How reducing staff turnover saved West Arnhem Regional Council millions each year

With 3 years of staff turnover at 57% costing an estimated $2.9 million each year, West Arnhem Regional Council (WARC) knew it needed change.

“WARC decided that setting a baseline for employee engagement and employee experience was critical for the improvement journey. Insync was selected to partner with WARC to deliver an important employee survey across the business”.

Over the past two years, Insync has been working with WARC to measure levels of employee alignment and engagement, identify problems and provide the following solutions:

• An evidence-based framework that has been academically and statistically validated
• Extensive Australian local government benchmark data with over 40,000 responses to contextualise results
• Research and project management expertise to guide WARC’s team through the exercise
• Use of multiple modes of survey administration to increase response rates
• A comprehensive set of reports housed in a central portal for secure storage and easy distribution
• A comprehensive debrief of the survey results with the CEO and survey project team highlighting areas of strength as well as optimal areas of investment to boost engagement and alignment

Based on the employee feedback, WARC decided to focus on four key areas: performance building through professional development, top-down communication, employee reward and recognition and collaboration between departments and offices, resulting in a 25% drop in employee turnover figures and placing WARC in the top 10% of the Australian local government benchmark for engagement.