedback cycles

If you’re in local government, you already know that the trust of your community is everything. It’s the foundation for building positive relationships. But when trust is eroded, it can feel like...

Simplifying the journey to actionable insights

Are you tired of spending countless hours making sense of survey data? You’re not alone. Councils across Australia work hard to seek and gather feedback from their employees and community, but for...

Laying strong foundations for council success

Getting a clear picture of where your council is at is essential. Only with this baseline can you prioritise effectively, knowing exactly where to focus your efforts to guide the development of your...

The art of bringing your people on the journey

How engaged are your people in your journey of continuous improvement? The irony is that all too often employees disengage from the engagement process. They suffer from ‘survey fatigue’ when insights...

Unblocking bottlenecks by helping turn insights into action

As an HR, P&C, or OD leader in Council, you’re tasked with the critical role of creating a culture that views the big rock challenges as opportunities. A culture that enables Council to find a way to...

Closing the insights gap for council's outdoor workers

Your employee engagement survey results are in! But the participation rate of your outdoor workforce is in stark contrast to office-based teams. So you’re left with no choice but to make decisions...

Unlocking Key Trends: What Councils are saying and why it matters

Local government is complex and constantly evolving. When you’re busy navigating tight resources, changing community needs, and workforce challenges day in day out, it can be hard finding time to...

Open your eyes to the blind spots

As a leader you know your council inside out, right? You're connected to your people, and confident you know where the biggest opportunities, risks and challenges lie. You know exactly what your...

Unlocking the art of doing more with less: A guide for Councils

Anyone working in local government will be familiar with this conundrum: service delivery expectations from the community and legislative and reporting requirements are both on the rise. But funding...

Dealing with Community Incivility: A Growing Concern for Councils

Absolutely no one should have to deal with death threats, physical abuse or verbal harassment when they come to work. And yet increasingly this sort of behaviour is becoming ‘part of the job’ for...

When cultures are more like cults - and how to avoid it!

Healthy organisational cultures are often characterised by a common sense of purpose and shared values. However, most of us know a story or two of company cultures that go beyond this, and the...

Unleashing the power of AI for faster survey results and actions

After 12 months of rigorous research and testing, AskYourTeam is pleased to announce a significant product enhancement. It allows customers to generate top line user friendly analysis of their survey...

Essential Project Management Strategies for Australian Councils

Everybody loves getting their teeth into a good project, particularly when there is hope of transforming an area of the business. But what happens when it goes wrong? In the dynamic world of project...

Enhancing Workplace Mental Health Post-COVID: A Guide for Employers

As New Zealand emerges from the global pandemic, it’s time to reflect on the immense impact that COVID-19 has had on our collective mental health and wellbeing. Workers are more stressed now than...

Psychological safety in the workplace

Psychological safety is a critical component of effective team dynamics and innovation, particularly within Australian councils where the pressures of public service and community expectations...

Turning feedback into action

In this article, we dive into the power of feedback and its pivotal role in shaping the future of council services. Whether it’s enhancing community satisfaction, improving team dynamics, or...

Success through meaningful involvement

Diversity and inclusion drives brighter and better business. I’m sure you know that and are familiar with the terms demographic diversity and cognitive diversity. Demographic diversity gets the most...

Survey fatigue: triggers and tips on how to avoid it

Survey fatigue. Not a problem…We have probably all heard of it and some of us have experienced it but with a bit of thought it can be relatively easily avoided. Before we get into how, let’s think...

Four tips to secure top survey uptake

As the ‘highly effective’ Stephen R. Covey said: “Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” Employee feedback is the pure gold that can enhance...

The Three Cs for creating a culture of involvement in your workplace

It has become the number one jargon buzzword in business over the past five years. “Culture”. It gets used a lot, but seldom explained. “Good workplace cultures” get celebrated, “bad workplace...

The Impact of “Big Data” on HR

Big data is not a new paradigm. It has been promulgated since Roger Mougalas of O’Reilly Media coined the term in 2005. The 14 years since its inception has seen the growth in storage data worldwide,...

Three golden rules for effective change management in councils

Councils are in the privileged position of making a positive impact on the daily lives of your community. But it’s a tough gig. Topline revenues are constrained and linked to planning cycles and...

Workplace culture starts with involvement

It’s a human truth that we operate best in groups - in fact one of our most fundamental human instincts is the desire to cooperate and work together. Our most well organised and effective groups are...

6 tips to spark agile collaboration in your team

In today's dynamic work environment, fostering collaboration within teams is not just beneficial; it's essential. Collaboration pushes team members to excel, provides valuable insights, aids in...

Checking the pulse

Digital disruption is reshaping the HR landscape, creating new opportunities for those organisations that are ready to transform. The most exciting are new digital HR tools that extend the influence...

Are you implementing a culture of empowerment in your organisation?

Empowerment in any workplace starts with leadership. It has to because at its essence, empowerment is a transfer of power from a leader in authority to someone lower down in the organisation chart....

How to make continuous performance management work?

For many decades in HR, performance management has been centred around annual performance appraisals. These occurred at both the individual level (the dreaded annual review), and the company level...

The great reset

A little over two years ago we plunged into lockdown due to the appearance of COVID-19. Overnight our working world changed. Bustling office buildings became like ghost towns, complete with...

Is financial stress taking its toll on organisational productivity?

Today is the World Day for Safety and Health at Work. While it is primarily focused on preventing workplace accidents, it’s worth reflecting on how the concept of workplace health and safety has...

It’s time for leadership to evolve

If there is one universal truth about leadership, it’s that there is no single way of doing it right. To be authentic, leaders must be themselves and, as we know, everyone is different. However, in...

Why self-awareness matters

Self-awareness. As I write this, I think I can hear collective sighs. That old chestnut, I hear the detractors say. What about it? And there in lies the problem. It’s one nut leaders across our most...

Beware of willful blindness

Ask around your colleagues at work - if you saw something wrong going on in the street, would you try to intervene, speak out, call the police? In my experience, just about everyone says yes they...

Leading effective and human-centred change management

2020 showed us that business is everything but predictable. The social and economic disruption of the past year is reflected in the new vocabulary we use. Speaking about a business planning a ‘pivot’...

Are wellbeing and employee productivity mutually exclusive?

As Sir Richard Branson famously said, “Train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so they don’t want to.” That’s the kind of mindset that leaders and business owners must give...

Leveraging technology to enhance a human workforce

While historically it has been manufacturing and low-skilled labour roles that have felt the biggest impact from technological revolutions, today barely any role remains unaffected by its influence....

Keeping the Human in HR

The rapidly evolving digital world is bringing changes to the landscape of the HR workplace. These are exciting times. But, with the excitement we should exercise caution and not underestimate the...

Anonymity key to overcoming unconscious bias

Diversity and inclusion are priorities for every HR pro today, but too often we shy away from conversations about the biggest barrier to creating more inclusive organisations -unconscious bias. This...

Ignore poor performance at your peril

Managing poor performance is one of the most challenging aspects of leadership. It requires tactful conversations that meet business needs, preserve employee dignity and wellbeing, and stay on the...

Organisational trust – does it matter and should leaders care?

Organisational trust. It can take years to build and only moments to erode. But it’s absolutely critical to business success, given the close alignment between trust and performance. The COVID-era...

Enhancing employee experience following 'The Great Resignation'

The global pandemic has irrevocably altered the landscape of the labour market, giving rise to phenomena such as the "Great Resignation". As we continue to navigate this new terrain, the importance...

Why employee experience is fundamental to recruitment success

Despite the recent uplift in Australia’s unemployment rate, the country’s labour market remains tight with record-level job vacancy numbers keeping workers very much in the driver’s seat. Employers...

Is your business suffering from high employee churn?

Businesses are competing like never before in the war for talent. The cost of recruitment is huge, particularly if using a recruitment service, and of course there’s all the internal “costs” such as...

Leadership trust - the glue that will make your employees stick around

Recruitment and retention is taking a disproportionate amount of bandwidth as organisations struggle to fill roles, and deal with the downstream impact of the pandemic, government lockdowns, and two...

Tips for employers faced with cost of living remuneration expectations

If you’ve been inside a supermarket lately, or to a petrol station, you’ll know that the cost of living is rising rapidly. The pandemic, supply chain issues, interest rate rises, and the war in...

Regular conversations with your people

Do you remember what it’s like to land a new job? The interview process, the hope, the anticipation? You turn up on ‘Day One’, bright eyed and bushy tailed and ready. Ready to make a difference,...

The power of purpose in council operations

In today’s dynamic work environment, understanding and communicating your council's purpose is more crucial than ever. KPMG’s research underlines the significance of purpose in crafting an...

Addressing new hire performance - a must do for every leader

Most of us avoid conflict and difficult situations like the plague. Maybe it’s because we don’t know how to broach the subject, or haven’t had the training. Maybe we can’t separate the person from...

Solve your retention issues early

Labour market woes are set to plague employers for the foreseeable future. Unemployment is expected to remain close to record lows, an EMA survey says that 90% of businesses are struggling to find...

Psychological Safe Workplace: Strategies for Retention

Welcome to our exploration of psychological safety in the workplace - a critical factor in employee retention and overall organisational health. In today’s fast-paced work environment, especially...

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