2019-Wesley-Mission-Annual-Report - Flipbook - Page 39
Supporting our
people for growth
As an organisation with people at
its heart, Wesley Mission staff and
the systems they use are the key
to delivering a service experience
that demonstrates that ‘every life
matters’. As needs increase in
our community, investing in our
people and systems is essential
for continued growth.
Trust is at the centre of everything Wesley Mission
does. People trust us to support them through their
most vulnerable moments. Governments trust us to
deliver safe, relevant and quality services. Likeminded organisations trust us as a community
partner. And people and businesses trust us to use
their time, skills and money to make their
communities stronger.
That trust isn’t generated by, or for, a faceless
organisation. It’s built through compassion,
connection and understanding shared
between people.
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In 2017/18, we welcomed 538 new staff members to
Wesley Mission. The increase in staff was driven by
the commencement of new programs and
expanding the reach of some of our existing
services, such as Wesley ParentsNext and Wesley
Disability Services.
The past 12 months was also a time of change, with
funding policies, compliance requirements and
other aspects of the operating environment
presenting our services with new challenges. In this
environment, we retained our ability to respond to
and support the needs of impacted services
and programs with flexibility and agility, and to
provide support and development for both new and
existing staff.
Retaining a fulfilled and inspired workforce
In 2017/18 there were fewer workers compensation
claims than the year before. We retained 79.6 per
cent of our staff–exceeding our target of 77 per
cent, which we set by benchmarking our rate
against the community and social services sector.
To be a listening ear to someone in their time of
need is a gift that many Wesley Mission staff give to
our clients, demonstrating both respect and care.
Just as this is important to our clients, the thoughts
and experiences of our people is important to us. To
help track employee engagement, we introduced
‘Pulse’ surveys that are conducted regularly to
gather staff feedback. The survey response rate was
an encouraging 81 per cent, which, in itself is an
important sign of engagement.
Our current focus is on empowering our frontline
leaders, who are the face of the organisation in the
community and vital to our continued growth.
Our engagement with this group remains high at
83 per cent.
Creating a healthy workplace where our
people can thrive
Compassion fatigue is a constant risk, particularly
for those who are deeply dedicated to their work.
Due to the large number of Wesley Mission staff
operating in challenging roles, employee wellness is
a key factor. Wellness encompasses the legal,
professional and moral aspects that shape our work
environment and empower our people to be the
best they can be. It contributes to the growth and
development of individual staff and, ultimately, to
the sustainability of our organisation.
Wesley Mission supports and promotes the
wellness of our people through a range of services
and resources including an employee assistance
program, pastoral care provided by chaplains, an
experienced work health and safety team, and
bespoke learning and development programs. In the
last year, 2,398 staff participated in internal training,
building capacity through more than 200 courses
and 830 hours of face to face workshops. Three
hundred of our new staff attended formal orientation
programs, supporting the onboarding process and
helping to connect people with the heart of our
Word and deed mission.
Empowering our people with quality data, for
quality outcomes
Delivering sustainable growth across Wesley
Mission requires robust, reliable data that tracks
performance, and informs our continuous
improvement.
data of how many people we helped, to analysing
how we’re making a difference in people’s lives.
Last year, we received feedback from the NSW
Department of Family and Community Services that
they were particularly impressed with the quality of
the data contained in our successful tender to
expand Wesley ParentsNext into new locations. And
this year, we’ll work systematically across all our
services to build their capacity to use the system
and perform outcomes-based reporting, so we can
better understand our impact and practise
evidence-based care.
We also implemented a Client Relationship
Management (CRM) system that connects all the
different services, programs and people who make
up Wesley Mission. This is a foundational piece of
infrastructure that allows us to understand
our clients better and provide efficient,
person-centred care.
The CRM allows us to maintain a complete picture
of the people we serve and provide integrated
support through our wraparound services. We can
identify and direct people to all the services that are
relevant to their circumstances, without the need for
them to describe their challenges to multiple people.
This is a particularly important factor when
supporting people who have experienced trauma,
which so many of our services do.
In 2017/18 we developed the Business Intelligence
Portal: a unified data warehouse that enables the
staff in our services and programs to better capture
information about what they’re delivering, who
they’re delivering it to, and the impact of their
service. It allows us to move beyond the baseline
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