The skills shortage had a brief holiday... Attracting, retaining and motivating your workforce in a challenging environment.

Today’s economy is changing, but that’s nothing new. To achieve business success it is critical to understand the changing market and work environment and have flexible and responsive workforces.

We need to determine what resources are needed as our businesses hopefully flourish, and recognise that the labour crisis that we experienced prior to the GFC has not gone away. The population is still ageing with more people retiring and less children being born, and Australia continues to have a low workforce participation rate.

Robert Critchley will address the key issues that affect the people-management side of business such as selection, retention, and motivation. Guidance and creative tips will be provided to ensure human resources strategies are aligned with business needs.

University of Adelaide: Heads of school leadership program

Since its establishment in 1874, the University of Adelaide has been among Australia's leading universities, continually contributing to the wealth and well-being of the State and the nation. The Heads of School (HOS) Leadership Program was developed in 2008.

It is a customised program aimed at developing a clear and shared approach to leadership, including the identification of individual and collective responsibilities amongst the University’s middle managers. The program is a key component of the University’s succession planning and represents an investment in the leadership capability of a pivotal managerial cohort. An indication of the strategic importance of the program is that it is sponsored by the University’s Vice-Chancellor and President (CEO). Join Trish Hughes as she discusses this program and its impact.

How Bendigo and Adelaide Bank managed through the global financial crisis without redundancies

During the GFC, Bendigo and Adelaide Bank took a view that its human capital was critical to its future success. So to implement redundancies as a means of reducing costs was a very short term focussed strategy. A better view was to find a key strategy that allowed lowering costs but retaining staff.

Julian Carne will discuss this key strategy, including the reactions, how the strategy was aligned with the organisation’s culture and values, and what the outcomes have been.

A High Performing Public Sector: Developing South Australia’s Framework

The Public Sector Performance Commission (PSPC) was established in July 2008 to implement the Government’s vision of a high performing public sector that is well regarded and amongst the best of its kind.

The PSPC has developed the High Performance Framework aimed at creating a government-wide culture of high performance and continuous improvement. The proposed framework will provide agencies a common understanding of performance expectations that clearly aligns to government policy priorities.

Solutions for the silver tsunami

This session will showcase solutions for ageing workforce risks, challenges and opportunities as identified in your workforce planning data. Discover powerful questions to ask, next steps to take and what return on investment you can expect. This unprecedented demographic shift in our workforce (aka the silver tsunami) requires intentional strategies to reduce risk and achieve sustainability. Drawing from over five years of public and private sector case studies, we will explore how you can implement these strategies within your existing HR and culture frameworks.

The workforce planning imperative

Workforce Planning Australia (WPA) understands that participants are keen to build their capabilities and knowledge on this critical issue. In this practical session, WPA will outline the core elements of workforce planning and a nationally recognised and recommended framework. The session aims to inform, excite and engage participants to commit to strengthening leadership and governance in workforce planning; to produce evidence based workforce planning; to establish a systematic approach to workforce data gathering and analysis; to transition workforce planning outcomes into workforce development strategies and to integrate workforce planning into normal business practice.