Our organisation
The operational divisions
The organisation is headed by Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Carol Jeffs. Our direction is determined at the global level by the elected councillors but at the operational level by the CEO, through general managers, managers and officers.
The organisation is divided into 5 divisions headed by general managers:
- Assets and services
- Community wellbeing
- Corporate services
- Planning and development
- People and culture
Our staff has grown to almost 400 across a range of full- and part-time positions, reflecting the rapid growth in the shire and the continuing need to increase resources to maintain service standards.
Our CEO
Ms Carol Jeffs has extensive experience in local government management and leadership, and a demonstrated commitment to community engagement and participation.
Carol brings more than 15 years’ experience as a senior local government executive, having led planning, corporate services, economic development and community services at both regional and inner metropolitan councils.
She has held positions of Interim Chief Executive Officer and General Manager Community and Economic Development at the City of Port Phillip, and was previously General Manager Governance and Manager City Planning at Latrobe City Council.
As a proud Cardinia Shire resident, she is committed to making a difference in a place that she knows and loves by working closely with the community, councillors and staff to continue to deliver high quality services and infrastructure across the whole shire.
She believes in advocating strongly for what Cardinia Shire needs and engaging with residents, community groups, farmers, businesses and landowners, as we take up the challenge of creating a future we can all be proud of.
Councillors unanimously resolved to appoint Ms Jeffs for a five-year term at a Special Council meeting on Monday 23 July 2018, and she started as CEO on Monday 8 October 2018.
Ms Jeffs holds qualifications in business (Bachelor of Business) and economics (Master of Economics), is a Harvard University Executive Program graduate and a member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Activity-based working: how our staff work
With the move to the Officer civic centre in 2014, we took the opportunity to move to an activity-based working (ABW) environment.
This way of working is helping us to achieve better collaboration and communication between departments and staff, which leads to greater productivity and efficiency.
What it means in practice is that staff are able to select their work space based on their day’s activities, and are encouraged to ‘follow your work’ – that is, be mindful of the space they are ‘occupying’ at a given time and to move to a different, more appropriate space as their tasks change throughout the day. This approach applies to all staff in the organisation including the CEO and managers.
We were the first Australian government organisation to adopt this way of working. Many other organisations are looking to us as an example of how ABW can be successfully achieved; tours of our civic centre are regularly conducted.
To make ABW possible, staff extensively use mobile and digital technology. This has reduced the dependence on paper and improved customer response times. We have recorded a 75% reduction in paper usage since moving to the new offices.
