Automation of job Matching System

Central Council 14 February 2005

CC5/05
"That the RRSU proposal for Automation of Job Matching System be endorsed by Central Council with the provisions that:

1. agencies do not subcontract this role to private sector labour hire companies;

2. agencies are appropriately staffed to match their displaced officers across the sector as was formerly done by Premier's Department (RRSU);

3. the issue concerning the Department of Commerce Career Transition Program (re meeting with Col Gellatly) is satisfactorily resolved."

Summary

• The Redeployment and Relocation Services Unit (RRSU) of the Premier's Department, wants to automate the jobs matching process via the on-line "jobs.NSW" system and after trialling proposes to introduce the change in April

• Under the change, the job matching process will be devolved to HR in individual Departments

• RRSU will still retain oversight for:

• Collection of statistics (Significantly it will now be

• Advantages: speeding up the process of re-deploying excess staff and therefore affirmation of Government policy of "no forced redundancies"

• Disadvantages : none identified

Report of the RRSU proposal for automation of job matching process

Attachment is the RRSU's summary of the proposed changes

The Redeployment and Relocation Services Unit (RRSU) which currently centrally co-ordinates the matching of excess staff to jobs, is proposing to automate the process electronically. It will be doing this via the already existing "jobs.nsw". The proposal will be trialled in January/February with commencement in April. The RRSU and PEO are promoting it as a win-win situation. A brief outline of the proposal presented by RRSU is attached.

An effective job matching system is a demonstration of the Government's commitment to a policy of "no forced redundancies".

The PSA has long-complained about the viability and effectiveness of the job matching service, previously coordinated by the Workforce Management Centre. Currently it is still centrally coordinated by RRSU where a list of displaced officer names is manually matched to job ads. The new automated system will see the job matching operation devolved to the HR section or case manager of individual agencies. Job ads can be held in a holding bay before going to press to give agencies the opportunity to job-match. It removes the current manual double handling and time consuming operation by RRSU.

RRSU reported that the number of displaced staff on their books has risen to 450. This is a result of the restructures and amalgamations arising from the 2004 Mini Budget "Super Ministries". Both RRSU and the PEO are eager to expedite the placement of displaced staff via the new job matching system.

RRSU will still retain certain central monitoring control and regulation over areas such as

• collection of stats for Workforce Planning - the automated system will for the first time allow the collection of displaced employee skill profiles which would be important for workforce planning. Every displaced employee will now register with the RRSU whereas currently the displaced employee can choose to register or not

• registration of job matches ie where an agency tags a job as potential match for a particular employee, this must be reviewed and approved by RRSU to ensure there is no mismatch. RRSU would in particular be looking at the skills match and the salary level to ensure it is within the 5% or 1 grade differential provided for in the Managing Displaced Employees Policy (MDEP). It was noted that if an employee in a tight labour market in a regional area, voluntarily accepted a salary difference down of greater than 5%, this would be accepted - as long as it WAS voluntary. If there was a mismatch, RSSU would have the right to veto

The PEO and RRSU advised that although it was thought desirable that individual displaced officers could themselves browse for possible matches, this was not technically possible because of the firewall arrangements on many agency intranets. There were however seen to be advantages in devolving the process down to local agency case managers.

The current MDEP allows for the temporary trialling of displaced employees in temporary jobs, or to undertake work of a temporary nature. Indeed the current PEO Guidelines on Temporary/Casual employment and Staff Mobility recommends consideration of displaced employees ie use of existing staff rather than engagement of more temporaries and casuals

The pilot in Jan/Feb will involve agencies such as:

• Department of Commerce

• A number of small agencies such as the Australian Museum