There is no doubt that the APVMA relocating to Armidale was very good for Armidale, but not so great for the agency.
Whatever you think of the move and how it was handled, a certain level of credit has to be given to the now ‘on leave’ CEO Lisa Croft and the almost entirely new team at the APVMA for managing to get their performance metrics up to the high 90s in a few short years from the loss of 85% of their staff when the agency was forcibly moved to Armidale in 2016.
Obviously, not all is well. While the Minister is right to be concerned by the allegations raised in Senate Estimates last year, and obviously something in the interim report concerned him enough to bring in the police, there should be a warning sounded about judging Ms Croft’s performance by Canberra public service standards.
(I’m just going to skip right past the fact that Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson’s information was wrong, no one was urinated on, and he raised those allegations, I am told, without any permission of the three alleged sexual harassment victims nor care for the fact he was retraumatising them, and subjecting 150 dedicated public servants to intense bullying from Barnaby haters, for a cheap salacious headline.)
The “private urination incident”, as it has been dubbed, could have happened to any employer in any regional area. In country towns, no one is simply your work colleague – they are also at your gym, your kids go to the same school, you play on the same sporting teams, you shop at the same shops and they are often, quite literally, your neighbour. As such, is not uncommon for executives and subordinates to know each other in triplicate. That includes it being common to be at each other’s homes, or at the same private parties.
And, like anywhere else in Australia, all kinds of people occasionally drink too much and embarrass themselves. If everyone that got too drunk at a private party was immediately fired from their jobs there’d be a lot of people unemployed, including most politicians and their staffers.
One of the lines of questioning Ms Croft was subjected to by Senator Whish-Wilson is why she knew about the incident if it was a private matter, why people told her about the incident if they weren’t making a formal complaint, and why she was still talking to the alleged urinator after he resigned.
Duh, it’s a small agency, in a small town. And like pretty much all country towns, everyone knows everyone, and people talk.
The situation is comparable to UNE, by far the biggest employer in Armidale that also attracts staff (and students) from all over the world. It too has been found to have a toxic work environment, and SafeWork NSW was giving it directives to fix its psychosocial risk management at about the same time Minister Watt was ordering a review into the APVMA.
But the University’s issues can’t be tethered to an arbitrary decision that uprooted it and moved its operations. The significant upheaval at the University can, however, be linked to a series of bad senior appointments, mostly of people that have only previously lived and worked in cities much bigger than Armidale. And most of them, either because they wanted to ‘make their mark’ before moving on to a bigger university, or didn’t understand the culture they had landed in, set about ‘restructures’ that fired the locals and well-loved, and promoted the outsiders and hated.
Which raises the broader point. Should the hiring of a CEO or other executive into a regionally based organisation be on a standard grid of what’s considered important in the city, or should a fundamental consideration be whether they understand the community they are going to to live in, work in, and be a leader for? Should regional executives be judged by city standards?
Most of what is known about organisational culture and ‘good’ HR practices is designed in and for the city, and does not allow for staff who know each other in multiple layers. The humanity of rural living is messier, more complex, and at the same time far richer and more resilient. Shouldn’t our major employers reflect that country messiness and richness, and not city sterility?
Should the measurement of regional executive performance instead be based on their ability to thrive within that messiness and complexity, harness the power of close knit teams that comes with everyone knowing everyone, rather than trying to impose clinical, arms length, ‘best practice’ policies?
For a more specific example, let’s look at the policies against nepotism. Anti-nepotism policies are designed to prevent related individuals from working in the same company or department, and are usually imposed in the hiring process. In simple terms, they prevent executives from hiring or promoting their family members or people otherwise closely linked to them on a personal level, like partners or best friends. That doesn’t work in small towns with very large families. If such policies were enforced in Armidale, having a Moran, Widders, Kelly, Stace or so on on the hiring panel is likely to wipe out half the available candidates.
Nepotism policies are also a particular barrier for Indigenous employment, as quite obviously members of the local mob are frequently related to each other or have some other personal connection. It is of course not the only reason, but in a town with an Indigenous population more than double the state or national averages at 7.8%, our major employers are much whiter than they should be, with ATSI employees being less than 3% of the overall staff at both APVMA and UNE.
Of course you want transparent and above board hiring practices, but why can’t we redefine what is considered ‘above board’ for our reality and our communities?
And when there is an issue, can we have complaint mechanisms that are designed for, and provide protection in, communities where everyone knows everyone, and people talk?
It’s not like this is a new concept – Tönnies was writing about Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft in 1887. Armidale is a Gemeinschaft community, we need policies and standards designed for that, not the Gesellschaft society of the city.
We have a way to go with the culture reviews and restructures of both APVMA and UNE, both of which have uncertain leadership for a while. Here’s hoping that whomever is leading those organisations into the future are people who truly understand and embrace the benefits and differences of being in this unique community. Let’s also pray that their boards allow them to embrace all that Armidale is and can give to their organisations, rather than demand adherence to a city culture that will only result in tears and more bad headlines.
And, when the APVMA returns to Senate Estimates today, here’s hoping cheap politicians don’t take another whack at real people and our community just because they like the sport.