Whanganui District Council chief executive David Langford. Photo / Bevan Conley
Whanganui District Council chief executive David Langford. Photo / Bevan Conley
Specialised staff are in high demand at the Whanganui District Council, an issue compounded by competition from the private sector.
Council chief executive David Langford said there had been an “absolute surge” in construction and the house building sector since Covid-19, and with a lot of government stimulus funding, project managers and planners were in massively high demand.
“They were already skill shortage areas before Covid,” Langford said.
“It’s definitely difficult and the council is having to compete really hard to recruit and attract good people that can deliver our work programmes.”
Langford said the council was carrying a number of vacancies in project management.
“If you look at the status report, you can see how many of our projects haven’t progressed because they’ve got no resource.”
The annual plan 2022/2023 project status report lists 55 council projects with a budget of $100,000 and above, ranging from an accessible playground to earthquake strengthening of the council chambers, the Women’s Resource Centre and the Upokongaro Hall.
Ten of the projects are in the “red” setting (significant issues) and are “subject to more intense oversight to ensure the right decisions, such as ‘go, no-go’, are made in a timely and appropriate manner”.
The Women’s Resource Centre and accessible playground are on hold due to capacity issues.
Langford said if the council was going to complete a lot of different things, like the port and the Sarjeant Gallery, all the business-as-usual operations, and new projects, it needed to “resource up” to deliver.
He had started conversations with Massey University about how the council could support an environmental planning scholarship.
“Hopefully, we’ll be in a position to launch a programme in the coming months.
“We do have alternatives to just recruiting on the open job market and competing. We can also grow our own talent whilst creating new jobs for people in our community. We can get the youngsters transitioning out of school and into work.”
Projects like the Manawatū Tararua Highway are taking staff away from Horizons, the regional council's acting chief executive Craig Grant says.
Horizons Regional Council is also recruiting for multiple positions, including a river management engineering officer and operations manager, a senior project engineer and consents monitoring officers.
Acting chief executive Craig Grant said river engineering was the hardest sector to fill at the moment.
“With the huge Manawatū Tararua Highway construction and other roading and building jobs, we’ve seen an exit of our people.
“These other commercial entities are paying premium salaries which we just can’t compete with in local government.”
Horizons had enhanced its culture and staff wellbeing to add value to someone’s employment outside of the financial component, Grant said.
Whanganui’s senior roading engineer Brent Holmes left last July to take up a role at Waka Kotahi.
Langford said the recruiting process to fill the position was in its final stages.
“We are calling it the transport manager now, rather than the roading engineer.
“Hopefully, we’ll be in a position to make an announcement about that in the next few weeks.”
Ruapehu District Council chief executive Clive Manly said they tried to recruit locally for more general roles but there was competition in the national market when it came to specialised vacancies.
“We’ve lost specialist staff to the new water entities, and that’s because they were in the [Ruapehu] office part-time on a flexible arrangement,” Manley said.
“They’ve had the chance to go to the government department and they’ve taken it.”
The council had been advertising for a permanent project manager for a long time, Manley said.
“We obviously have to fill the position with a contract while we’re recruiting and we have a very good person who comes in, but we pay national rates for them because they don’t live in the district. They visit the district when they have to.
“For real specialist help, part-time on a contract basis is what you’re forced to do.”
The Ruapehu District Council offices in Ohakune. Photo / Moana Ellis
Manley said Ruapehu didn’t have an extensive work programme like Whanganui or Palmerston North.
“We are a small council and we don’t have many luxuries to spend money on anyway, and when it comes to cutting money, it’s very hard because we don’t have much to start with.”
Langford said it was important to get the right person for the job - someone who had technical and leadership skills but also had the ability to collaborate with the local community.
“Finding that right person is the first challenge, and once we’ve found them, we’re competing against the private sector. It’s no secret that the public sector typically pays less.
“We are on the back foot in terms of competitive salaries. There are other benefits to the money that we pay, though.
“Most of the staff that work for council have a real passion and commitment to serving the community and having that sense of purpose makes up for that little bit of salary gap.”
Grant said there was a river engineering shortage today but it would be something else tomorrow.
“The world has changed as well. We’ve got a much more modern workforce than we might have had 10-15 years ago. It’s no longer a career for life.
“Another thing that’s happened is the Covid barriers have now gone. We are finding a number of our staff are taking the opportunity to have an overseas experience now.”
