Lake Macquarie City Council

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Engaged employees drive significant transformation

Since 2007, Voice Project has been supporting Lake Macquarie City Council to measure, track and improve work culture, engagement, and employee experience. This has been carried through six employee engagement surveys between 2007 and 2019, which included significant work in the design, administration, analysis, reporting, and feedback of survey results. Additionally, Voice Project supported the communication of survey results in formal indoor and outdoor staff debriefs. In that time, we have observed remarkable transformation at the Council. As one of our top-performing councils, Lake Macquarie City Council has consistently demonstrated a progressive change management approach that focuses on engaging the workforce in a collective effort to boost change. In recent years, this sector-leading change process led by staff has created an engaged and collaborative workforce. This resulted in $1.8 million in budget and productivity gains.

As part of an ongoing partnership between Lake Macquarie City Council and the University of Newcastle, the University was commissioned to undertake an independent review of the change process at Lake Macquarie City Council.  The research identified some key learning for positive change management for other local governments, including:

• agreeing the vision and values early in the process

• driving leadership throughout the hierarchy

• committing to staff involvement and participation

• monitoring the process and being flexible to pivot as required, and

• creating a more agile, connected organisation

Read or download the full case study to see how they did it: Staff leading change: Lake Macquarie City Council’s innovation offers.