Livingstone Shire Council staff turnover questioned despite ‘ideal’ life
People employed by one Central Queensland council get to live and work in paradise - so why is the organisation’s staff turnover rate so high?
Rockhampton
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Questions have been asked about Livingstone Shire Council’s staff turnover rate with its chief executive officer admitting the figure is “double what’s ideal”.
At the council’s most recent monthly meeting before Christmas, CEO Cale Dendle told councillors the organisation’s staff turnover rate was about 18.5 per cent - or if you exclude retirements, about 16 per cent.
“Which is about one and a half FTEs (full-time equivalent positions) per week,” Mr Dendle said.
“Which I think is a reflection of... movement of personnel in a number of industries, not just across Central Queensland but indeed across the country.”
After Mr Dendle revealed the current situation as part of his quarterly management report, Councillor Glenda Mather had several questions for the CEO.
Armed with the knowledge that council, as at October 2022, employed 359 permanent full-time equivalent workers, 32 temporary FTE staff and 10 casuals, Mrs Mather was concerned.
“The 18.5 per cent staff turnover - do we have a breakdown as to the reasons, I mean assuming of course we were being told what was actually the reason (staff left)?” Mrs Mather asked.
“I mean we can’t do anything about that if they want to give us another reason - but I mean that (staff turnover figure) is clearly high, that’s almost one fifth of our staff.
“I’d like to see that improved to be quite honest - get a little bit of stabilisation there.
“Because every time you lose somebody you lose that information, that expertise, that knowledge, the background, history, all those things.
“So you try to stabilise that if we can.”
Mrs Mather said her question was why there was such a high staff turnover.
Mr Dendle said he was happy to “have a stab at” responding to that question.
“It’s a reasonably broad question,” he said.
“The answer is a variety of reasons, Cr Mather.
“We had some councillors in the room yesterday where we celebrated an existing staff member (who has) secured another position which would be a promotion for her, so in future, that person will be included in these figures.
“But we’re pleased for that person.”
Mr Dendle said there was “a range of people” leaving employment with Livingstone Shire Council to go to “other things”.
“And generally we celebrate that - we have some others who might be leaving for other reasons that aren’t necessarily celebrated in that way.
“I would agree that turnover at the moment is probably about double what’s ideal.
“I don’t think that’s uncommon in a number of workplaces at the moment.”
Mr Dendle said a factor to keep in mind was the council had “incentivised retirements” and almost 20 per cent of its workforce was aged 60-plus.
“Our average tenure, I think it’s still above eight years here... so we have a lot of people who’ve been with us 20-plus years.
“So people are rusted on to Livingstone Shire and that’s generally a good thing.
“But we do have some churn where people come and stay for a short time and move on to other things for a variety of reasons.”
Mrs Mather said she would like to see some comparisons with other councils of similar size to Livingstone.
“We need to aim for something less (turnover) of course, but I’d like to see how we fare,” she said.
“Because, I mean it’s such a good place to live, why are they (employees) leaving us?”
Mr Dendle responded by saying he could speak from his experience in mining areas like the Isaac region (Moranbah, Clermont, Middlemount, Dysart).
“Those sort of places have incredible staff turnover because there’s so many opportunities for people in those areas,” he said.
“As I say, I think in our case in an ideal world, we’d be about half of that (18.5 per cent) turnover.”
Councillors voted unanimously to receive Mr Dendle’s quarterly management report.
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