Annual Report 2005 - Part 3
Enhance our people capability
To meet the challenges of delivering our services to the community, we need technically competent people who are guided and supported by strong leaders.
Capable senior managers and team leaders
For us to adapt and change to meet future business outcomes, our people need strong and credible leadership. Over the past three years, we have been running leadership development programmes for our team leaders and managers. These programmes aim to grow the skills our leaders need to achieve our outcomes. During 2004-05, we continued to enhance our leadership through a wide range of opportunities, as detailed below.
- Team leader development programme - we completed a review of our programme this year, and identified what we can do to help provide specific development experience for new and acting team leaders as part of the team leader induction.
- Leadership programme - as at 30 June 2005, 190 of our more senior managers have been through our core leadership programme.
- Management forums - three half-day national management forums were held this year, covering key issues such as diversity, leadership expectations, and the State Services Development Goals.
- Public sector Senior Management and Leadership Development strategy
- Australia New Zealand School of Government - four senior managers are currently undertaking the Executive Master of Public Administration programme. We also sent a senior manager on the Executive Fellows Programme and will do this again next year.
- Leadership Development Centre - at 30 June 2005, approximately 160 managers were listed with the centre and they are eligible to use their services.
- Public Sector Training Organisation - staff have completed a range of unit standard-based qualifications including: Administration of Revenue Law, Business Administration and Computing, and Call Centre certificates and diplomas. We have 47 Modern Apprentices and 75 workplace assessors registered and supported by the Public Sector Training Organisation.
- Executive Leadership Programme - we currently have two managers taking part in this executive programme.
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Developing our leaders  Commissioner David Butler (centre) congratulates Raju Budhia and Heather Beehre on their leadership awards. The Inland Revenue award was established in 2002 to provide financial support to managers and team leaders who wanted learning and development opportunities outside the scope of normal developmental budgets. Raju used his award funding to attend the Advanced Management Programme at Mt Eliza Business School, Melbourne. Heather is undertaking a diploma in coaching skills through a distance learning programme from the Leading Edge Foundation. "The award is great - such a real boost. I never imagined, when I started working here, that I'd have such a long career ahead of me at Inland Revenue; but there have been lots of different opportunities for me along the way," says Heather. Other leadership opportunities include a team leader development programme, which introduces Inland Revenue's leadership expectations, creates a common management language across the whole organisation and ensures our frontline managers are operating from an even playing field of leadership and people management skills. We also offer a similar course for managers. |
Our people
Every year we monitor a range of issues that relate to our people. This year's annual climate survey was our fourth and focused on measuring our progress on:
- the values supporting our Charter
- commitment to our strategic direction
- our working environment.
This year, we had a high response rate with 82% of our people completing the survey, an increase of 24% on our first survey in 2001. This also shows the increased level of confidence our people have about their relationship with Inland Revenue.
Overall, there was an increase in all areas surveyed and some key results include:
- The level of support for our strategic direction increased significantly to 72%, after remaining stable between 2001 and 2003. This level of support puts us in the top 5% of the New Zealand private and public sector organisations surveyed.
- People are 5% more positive about their relationship with the organisation and 15% more positive since we started the survey in 2001.
The improvement in our leadership rating, support for investment in technical skills development and diversity shows that our focus on leadership and other development activities are moving us in a positive direction.
Relationships with unions who represent our staff
Inland Revenue has strong, successful relationships with two major unions that represent nearly 70% of our staff.
The strength of the Inland Revenue - Public Service Association (PSA) relationship (covering approximately 2,700 staff) is reflected in our Partnership Agreement, introduced in 2004. Considerable benefits continue to arise for us and PSA members as a result of their collective participation in a wide range of organisational initiatives and projects (for example, change management implications following from the introduction of our new imaging technology) and new government initiatives (such as Working for Families).
Inland Revenue and Taxpro also have a collective agreement which covers nearly 700 staff. We have a strong relationship with Taxpro which is reflected in the Inland Revenue-Taxpro Heads of Agreement and the constructive and positive approach adopted by both parties in the various organisational initiatives and projects that we are involved in together.
Setting standards for our staff - Code of Conduct
Our Code of Conduct provides a solid framework and a set of rules to use when exercising common sense judgements in our day-to-day work. It sets out the responsibilities and behaviours we expect of our people, including the high standards of integrity and behaviour. Our code builds on the minimum requirements set out in the State Services Commission's Public Service Code of Conduct.
We have been reviewing our Code of Conduct, which is updated every three to four years, and it will be delivered with appropriate training to all of our staff in the second quarter of the 2005-06 year.
Setting standards for our staff - performance management
During the year, we continued to focus on our performance management system. This included:
- coaching for reporting officers and staff
- using enhanced support tools
- implementing a review process for managing disagreements promptly.
Ensuring a healthy and safe workplace
This year we reviewed our health and safety systems and introduced our new Health and Safety Policy in April 2005.
In a recent health and safety audit in Manukau Service Centre, we attained a secondary accreditation in the ACC Partnership Programme. This accreditation provides a levy discount on Inland Revenue's ACC levy, which recognises we have effective injury prevention initiatives.
Building our capability
As at 30 June 2005, we had 4,762 employees 1 based in 22 sites in 17 different towns and cities.
Attracting, motivating and retaining good people
Over the last three years, we have moved to an annual review of our salary ranges with reference to the salary rates paid by other public sector organisations. This influences our ability to recruit and retain the people we need to achieve our desired future.
Figure 37 - Staff turnover
Our turnover at 10.2% has remained steady over the past five years, with higher turnover in Auckland and Wellington, reflecting the competitive labour markets in these centres. Although some business areas have very low rates of turnover, for example Policy Advice (5%), the Business Development and Systems business group (5%), and Field Delivery (8%), other areas have higher than average rates, including call centres (20%), Child Support (18%) and the People, Capabilities and Governance business group (13%).
Our average length of service is 10.3 years, but this varies across Inland Revenue. Call centres have an average length of service of 3.9 years, compared to Field Delivery which has an average of 12.7 years.
Figure 38 - Length of service
For a number of years we have offered a superannuation scheme to all employees. Following the introduction of a new superannuation scheme for public servants, the State Sector Retirement Savings Scheme, we have now closed off the Inland Revenue Scheme to new entrants and supported the transition of members to the new scheme.
Capability and learning
New Zealand's business environment is becoming more complex. Therefore, to deliver our services to taxpayers and other customers, we need to have high levels of technical competency to address emerging compliance issues. In some cases, this means that we need to recruit and retrain people with the right qualifications and technical skills.
During the year, we worked across two broad areas in developing our technical competencies and skills. These areas were: enhancing the structures that support our development work, and our ongoing training to enhance the skills and knowledge of our people.
Support structures
During the year, we undertook a number of initiatives to enhance the support structures needed to improve our technical capability. Part of this included the commencement of work to develop a three- to five-year capability and learning strategy. Other initiatives included:
- strengthening our human resource framework by creating a number of new positions as well as making a number of new senior appointments, including a new Deputy Commissioner People, Capabilities and Governance
- realigning our planning and finance functions, which involved merging two separate business units (Planning, Finance and Monitoring with Corporate Finance). This new group will increase our capability to support current and future-focused planning and finance work internally and externally.
Training
We work across a wide range of tax and social policy areas that require us to understand legislation and other supporting internal standards, such as technical standards and best practice statements. During the year we conducted a considerable amount of technical training, ranging from internal paper-based courses, through to tertiary level courses undertaken at various institutions.
The success of these training programmes is reflected in the incremental improvements made in the level of our people's technical competencies. We measure the change in the tax and social policy technical competency rating of our people every six months. Figure 39 shows the measurement of the average gains in the levels of their technical competency from June 2001 to June 2005.
Figure 39 - Annual gain achieved in staff competency
During the year, we also:
- built our workplace assessment infrastructure to enable all our staff to turn their role competencies into unit standards recognised by the New Zealand Qualifications Authority.
- continued work on forming a relationship with a New Zealand university to offer our staff undergraduate tax degree opportunities in 2007.
- continued to work with the New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants as an approved training organisation. Inland Revenue is the third largest employer of accountants in New Zealand and provides a sound mentoring foundation for graduates.
- provided training expertise to other tax authorities. This helps to further develop our relationships and raise the overall standard of tax administration in the Asia-Pacific region, as well as fostering cooperation between countries on tax issues.
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New Zealanders provide computer auditing training  Kris Rapson and Rachel Hawes, Senior Investigators in the Computer Tax Audit unit, represented New Zealand at the second SGATAR (Study Group on Asian Tax Administration and Research) Joint Training Programme on Computer Auditing in Yangzhou City, China. The 14-day programme was hosted by the State Administration of Taxation of China and Yangzhou Tax Institute. Ten countries received the training: China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Chinese Taipei, Thailand and Vietnam. SGATAR was established in 1970 with a view to reform and develop overall tax policies through the exchange of tax administration knowledge and experience. New Zealand was selected as the lead instructing country due to our advanced application of computer auditing over the past ten years, with Rachel and Kris acting as resource experts and delivering training. Representatives from Japan, Hong Kong and Australia also gave presentations. "It was a great opportunity for us to talk to people from countries whose tax system isn't as developed as ours and help them with ideas on how to develop theirs further," says Rachel. |
Figure 40 - Inland Revenue employee distribution
Figure 41 - Service Delivery employee distribution
Figure 42 - Business Development and Systems employee distribution
Figure 43 - Qualifications
Diversity - equal employment opportunities (EEO)
We have undertaken a review of our workforce and assessed the impact of an ageing workforce on Inland Revenue over the next few years. We identified a number of issues for the coming business year, including the need to review our recruitment and retention strategy, as well as progressively rolling out mentoring programmes to business groups.
In the coming year, our diversity strategy and multi-year EEO plan will be updated and refreshed in line with the review of our HR Strategy.
Figure 44 - EEO statistics
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| Percentage of staff | |
|---|---|
| Women | 64% |
| Women team leaders | 65% |
| Women managers | 38% |
| Disabled people | 3% |
1 Full-time equivalents as of 30 June 2005. This compares to 4,713 as at 30 June 2004.
Date published: 12 Oct 2005
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