Human Resource Challenges for Northern Territory Government

This paper explores the human resource challenges faced by the Northern Territory Government in their business and economic development department. It discusses recruitment and selection processes, population growth issues, change management, succession planning, and training and development. The department aims to attract trade and investment opportunities, develop a skilled workforce, and support business growth and sustainability.

Running Head: HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGMENT
Human Resource Managment
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

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Introduction
This paper will explore human resource challenges for one of the business and economic
development functioning departments of the Northern Territory Government.It is positioned to
attract greater trade and investment opportunities to develop the north, enable the advancement of
a skilled and capable workforce, equipped for the jobs of the future and support business growth
and sustainability by delivering a broad range of programs and services to business, industry and
workers.The department has an annual budget of approximately $216 million and approximately
250 full-time equivalent employees in 2017-18, with a Territory-wide network of regional offices. It
has a small people and capability team of six people. The key stakeholders are Territorians and
Territory Enterprises. Local government, Federal Government, Industry Associations, Project
Proponents.
Main Body
Recruitment and Selection
The Department is committed to attracting, developing and retaining a talented, diverse and
inclusive workforce. It is recognised the importance of transparent recruitment and selection
processes based on the merit principle and to this end, adhere to the NT Public Sector (NTPS)
recruitment and selection policy and simplified recruitment scheme.
Recruitment and selection processes are to follow the NTPS best practice standards of completions
within six weeks of the date of advertising where all applicants are afforded a high standard of
candidate care and are fully informed of the selection outcome.
This makes attracting the right people—in terms of ability and motivation—and having the means for
effectively assessing and selecting the best employees fundamental HR responsibilities.
Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence that many public service agencies lack this HRM
capacity. For example, in two reports the Partnership for Public Service not only identifies a litany of
HRM challenges (2010a)—most notably, assessing job applicants (2010b)—but also reports healthy
skepticism among federal human capital officers over the ability of the federal HRM workforce to
meet them. This situation is potentially dire given President Obama’s (2010) memo aimed at
streamlining federal hiring—including the goal of eliminating burdensome and time-consuming essay
requirements for applicants. Though streamlining may be a laudable goal, the U.S. Merit Systems
Protection Board (MSPB, 2010) warns that federal agencies may struggle as they seek tools for
evaluating what may end up being—thanks to these reforms and anemic job growth associated with
the Great Recession—a flood of applicants. Similar pressures undoubtedly obtain at other levels of
government and in nonprofit organizations where HRM capacity issues may be even more
pronounced. – Clerkin&Coggburn
We generally agree with the importance of incorporating PSM as a selection criterion into public
service employment despite practical challenges (Mann, 2006), but we also want to reiterate the
importance of including certain PSM messages from the very beginning of the recruitment process as
part of a human resources marketing strategy (Jacobson, 2011; Ritz & Waldner, 2011). Owing to the
attraction-selection-attrition framework, public service organizations should consider incorporating
PSM, especially elements related to the Self-Sacrifice dimension, as a key component of their
recruitment efforts (e.g., Liu et al., 2011; Doverspike, Qin, Magee, Snell, &Vaiana, 2011). If the goal is
to develop a large pool of qualified applicants with high PSM, then it behooves organizations to send
clear and accurate messages in their job announcements about both the organization’s values and
the nature of jobs being filled (MSPB, 2010; Tschirhart et al., 2008). Offering a realistic portrayal of
what the organization stands for and a preview of what a specific job entails should help facilitate an

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applicant self-selection process where high PSM prospects are more apt to apply than those with low
PSM.12 – Clerkin&Coggburn
Kramer & Barton
Pics on phone
Small jurisdiction, small population, smaller pool of candidates
Since the population level of the Northern territory of Australia is relatively small and the economy of
the land is also small with several remote areas, there are issues regarding data collection of the
human resources. The small sample size of the population for data collection during the official
surveys is the reason behind the data being skewed since the information might not be the true
representation of the entire population and tis might in turn result in greater volatility. The remoteness
might be one major hindrance behind data collection for the Northern Collection. In this context,
Cooper, Noblet and Burke (2012), highlights that trend data is very essential as it is often very helpful
for analysis since it smooths seasonal as well as one off variations.
The small population of the land is also one major issue for the Northern Territory HR
development department. Despite the diversity of the internal population, there are several other
issues that need consideration of the government. The first issue is the typically male dominated
population. That is why there is an imbalance in the working sphere and the communal life as well.
The instability of habitation of the non-indigenous people is one of the major reasons for which the
corporate working sphere of the community is suffering from the lack of resources. On the contrary, it
has been noticed that the indigenous population comprise of only 14% of the workforce. This is why,
the personal as well as the professional development of the local population is difficult to be mapped.
The volatile population growth pattern of the Northern territory is becoming the major
hindrance behind the formulation of some stable human resource development policy in the region.
As investigated by Clerkin and Coggburn (2012), the changes in the migration laws to and from this
region is one of the main factors accountable for the absence of a rigid development plan for the
economic, educational and individual development of the people of this region. Another identified
issue because of which the indigenous as well as the expatriate population finds difficulty in economic
as well as persona accomplishment in this region is the poor internal connection across the various

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governmental departments and the weak interlink between the core working committees of the labour,
finance as well as transport departments.
The business and economic development department of the Government of Northern territory
is positioned in order to attract greater trade and investment opportunities to develop the north, enable
the advancement of a skilled and capable workforce, equipped for the jobs of the future and support
business growth and sustainability. However, the department is quite distanced from the main
political power centres because of which the financial decisions of the federal or the local government
are not yielding productive decisions (Kramar, Bartram & De 2013). As an outcome, the impact of the
government’s decision on the service and/or the product market is becoming ineffective. Lastly, it
should also be specified that the extreme climate that the remote areas of the northern territory are
subjected to, are the outcome of the natural disasters.
Population Growth Rate of the Northern Australia

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(Source: Taylor et al., 2018)
Change Management
Changes in government after each election – changes in priorities – budget freezes
In the December of 2018, the Northern Territory government released data of a spiralling net
debt, which rose from $1.7 billion at the time when the Labour party first came in to power
up to a miserably high value of $4.5 billion by the end of the 2017-18 financial years. It can
be expected that as the consequences of budget freezes, the expected valuation of debt by the
end of 20129-30 is supposed to rise up to $35.7 billion (Yeoh, Bowen and Carapetis 2016).
Currently the government is blaming the recent restructuring of the GST as the primary
reason behind the current fiscal problem that issue faced by the government. However, the
federal government have rejected the proposition. The current government also do not have
any plans to repair the budget of the northern territories. This implies that in the near future
the only alternative to cost management that will be available to the government is cutting
jobs of the public sector. However, Manison recently spoke in a public meeting that their
government is not going to undertake the approach of the CLP and make random cuts in the
jobs and make prices of essential commodities unnecessary high. As an outcome, it is
expected that under Manison the cost of living is not going to exceed the level of severity.
The government is planning now to provide a pay of $15000 to each family for
shifting permanently to the NT under the Boundless Possible Population strategy of the
government. It is in this way that the government is expecting to boost the channels of
economy in NT. Nevertheless, it can be counter argued that at the at the moment, the cost
cutting is the only option open to the financially downtrodden Manison government and
reduction of jobs as well as salaries of the public sector is the only option available to the
government. Nevertheless, the government, as it seems of now, will not be able to offer

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permanent scope of work to the new infiltrates, since the government cannot afford to invest
10 to 12% of their annual budget over salary. As an outcome, influenced from the findings of
Peden et al. (2017), it can be assessed that the lack of permanent employment will again drive
the new habitants of the NT to move out of the locale in search of better economic
opportunities.
Succession planning/ career development
The Northern territory career and economic development department is offering financial incentives
to the workers, incorporating those in the disability sector, if the workers decide to settle in the
Northern territory. However, as analysed by Humphreys et al. (2017), the population growth
strategy of the NT is faceted to develop the population growth rate from 0.6% to a historical
percentage of 1.4%. As such, they further reports that the government is supposed to create
opportunities of 21000 new job opportunities within the next 10 years. This will give the economy of
the Northern territory a boost of about $10 billion. However, Freeman et al. (2016), argues that there
are subtle factors that would not provide the scope to the concerned department of the NT government
to implement this plan. The first factor behind this is the lack of consistency of the government. After
the change of government at the end of each election, the individual governments discard the policy of
the previous government. As an outcome, two things happen. Firstly, the investment that has already
went in to the project goes in to waste. Secondly, the local population loses hope to get benefitted
from the government’s policies and starts migrating.
However, it must be reflected that the development of Human resources and trade department
of the NT government is trying to gather substantial development in the public sector of the NR
region. In this scope, the basic advantage that the government is that due to the lack of employability
in the stable position of the public sector services, the economic allotment for the employee salaries is
not invested.
Training and development
The training and development trends of the Northern territory are majorly different
from the career progressing plans of the NT government. As researched by Russell et al

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(2017), the job distribution in major parts of the NT is skewed even higher than before
towards the major population areas in the Northern Territory. As an outcome, the primary
focus has shifted from bringing in skilled workers in higher numbers to developing the skills
of the current workforce in urban locations of Northern Territory. This is in direct contrast
with the training and development policies of the concerned departments of the Northern
territory.
Analysis of the drivers of major skill development in Northern Territory reveals that
the workforce in the Northern territory is significantly influenced by the major projects and as
an outcome, the public sector industry is heavily reliant on the flying in and flying out of the
workers. The governmental sectors are not able to preserve the skills as well as experience of
the workers after the completion of the individual projects. Even if the migratory workers are
influenced by the initiatives of the Northern Territory to draw them towards remote areas like
Regional Skilled Visa or the Sponsored Migration Scheme, they are always eager to relocate
to the metropolitan areas after the fulfilment of the visa sponsorship requirements.
Innovation/ increasing productivity
Since 2010, the NT government has repetitively commissioned the income management for
helping the aboriginals as well as the migrants to find stable sources of income. However, the
popular belief among the majority of the aboriginals is that the income management
strategies of the government are highly discriminatory. In fact the Joint Parliamentary
committee on Human Rights founded in a review that there was a hint of racial
discrimination in the standards outlined in the UN conventions. Since the launch of the NT
intervention scheme for income management, the Commonwealth government has itself
contributed about AUD $1billion. Innovations like the abolition of the Community
development Employment Projects have contributed to creation of mass unemployment as
well as exploitation. The Rudd government developed the policy of NT jobs package by

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replacing the CDEP positions with real jobs creating about 2241 positions. However,
fundamental analysis by Russell et al. (2017), reveals that the jobs under the latest schemes
were actually part time and also recorded for lowest levels of public sector pay. As an
outcome of this step, the rate of unemployment of the aboriginals skyrocketed from 11%
(before this innovation) yo 28% after the implementation of the innovation project.
Advise the organisation on how they could improve the effect of HRM on organisational
performance.
Human Capital Plan
The basic framework for the NTPS Human Capital Plan of the NT business and economic
development department is as follows:
Workplace Culture
Strategies KPIs Timeframe
The capability, Leadership The desired articulations of 1 year

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Framework as well as the
Code of Conduct are needed
to be clearly crafted as well
as articulated so that the
culture that the NTPS is
attempting achieve, is easily
understood by the current
workforce
the culture of non-
discrimination among
recipients have to be
promoted among the on-field
employees.
Promoting the Code of
Conduct through various
products developed as well
as service targeted towards
various agencies.
Increasing the number of
employees who are
concerned about conduct as
well as NTPS values.
Revised annually
Supporting as well as
promoting survey, analysing
the agency results as well as
developing as well as
implementing the agency
Response Plan.
100% agencies develop
response plans as well as act
on the results.
Based on the whole sector
people Matter survey Report
(2016, 2018).
Using a multipronged
approach including raising of
awareness, training of the
staff and the managers,
appointment of trained
contact officers, development
 Increasing the
employee
engagement in the
NTPS as well as
ensuring employee
satisfaction.

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of individual competency in
dealing with the
inappropriate behaviour as
well as strengthening
reporting and mechanisms of
review
 Implementing staff
attended training.
Workplace Leadership Plan
Strategies KPIs Reporting Timeframe
Review of the existing
framework and exploration
 Development of
executive
Based on release of the
reports of People Matter

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as well as development of a
consistent performance
framework for the
executives.
The respective departments
will be responsible for
implementation of the
performance framework for
the senior executives as well
as reporting regularly against
Human Capital KPIs.
performance
framework as well as
template which
incorporates human
capital KPIs.
 Improvement in the
perception of the
leaders regarding the
role of the employees.
Survey results.
The current government
should carry on the
leadership program based on
the leadership capability
gaps, particularly at the
supervisory entry positions.
Workplace Conditions
Strategies KPIs Timeframe of
accomplishment
Development of a NTPS
transition to retirement policy
incorporating elements for
the assisting agencies with
Development and final
implementation of the
policies.
Implementation of the
retirement policy that had
been drafted by 30th June
2016.

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strategic workforce planning
as well as development. All
concerned departments of the
NTPS will be responsible for
the providing feedback
regarding the agendas that
would follow.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be stated that in order to effectively implement the development
policies for the aboriginals and the immigrants in the Northern Territory, it is essential to put
together a solid work team. It is necessary to discuss about the expectations of the community
as well as communicate about the individual responsibilities so that the entire organisation
stays prompt about the services that need to be undertaken.
References
References
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