The PSA meets with senior Service NSW management regularly throughout the year through the Joint Consultative Committee (JCC). This is a report back to members following the JCC held on 20 August 2020.
Takata airbag recall
The PSA continues to monitor and engage with the Department as to the safety concerns that have arisen with the Takata airbag recall.
A reminder to any Driver Testers who may have concerns about the processes, you are encouraged in the first instance to raise these with DTOps team by email to or escalate through to your local manager.
Working past shift and breaks: Overtime and business rules
An ongoing issue for a number of members has been when overtime should be paid when working past your end time. The business rule that should be applied is that when you have worked an additional eight minutes you should then be paid 15 minutes of overtime.
With regards to working into your meal break, the Contact Centre systems should allow for the exception and automatically correct for it. SNSW will look at making sure that there are uniform practices across the contact centres.
Early meal breaks
A further concern that has been raised within the contact centres has been staff having exceedingly early meal breaks shortly after starting their shifts – one example cited to the PSA was a staff member having to take their meal break at 9:00am, having started on a 7:00am shift.
Service NSW has looked into this, the earliest the system should allow for anyone to take a meal break from the beginning of their shift is after three hours.
There is a potential due to the daily optimisation that this may not be the case. Members are reminded that if this does happen that they should let their team leader know so that it can be adjusted to a more reasonable time.
Paid 10-minute tea break
From our organising visits across Service Centres, a few concerns with regards to members paid 10-minute tea break have been raised. Some practices that have been reported to the PSA include some Centres placing a blanket ban for having the break on Saturdays and others requiring members to combine it with their meal break.
The PSA has now been assured by Service NSW that this should not be happening and advice has been provided to those Centres where this is occurring.
COVID-19 update
Driver Testing and masks
The PSA supports the overall Department of Customer Service advice that where you cannot safely social distance, that is keep at least 1.5 metres from other people, you must wear a face mask. This means that for Driver Testers wearing a mask is now an inherent requirement for your role and part of the personal protective equipment necessary for you to safely undertake your role.
If you cannot meet the requirement, you should in the first instance discuss with your manager so that alternative duties can be found for you until such time as this direction lasts.
The PSA maintains it should also be a compulsory requirement for applicants to also wear masks.
At this time this is still under review by Service NSW, which has sought legal advice as to whether it could enforce such an order. However, there are some other issues and risk factors that have to be taken into consideration.
The PSA does not at this time support a call to suspend Driver Testing while we remain outside of Stage 3 restrictions. However, should the State re-enter into Stage 3 restrictions, our expectations would be to revert to the previous essential-only testing protocol.
Masks for Contact Centres and headsets
PSA Delegates have raised concerns about social distancing within the contact centres. Service NSW was able to confirm with the PSA that from 21 August 2020 face masks will be made readily available to staff in Contact Centres where they cannot appropriately social distance.
Service NSW was also able to confirm that all staff will have their own headset and orders were in progress for the Contact Centre standard headsets to replace department regular issue.
Customer Engagement Integration (CEI)
With the first phase of the CEI now completed, staff have been transitioned from Revenue and the Better Regulation Division into Service NSW.
This has meant that there are now four additional Contact Centre locations of Maitland, Gosford, 4PSquare and Lithgow.
There is, however, still a considerable amount of work to be done to fully integrate these areas onto Service NSW systems. It is intended that when this is completed, staff will have the opportunity to nominate for preferred locations.
Newly transitioned members from Revenue and BRD – Fair Trading are reminded of our current survey, if you haven’t filled it out please take a moment to do so:
Please take the survey at the following link; www.surveymonkey.com/r/ServiceNSWdetails
Customer Concierge Operator and Customer Service Representative Role Dispute
Due to the pandemic progress on this matter has been substantially delayed, however the PSA will be meeting further with the Department on 28 August 2020 in relation to this matter.
A further update to members following that meeting will be provided.
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