Office of the Registrar General restructure consultation - Public Service Association

Office of the Registrar General restructure consultation

Office of the Registrar General restructure consultation – February 2019 (PDF version)

The PSA Industrial Officer Simon van Vegchel along with DFSI Delegate Howard Bell met with the Registrar General (RG) Mr Jeremy Cox on 12 February 2019 to discuss the recently released draft Restructure Management Plan for the ORG. It was a broad-ranging discussion as to the rationale as seen by the RG for the proposed changes.

  1. Consultation
  • The PSA again reasserted its concern that DFSI continues to commence its consultation processes much later than it should when proposing changes that may affect the health and wellbeing of workers. The relevant statutory obligations and best practice considerations were discussed at length.
  • The RG has agreed to an extension of the initial consultation period until Friday 22 February 2019.
  • The PSA encourages members to forward their specific concerns about the ORG to the Management Team for feedback.
  • Should you not wish to be identified there is a confidential option that you can utilise.
  1. Move from single graded DPO classifications to Clerk Grade 11/12

The RG acknowledged this was a difficult area for the ORG and that it had its background in the concession of how to pick the regulator out of the then LPI. There are three principles that he alluded to in his discussion around this being:

  • Concerns about the level of knowledge at the senior level and potential risk to the business at the loss of that knowledge and a better acknowledgement of succession planning along with the need for better progression opportunity to allow managers to move into director roles.
  • Transition in and out of the ORG is fairly low to non-existent and that there was a need for the business to be more flexible moving into the future and that while acknowledging that there was a tension between the 11 and 12 in creating the 11/12 role that a more generic role description will allow staff to develop into their preferred area – whether that be managing or specialisation. It was his position that logically the DPO 12 would most likely move into the proposed Managing 11/12 roles. He was aware of there being a potential for concern in a couple of years when the current DPO 11 would be at the max 12 level on the Clerk Grade 11/12.
  • The RG expressed a desire to broaden the job descriptions and the sense of responsibility for those roles. Whilst acknowledging concerns as to the TAF, the position put forward is that while there will still be dedicated TAF resources the work will be more equitably distributed across the teams. The question then becomes one of workload and where there is an excess of workload then it is raised through the structure as a resource allocation. It is then leadership’s role to make the decision as to what is important for ORG. He acknowledged that this was a shift for the Regulator to move towards working out what is important with regards to capacity and prioritising.
  1. eConveyancing
  • Within the current structure the eConveyancing has been a project which is meant to conclude by 1 July 2019 and that by now 70 per cent of that business should have been shifted out into the wider ORG structure or ‘mainstream’. He acknowledged that there will still be an ongoing need for the current contractors and referred to the Victorian State Government system.

The PSA will continue to work with members during the consultation period and throughout the restructure process. Should members want to raise additional issues the can contact

PSA Industrial Officer Simon van Vegchel by email .

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