Annual Report 2006: Part three - Key strategies
Excellent state servants
Developing our capability and learning
To deliver the services that will help our customers comply with their obligations and receive their entitlements, our people need to have well-developed technical skills. These skills let them interpret the law, provide accurate information and undertake complex tax and social policy work.
Tax technical training
During the year our tax technical training product range was updated to reflect recently enacted legislation, new policy and case law. We encourage our people to work towards a range of formal qualifications that recognise their growing technical capability, through both in-house tax technical training and other educational programmes. As a result of our efforts, our overall technical competency increased by 7% over the 2004-05 level.
We initiated a review of the effectiveness of our tax training to ensure we reflect leading practice and are well-positioned to meet future business needs. The recent changes to organisational arrangements ensure that the Chief Tax Counsel provides greater oversight of our tax technical development over the coming years.
Delivering and monitoring our training
To deliver our training material effectively and efficiently across the department, we introduced innovative electronic technologies. For example, we have developed several electronic learning modules and a learning management system that creates an effective "e-learning" environment and builds on the department's e-business strategy.
We also recently adopted a general competency framework that will enable us to maximise the impact of our technical skills and improve our ability to achieve our outcomes. The competency framework is aligned with frameworks in use by other state sector agencies and will be implemented next year.
Building our leadership
We retain our strong focus on excellence in leadership at both the individual and organisational level. As we adapt and change, and as we deliver a diverse range of functions and activities, strong leadership is critical.
Inland Revenue has well-established programmes for developing our managers and team leaders. Since the introduction of our leadership programmes in 2002, 210 of our managers and 583 of our team leaders have attended an in-house leadership course.
Specific initiatives undertaken during the year included:
- upgrading the job expectations for our team leaders to better reflect our understanding of the nature of the leader's role and how this is aligned with the achievement of our outcomes
- refreshing our current leadership framework, which provides the foundation for leadership training and helps our leaders to improve employee engagement and develop more flexible and adaptive leadership styles
- developing a leadership talent management plan to ensure we have a pool of future leaders and provide appropriate development based on their aspirations, ability and engagement.
| Winners of Inland Revenue awards |
|---|
Leadership and learning are the inspiration behind the Inland Revenue Awards which were presented to three 2005 winners.
From left, Richard Owen, Uma Mukherjee, and Packiam Skinnon receive their awards from Naomi Ferguson, Deputy Commissioner (Service Delivery) Inland Revenue has an ongoing commitment to offering opportunities that will ensure people's growth and development along their chosen career paths. The Inland Revenue Awards provide financial support to current and future leaders who want to take up learning and development opportunities that would normally be outside the scope of most training budgets. The award is aimed at team leaders and managers (or equivalent positions) who demonstrate a strong potential to contribute to our organisation in a leadership role and who are looking for new ideas, perspectives and intellectual stretch. The 2005 winners were:
|
Trusted state servants
The community needs to have confidence in our ability to apply the law consistently and impartially. We also need to be seen to uphold the integrity of the tax system, which requires us to meet the highest standards of integrity and exercise good judgement in everything we do.
Our success is built on the commitment and behaviours we demonstrate when delivering our services. Our Code of Conduct, which builds on the requirements set out in the Public Service Code of Conduct, was reviewed and reissued during the year, supported by training for our people. The Code of Conduct is a statement of how we will deliver our services, how we will behave, and how we will demonstrate the high standards of integrity and behaviour expected of us as employees of Inland Revenue and as public servants.
Other pages in: Part three - Key strategies
- Promoting compliance
- Providing information and support
- Maintaining compliance with the law
- Tackling the harder end of compliance
- Gaining organisational efficiency
- Reducing compliance costs
- Developing the capability of our people and providing the tools they need
- Becoming an employer of choice
- Key people statistics
- Developing our tools
Date published: 06 Nov 2006
Back to top