Our People
A major focus for the year has been the development of a five-year People Capability Strategy for the Treasury. The Strategy sets out principles for the capability we need to deliver our business across all our roles and functions and what this means for us in the future, consistent with fiscal parameters. It then details the approach we will take to our people management levers such as attracting, acquiring, deploying and utilising, leading, developing and demanding performance. The objective is to ensure the Treasury has the capability to deliver on our outcomes and results over the next five years by ensuring all our efforts are mutually supporting a clear and coherent vision.
The People Capability Strategy will be signed off and communicated in early 2010/11 and new work streams started, with a focus on detailed workforce planning and review of performance management. However, during 2009/10 a number of initiatives to implement the Strategy have been progressing in tandem with strategy development:
- We have reviewed our remuneration framework and adopted a more flexible approach which allows targeting our remuneration spend to support our organisational goals and finance strategy.
- We have become sharper and more responsive about deploying our people to areas of highest priority, moving them in a more flexible way and increasingly adopting a project approach to major pieces of work.
- As part of the leadership review, we created the new roles of Chief Economist and Chief Accountant in order to increase our depth of professional leadership and external influence in these areas.
- We have made significant investment in talent mapping with a view to identifying and developing our high potential senior analysts and creating viable and rewarding career pathways for people. This programme will expand to other roles in 2010/11.
The Treasury surveyed staff to assess their engagement in July 2009 and achieved a participation rate 94%. The results were positive compared with the NZ State Sector database, with engagement at the 62nd percentile. The information gained from the survey has supported the development of greater alignment of individual workplans with organisational results for 2010. The Treasury will be running the survey again in 2010/11.
| As at 30 June | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Staff Numbers |
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| Total full-time equivalent | 341 | 343 | 324 | 312 | ||
| Full-time staff | 306 | 310 | 298 | 278 | ||
| Part-time staff | 47 | 46 | 35 | 46 | ||
| Total headcount | 353 | 356 | 333 | 324 | ||
All Staff |
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Gender distribution |
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| Women | 49% | 52% | 51% | 50% | ||
| Men | 51% | 48% | 49% | 50% | ||
Ethnicity Distribution (self-identified, multiple responses possible) |
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| NZ European | 69% | 72% | 73% | 72% | ||
| NZ Māori | 4% | 5% | 6% | 5% | ||
| Pacific Islander | 2% | 2% | 2% | 2% | ||
| Asian | 6% | 6% | 5% | 4% | ||
| Other European | 14% | 11% | 10% | 13% | ||
| Other ethnic groups | 3% | 1% | 1% | 1% | ||
| Undeclared | 2% | 3% | 3% | 3% | ||
| Turnover | 13% | 11.1% | 22.2% | 18.9 | ||
| Average length of service (yrs): | 6.4 | 6.5 | 6.4 | 6.2 | ||
Equal Employment Opportunities
The Treasury continued to participate in processes and surveys to inform Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) approaches including contributing to New Zealand's 2010 report on Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and initiatives from SSC. The Treasury continues to focus on equal opportunity and diversity through assessing core processes for recruitment, selection and development initiatives for fairness. This year the Treasury's staff set up a Senior Women's network to increase the ability to share ideas and support for initiatives such as mentoring. The Treasury delivered several development programmes focused on Māori engagement, implications for policy advice and language.
Risk Management
The Treasury's risk management practices use an approach modelled on the Joint Australian/New Zealand International Risk Management Standard. Risk management in the Treasury is implemented through business processes such as strategic and operational planning and project management. Risk management functions, roles and frameworks also exist in specific operational areas including NZDMO and NZECO.
We oversee and manage our overall set of risks through a Risk and Audit Committee, which includes experienced external members who provide independent perspectives. Our intention is for this committee to become an official sub-committee of the Board. We will review and revise, if required, its specific roles and functions to align with the Board's charter.
We are currently improving our strategic risk management approach to ensure there is systematic and regular assessment and monitoring of key strategic risks facing the Treasury. The first stage of this approach was a facilitated workshop with our senior leaders to identify our key strategic risks and agree their priority ranking. These risks will regularly be monitored, reviewed and reported, by being integrated into regular performance reporting.
A Risk Advisor has recently been appointed, with responsibility for further developing and maintaining an appropriate enterprise-wide risk management approach, including further refinement of strategic risk management assessment, monitoring and reporting.
