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Buy-in from internal stakeholders for IPR reporting is one of the most challenging aspects of implementing the IPR framework. In our latest Insights Report, IPR and Technology, we gathered data from 20 NSW councils to under IPR frustrations and uncover emerging best practices. The research found that while some individuals may report willingly, most do not see it as a priority, get frustrated with repeated requests, and need to be educated on how IPR can enable time savings and offer insights to help teams achieve their goals. “When you ask people for info, they say 'we already told you that', it’s that constant repetitive asking for the same information that frustrates people.” - NSW IPR Practitioner Councils have access to a wealth of data across their many service streams. However, accessing and leveraging this data can be difficult, and the manual process of collecting and validating it is cumbersome. This makes it hard to generate insights that engage a broad range of stakeholders. Download a copy of the Insights Report here Negative consequences of reporting are often feared, which can contribute to resistance. When periodic reporting shows up a surprise result, defensiveness is a common reaction. The research indicated that a shift in council mindset is important. Councils need to communicate that benchmarking is not about being the “best” or “worst,” but about using data to deliver better results for residents and key stakeholders. Ensuring there are no surprises in periodic reporting is important for reducing fear. Real-time reporting on an operational level provides councils with regular opportunities to “fail forward” and embrace internal transparency and accountability as part of driving cultural change. “Internal stakeholders don’t see it as their responsibility to provide the information, they don’t realise they’re the subject matter experts and IPR relies on them to report in a timely manner.” - NSW IPR Practitioner Reporting is crucial but to encourage that sense of investment from staff, councils must simplify reporting processes to assist staff to engage proactively. They must support teams to access and understand data-driven insights and ensure staff at all levels understand how their roles link to achieving strategic objectives. Best Practice Tips to get staff to take responsibility and ownership for IPR Tie individual purpose to the broader council and community outcomes Emphasise how everyday staff activities impact upon organisational and community success. Use an empathetic approach to effectively convey the significance of IPR activities. Develop a comprehensive communications strategy that highlights the benefits of IPR activities for diverse stakeholder groups. Welcome questions and stakeholder concerns Foster open communication so you can recognise and address concerns. Address concerns when expectations are not being met. Consider and explain costs and trade-offs to all stakeholders. Refresh your approach and continue to engage as priorities and personnel change over time. Streamline so it’s as easy as possible to do the doing Eliminate duplication of effort by having stakeholders report only once, in one place. Provide a clear outline of everyone’s obligations to ensure the process is robust and accurate and reflects their projects and services. Simplify the reporting process to make it easier for stakeholders to meet obligations. Uncover all the insights in the latest report - IPR and Technology. Download a copy of the Insights Report here

What she lacks in height she makes up for in passion, enthusiasm and personality. Meet Caitlin James - the friendly person on the other end of your support requests - that is, after she has had her morning coffee! Tell us a little about you, where you're from and your family: I'm just a 5’1 gal with four brothers who was born and raised in Longreach. I now enjoy living in the big smoke - and although my friends and family are scattered throughout North and Central Queensland, I'm confident that I'll be able to persuade them to relocate here soon. What's your role at Redman, and what does it involve? Ever contacted Redman Solutions with a support request? Chances are I am the person on the other end of your email doing my best to solve it as quickly as I can. What do you love about your role? Each day I support our clients from all over Australia. Through conversations and getting to know them, I am learning so much more about places that I never knew existed. I also love how challenging and diverse my role is. There's always a new request or something I am not familiar with - learning and helping others at the same time keeps my role interesting. What gets you out of bed in the morning? That's an easy one... coffee What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? I recently became an aunty, so you can usually catch me calling my brother and sister-in-law every five minutes to make sure my two-month old niece knows her aunty is the best. What's something people may not know about you? If you’re from Central QLD you may have heard me sing with our shockwave crew. I was part of an annual festival that travelled around Central West QLD helping young people & communities. What about travel, is it something you have coming up? I’m actually about to travel along the East Coast on a dream road trip. We will be heading from Brisbane to Newcastle and there will be many steps along the way. I'm very excited about it and can't wait to explore more of Australia.

In New South Wales, Integrated Planning and Reporting (IPR) practitioners have the responsibility of maximising trust and performance of council by implementing the NSW IPR framework and sharing information with various stakeholders. Technology is critical for successful IPR implementation but accessing the right information to make decisions on technology and systems can be difficult. We interviewed 20 NSW councils to understand their IPR frustrations and uncover emerging best practices in terms of process, systems and technology. This report aims to present this data in a way that supports councils to manage this process and use technology to effectively support IPR activity. Download your copy here. Some insights from the report include: The burden of data manipulation, validation and reporting: 68% of respondents said pulling reports easily vs having to do a lot of manual handling was their biggest challenge when it comes to reporting on IPR to external stakeholders. Getting staff to take responsibility and ownership: 74% of respondents said getting staff to take responsibility and ownership was their biggest challenge when it comes to preparing and managing the suite of IPR plans. - Discover all the challenges, key takeaways and tips in this report. Download your copy here. Enjoy - Team Redman

Tamika Peever, Redman's Office Administrator, is dedicated to ensuring smooth operations whether she is at home or in the office. Learn more about her passion for Greek culture and her deep affection for her family in our latest Employee Spotlight. Tell us a little about you, where you're from and your family: I'm grateful to have grown up and still live in sunny Brisbane - it’s the perfect place to raise my two boys. I recently returned back to Redman after maternity leave and am loving being back. It’s great to have a work/life balance and be able to spend time with my family while also getting back into my role. What's your role at Redman, and what does it involve? As the Office Administrator at Redman, I am responsible for ensuring the smooth and efficient day-to-day running of the office. From managing the day-to-day running of the office to processing renewals and invoicing - I wear many hats to keep things running. I’m fortunate to be able to work across all departments, which means my role is varied and very fast-paced. What do you love about your job? What I love about my job is the incredible team I work with. We're more than just colleagues; we're a family. Each member of the team brings their unique strengths and talents to the table, and together, we're able to accomplish great things. We work hard, but we also know how to have fun, and that's what makes our workplace culture so special. Whether we're celebrating a big win or supporting each other through challenging times, we always have each other's backs. What’s your travel destination? I loved my time in Greece and can't wait to go back. Everything about it was incredible - the food, the lifestyle and the vibe in general. What do you enjoy doing in your spare time? There's nothing I enjoy more than spending quality time making memories with my little family. Whether we're exploring new places, watching movies snuggled up on the couch, or simply enjoying each other's company at home, every moment we spend together is precious.

Planning and reporting within Local Government can be complex. With various stakeholders, diverse community needs and many projects to consider, it can be easy to simply set and forget a strategic plan and fall into the trap of running periodic reports without considering how performance is communicated to the wider community. Strategic Planning efforts should not only inform decision-making and measure progress towards council goals but also reflect the priorities and needs of your communities. But how can you achieve alignment and truly reflect the priorities and needs of your community? Here are three ways to get you started: 1. Understand the needs of your community How well do you understand your community? To truly align your strategic reporting, you must first have a clear understanding of what those priorities are. Consider working with your community engagement team to create surveys and host Town Hall meetings or tailored focus groups that truly gather insight into the wants and needs of residents. At a recent conference, Luke Farr, Community Stakeholder Engagement Lead at Lake Macquarie City Council, explained how his team identifies key projects and takes a three-step approach to community engagement. “We identify key projects that we know will have a great interest in the community. We then look to go out with pre-engagement to get the communities thoughts on what’s working and what’s not working," he said. "From that feedback, we then prepare a discussion paper where we will come back with the community and check in with them - have we interpreted what you told us correctly? This way, you can iron out issues before a report goes to council recommending public exhibition. The community then has three opportunities for feedback, they have had the opportunity to be involved, have their say, and can see their feedback interpreted into the draft strategy. This potentially allows for a smoother public exhibition period." 2. Identify Key Performance Indicators and Define Strategic Reporting Success Once you have a better understanding of your priorities, you can then begin to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs) that are most relevant to those priorities. Tracking and analysing these KPIs can provide valuable insights into how you are performing, key areas for improvement and help you make data-driven decisions. Once these are defined, you can start to set specific, measurable and achievable goals that align with your community priorities. This helps to define success and, in turn, effectively communicate your impact. In a recent Industry Insights report, NSW councils state indicated that councils can lean towards vague measures due to a fear of community backlash. It’s easier to succeed at something unspecific and provide a positive news story than to be accountable to a measure that’s impactful, but that has consequences when not met. The internal culture around measurement needs to shift to a mindset that benchmarks are not about being the best or worst or success or failure; it’s about progress and direction. It’s how activity is kept on track, and that failure is OK because it gives us real feedback on progress. 3. Engage with Data Visualisation Strategic reports instantly become more engaging if they are easily accessible and able to be viewed in charts, graphs or infographics. Data visualisation is an easy way to communicative complex data in a more digestible format, making it straightforward for local communities to understand the impact of your initiatives. Interactive dashboards are a great way to tell a story, build trust and enhance engagement. But how do you know what to communicate? Luke Farr admits that while there can sometimes be an abundance of data, you need to be smart with the insights you have. "There’s definitely data overload, but it’s about what we do with that data and how we can interpret it from our community. Our community tells us things through our community satisfaction survey, and we interpret that data, but it’s about looking at the data we’re receiving from community engagement projects and ensuring we’re not going back out and asking the community the same thing that they told us two or three consultations ago. It’s about being smart with your data." Our recent Insights Report also discussed the importance of timely and accurate data collection and reporting across councils. Reports should be easy and automatic, as the manual nature of the data collection can create major bottlenecks, preventing organisations from being able to access data for timely decision-making. To solve this problem, council systems must make it simple to interpret and visualise data from multiple sources. It should be simple to create visual representations of the data, using reports, dashboards and indicators to help individuals assess the status of strategies, projects, plans or services as a whole quickly and easily. Templated reports that are tailored to the needs of various stakeholder groups should be “one-click” away. Envisio aligns people, plans, and performance data and helps local councils to develop and execute plans, track and improve performance, and communicate results. If you're looking to turn your strategic plans into action and provide visibility, transparency, and increased community engagement, get in touch.

According to governance leaders, the council meeting process is one of the most important yet inefficient processes in council. It is the core democratic process of local government, but its complexity presents hidden and costly risks for councils. We recently hosted a panel discussion at LGPro’s annual Governance Conference in the Hunter Valley. We were joined by local government leaders who highlighted shared challenges facing teams in relation to council meetings. Jenna Williams was joined by Todd Hopwood, Manager Governance and Customer Service, Wollongong City Council; Flora Lepouras, Executive Manager, Shellharbour City Council; and Sonja Drca, Manager Governance & Legal, Fairfield City Council. Here’s an overview of the insights discussed on managing key person and business continuity risk while creating, managing and executing the council meeting. Eliminating Key Person Risk and the Importance of Understanding the Process For over half of councils, the responsibility of managing the council meeting process rests on the shoulders of just one person. With the complexity, parallel workflows and multiple systems involved in the council meeting, how does the panel build redundancies to ensure the process runs smoothly? The panel agreed that retaining staff to manage the council meeting process can be difficult. Still, they have all implemented strategies to streamline the process and make it easier for those involved. “There’s a lack of appreciation of what is involved in one of the most important processes a council undertakes,” said Flora. “We have one person responsible for the end-to-end process of council meetings because when we try to get people involved, they run for the hills. A major challenge for us is that people don’t see the value in the systems we use, so we have gone back to using word – It’s less clunky than what we have, and we don’t have to train people on it.” There’s a lack of appreciation of what is involved in one of the most important processes a council undertakes. For Sonja, training people on the meeting process and having systems in place has been key to keeping everyone engaged and managing turnover. “We have had a very similar experience at Fairfield. It’s important to understand the end-to-end process – what happens behind the scenes, from the staff to the councillors and the executives. We have committee and council meetings, so it’s important that our staff are familiar with the code of meeting practice and how to prepare reports,” she expressed. “While meetings usually fall on one person, there comes the point where you have to train others. One of the things I did was form written procedures. I did have a staff turnover, and I found that was the best tool I had. It was a document that put in place why we do what we do, what needs to happen – and then instructions covering click this, press that. Todd agreed that keeping people engaged in the process could be difficult. As a result, he now has a Governance Team of four who manage each meeting on rotation. The Panel (L-R): Jenna Williams, Flora Lepouras, Todd Hopwood, Sonja Drca Managing the Stress, Frustration and Gaining Executive Buy-In With many stakeholders interfacing with the meeting process, it can be very frustrating and stressful for Governance Teams and Meeting Administrators who pull it all together. One point that did come up in the insights report was the lack of visibility at an executive level when it comes to the pain and suffering that teams go through. The panellists recognised this was an issue and provided advice on how they gained executive buy-in to make changes to meetings. Todd discussed the many approaches that he has taken to help encourage change. “Executive buy-in can be hard if your General Manager or Corporate Services Manager didn’t come from the Governance stream – if they haven’t been through the pain of council meetings and just turn up to the meeting, or if they haven’t lived and breathed it. So one of the tools I’ve used was getting onto the internal audit plan and influencing the scope to make sure it looks at pre-meeting processes and efficiencies.” Todd also encouraged councils to ensure their Governance Teams can make simple changes in the business review meetings to speed up the process. Executive buy-in can be hard if your General Manager or Corporate Services Manager didn’t come from the Governance stream – if they haven’t been through the pain of council meetings and just turn up to the meeting, or if they haven’t lived and breathed it. The Transparency Challenge From internal challenges with visibility of progress actions and resolutions to easy, consumable access to information – we asked the panel to share their experiences on how they are working to achieve greater transparency. It was evident from all panellists that technology played a role in achieving ultimate transparency. While Wollongong’s council meeting process is quite open, they aim to move to a transparent view of councillor activity. “We want to get to a point where we have councillor profiles on our website where people can then just click on them and view benefits directly linked and conflicts of interest,” explained Todd. “We also want our reports to link to the previous reports so you can just follow the bouncing ball, and if there’s community engagement action, you can just click and see the voting records. We want to have an approach where the customer can follow the bouncing ball and not have to know where to find information.” For Sonja, the challenges she faces regarding visibility relate to centralising information in one place and encouraging teams to provide updates shortly and succinctly for greater transparency. “I find people have a tendency to just write it’s in progress or ongoing. I say to them, tell a story, but please be mindful that we don’t need the bible; I want a short, succinct summary of the status of the matter. Obviously, with time, you do training, and people are getting better at that – you just need to give them the guidance, and that really puts things in context for them. I find people have a tendency to just write it’s in progress or ongoing. I say to them, tell a story, but please be mindful that we don’t need the bible; I want a short, succinct summary of the status of the matter, Sonja described that while the publishing process for Shellharbour is currently manual, the goal is to have all actions and responses visible to the community. “In an ideal world, we would love to be able to have our actions and responses and tasks on our website; at the moment, it’s a manual system - we have the council resolution, an action and an update, and that table goes to councillors, but it’s not published on the website for the public to see which is a great idea.” Effective Ways to Encourage Public Engagement Another aspect of achieving transparency is public engagement. Flora explained how Shellharbour uses strategies to make it easy for its community to view and interact with the published council meetings. “We have open Council Meetings. We webcast them live and publish them on our website the next day,” said Flora. “We have also tried to slow the whole council process down so people get an understanding of what happens in a council meeting. We have created what we call mock minutes, which is basically a transcript of every meeting. A staff member looks at the business paper and prepares these minutes, and it steps through the process so that any member of the public watching a council meeting can see what is happening every step of the way.” To view the full Insights Report discussed, please click here. Redman Solutions are proud Corporate Supporters of LG Professionals NSW and look forward to attending and hosting more thought-provoking discussions in the future.

With a natural desire to help people and a passion for local government, it’s no wonder Nicole Sargent fits in perfectly at Redman Solutions and is admired by colleagues and clients. We caught up with Nicole and discovered her love of the great outdoors and the important role she played in the 2019 Townsville Floods. Where are you originally from, and where are you based? I was born and raised in Townsville and proudly still call it home. We are lucky to be surrounded by family and love the lifestyle. In saying that, it does get quite hot, and we actually prefer colder climates – but we will probably wait until our two sons are older before we think about making the move. Explain a little about your role: I assist local councils with implementing new systems that improve their business processes. Having worked in local government myself, I love working with teams to align how they work with technology and streamline what they do. My goal is to make their lives easier and allow them to provide the best possible service and outcomes to their residents. Working closely with clients also allows me to share feedback and enhancements on our solutions with our internal development teams. We’re an innovative team that thrives on feedback, and it’s quite exciting that we are helping to shape how local government uses technology to streamline how they work. How long have you been part of Team Redman? I joined in July last year. It’s only been eight months, but it feels like I have been part of the team forever! What gets you up and going in the morning? Knowing that I am helping people, providing clarity and finding ways that will improve their work life. I enjoy solving problems and get an adrenaline rush when I can help people work through a challenge and come out the other side with some benefits and positive improvements. My aim is to make it easier and more enjoyable for people to do their job so they also enjoy coming to work each day. Outside of work, what do you enjoy doing? I’m a self-confessed book nerd and love nestling up with a good story on a rainy day – when I get the chance. Otherwise, you will find me down by the river on my stand-up paddle board or playing (winning) board games or puzzles with my kids. So, you love being outdoors? I love travelling around Australia and visiting local communities - I just wish I could do more of it. I look forward to being able to visit more Local Government clients in the future to understand more about their regions, how they work and what’s important to them. What’s one thing people might not know about you? I was awarded a National Emergency Medal for my work in the 2019 Townsville Floods. I worked as the Operations Coordinator and Emergency System Superuser in the Townsville Local Disaster Management Centre.

Sustainability is a core concern for many Australian communities, which is reflected nationally across council community strategic plans. With thousands of pages being printed in the council meeting process, paper waste is an ongoing concern that is out of alignment with the sustainability goals of Australian communities. Think about it - how many pages is your typical business paper? And is your current paper usage in alignment with community expectations? Sustainability was highlighted as a key risk in our latest Insights Report, The Unrealised Potential of Council Meetings. Here’s an overview of some of the findings, as well as some tips you can put in place to support sustainability. 75% of councils are still reliant on hard-copy business papers. Council business papers can reach up to 2000 pages each month. For a council with ten councillors, that’s 20,000 pages or 40 reams of paper each meeting cycle. With only one in four respondents saying their council meetings are completely electronic, across Australia, huge volumes of paper are being wasted each meeting cycle. This is not due to a lack of trying to move councils to electronic – uniformly, we all value sustainability and environmental protection – but sometimes it’s the practicality of the change that can make it difficult. Almost 1 in 2 councils say that staff and councillors get lost in big PDFs. Electronic PDFs can be confusing and unreliable, and the data showed that this is the most frustrating aspect of the meeting experience. It’s difficult to keep up with proceedings, accommodate changes to agenda items and prepare for upcoming items without getting lost. It’s unsurprising that many councillors and staff still prefer the experience of hard copy papers and why many fail to transition to electronic systems. When it comes to helping stakeholders make the change, it’s important to understand how they are currently using the system and how their experience will be enhanced by making the transition. How can you support sustainability? It’s evident that sustainability should be a focus, as it presents not only an issue, but ignoring it can cause many frustrations. So how can you support sustainability and encourage the change to electronic systems? Change is easy when the benefits to individuals are clear and users are supported to realise quick wins. They need to be clearly articulated and conveyed to each stakeholder group. It’s important to ensure that any system you are trying to transition people to is a genuine improvement of their experience. Systems also need to ensure that councillors can navigate wherever they need to be with one simple click and provide tools that elevate the experience, so the change is appealing. When it comes to implementation, always make sure that frustrations are heard and that a tailored approach is used to encourage behavioural change. Discover more insights by downloading the full report or watching our recorded webinar, or watching our recorded webinar here. Learn more about how Resolve Meeting Management can help streamline your Council Meeting process here.

We are all aware of disruptions caused by events such as fire and flooding and the difficulties these represent to council operations When relying on traditional system architecture, councils can be left vulnerable and exposed to sudden impacts on business continuity. While COVID has driven increased take-up of remote working and cloud-based solutions, many councils still lag in utilising cloud solutions for the meeting process. Even if councils use software to manage agenda and business paper compilation, most councils have systems in the process that are not integrated or remotely accessible. This continues to create inefficiencies and quality issues and can deter staff and councillors from engaging with the process. Our latest Insights Report, The Unrealised Potential of Council Meetings, highlighted the common challenges and risks associated with the council meeting process. One insight that we uncovered was Business Continuity – are our on-prem solutions making us inaccessible and vulnerable to disasters? Here’s an overview of some of the findings, as well as some tips you can put in place to mitigate risk. 67% of councils use four or more systems in the meeting process. Meeting administrators are responsible for managing an array of workflows and tasks beyond agenda and business paper preparation. These systems range from spreadsheets to webcasting technology and are necessary to plan and execute the council meeting. With over 60% of councils us 4 or more systems to manage the meeting process and 20% using 6-10, this can often lead to duplication of effort, frustration and wasted time. Additional systems often require additional processes and people, which prevents best use of council resources. The move to online meetings has also accelerated the natural progressions to hybrid meetings. This has introduced more systems and added a layer of complexity rather than making the process more streamlined. The implications of using too many systems which aren’t fully integrated can have huge implications on the council meeting process. It’s important to think about the meeting as an end-to-end process and consider how you could be doing more with less. Less than 1 in 2 councils have all systems in the meeting process accessible on any device at anytime. When stakeholders can’t access what they need, when they need it, the burden falls on meeting administrators to complete tasks, create workarounds or become a single source of truth to communicate across departments and keep actions on track. Councils can’t realise the full business continuity gains if some systems that support council meetings are not remotely accessible. If we want to accommodate remote working, we must be able to access the right systems across any device at any time. And with 54% not being able to, have we really taken full advantage of cloud-based technology? How can you support Business Continuity? More councils are moving to cloud-based IT strategies to overcome issues of system accessibility and to support business continuity. The ability to access systems and platforms from web browsers rather than specific programs makes it easier to manage the meeting process from anywhere and helps facilitate working-from-home arrangements. It’s important to consider all stakeholders when streamlining the systems used in your meeting process. Ask yourself – how will this benefit external stakeholders that we need to engage with this process, such as councillors and the public? It's important to consider all stakeholders when streamlining the systems used in your meeting process. Also, remember that many councils don’t get value out of the systems they implement because change management simply isn’t well-resourced. Technology fails when there isn’t buy-in, so when implementing any type of system, consider the benefits for all stakeholder groups and ensure the change is communicated clearly. Discover more insights by downloading the full report here, or watching our recorded webinar here. Learn more about how Resolve Meeting Management can help streamline your Council Meeting process here

It’s the one process in council that must happen, and for some governance leaders, it’s considered the most important yet inefficient process. The council meeting is complex, and with 67%* of councils using four or more systems to manage the process, it can be difficult for staff to create and execute with speed and accuracy. Our latest Insights Report, The Unrealised Potential of Council Meetings, highlighted the common challenges and risks associated with the council meeting. One insight that we uncovered was Key Person Risk – because one person managing the process is a disaster waiting to happen. Here’s an overview of some of the findings and tips you can put in place to mitigate risk. Key Person Risk – What’s the Impact? With the inherent complexity of the meeting process from end to end, there’s bound to be some risk around key people. In many councils, a single person is responsible for executing the meeting process from end to end – but what happens when that person becomes sick or has to take leave? When councils have no redundancy, key person risk emerges. The meeting process is inherently complex with multiple stakeholders, parallel workflows, and systems to be coordinated. The greater the complexity of the process, the greater the risk and the more challenging it is to train people to create sufficient redundancy. 1 in 2 councils rely on a single person to manage the process. Over half of all councils rely on a single person to manage the meeting process, with many admitting that key staff can’t take leave at certain times (25%) and staff must work overtime to make the meeting happen (21%). For those meeting administrators who can get approved leave, many councils mentioned the responsible person receives numerous texts and phone calls with questions and requests for assistance. In some circumstances, up to 12 people can be pulled in to assist team members to ensure the meeting goes ahead as planned. This impact can be huge in terms of quality and lost time. Think about where that time could be better spent by staff and how it could potentially slow council progress when things get pushed off the agenda. 70% of councils said last-minute changes and formatting issues cause stress and delays. Even for councils with systems in place, formatting challenges were named a top concern. These inefficiencies and frustrations make it difficult to train and unappealing to learn the meeting process, which makes creating redundancy difficult. Many respondents also noted their frustration with chasing report writers who don’t respect deadlines, which then creates last-minute pressure to solve more finicky formatting issues, adding stress to an already high-pressure situation. Along with this, many councils struggle to attract and retain staff in governance roles – this doesn’t help the situation. With duplicated tasks and effort, many employees do what is required to make the meeting happen without raising any issues or concerns. It’s this hidden risk that can result in frustration and disengagement. How can you alleviate the stress and mitigate Key Person Risk? It’s important to look beyond the agenda and business paper preparation and consider the whole council meeting process, end-to-end. Understanding the process can help to uncover where the challenges lie and who is being impacted. Consider identifying all key stakeholders and the outcomes important to them so you can ensure systems will be appealing to use. When considering systems, look at how they reduce complexity across the whole process for all relevant stakeholders and administrators. Remember, the more streamlined the process is, the easier it is to train people in this role to ensure councils have sufficient redundancy. Discover more insights by downloading the full report or watching our recorded webinar. Learn more about how Resolve Meeting Management can help streamline your Council Meeting process here.

Jenna is all about finding solutions to problems - whether it's negotiating with her five year old son to get out the door each morning or supporting local councils to achieve the best outcomes. We sat down with Client Executive, Jenna Williams to learn more about her passions, her entrepreneurial spirit, and what drives her succeed. Here's your chance to get to know her a little more. Tell us a little about where you are originally from and where you live now. I was born in New Zealand and lived in many places there - most recently, Palmerston North. We moved to Brisbane to chase the warmer weather and haven’t looked back since. Your role is Client Executive at Redman Solutions - what does that entail, and what gets you up in the morning? My key role is to look after the relationships in the business. I also work closely with councils to better understand how technology can support them to achieve the best outcomes and build trust and transparency with their communities. I also love working with my clients to uncover the regular challenges they face and create industry-leading research and insights to support the sector. What gets me out of bed most mornings? Knowing that I can make a difference in how my clients are working. I get so satisfied when councils fully understand the extent of how much our technology transforms how they work and gives them back more time, energy and focus. I also work with a very supportive team, so that definitely helps! What does a regular weekday in ‘the life of Jenna’ look like? My days start and end with uncovering problems and finding solutions! It all begins with me negotiating with my 5-year-old son and trying to find creative ways to keep him focused on getting ready and out the door for school. On most mornings, this involves him going for a bike ride and me chasing him which gives us both some exercise to start the day. Once I get into the office, I start the day right by cooking myself breakfast. I then contact my clients to involve them in research pieces and let them know about any recent discoveries we have made. This is followed by more research, writing reports and proposals, or face-to-face meetings with councils to understand their challenges. Then it’s off to the gym in the afternoon and back home with my son, where I try to avoid any more negotiations! What are you passionate about? I am a big believer in self and personal development and am always striving to be the best version of myself I can be. I’m fascinated by how we show up as humans, solve problems and make decisions which is why I enjoy my professional role so much. What's something people might not know about you? I am quite entrepreneurial and have some experience in start-ups. Most recently, during COVID, I launched a project that employed over 50 people from around the country who had lost their jobs due to the pandemic. We were like the Uber of Facemasks and were sewing thousands of cloth facemasks per week from home. What's on the cards for Jenna in 2023? My goal is to focus more energy on my NSW and VIC client base, attend more industry events and create more insight reports to help support the sector. Oh, and get much faster results when negotiating with my very head-strong 5 year old.

We recently held a webinar to delve into our latest Insights Report - The Unrealised Potential of Council Meetings. During this webinar, we discussed the five main areas of risk that we uncovered from the research. Key person risk Business continuity Oversight Sustainability Accountability and transparency Watch the webinar below to learn more about these areas and uncover best practice insights: Discover how Resolve Meeting Management can help streamline your council meeting process today! Book a complimentary demo here