Thirty per cent of Whittlesea council staff do not feel safe at work and the number of staff reporting psychological stress as a result of councillor behaviour and decisions has increased, a council report has revealed.
According to the council’s quarterly safety and wellbeing report January 2020 update, which was presented to the March 3 council meeting, the number of staff who reported feeling safe at work “dropped significantly” in the three months to December 2019.
The report said that in quarter four of 2018-19 (April-June 2019) and quarter one of 2019-20 (July- September 2019), 81 per cent of staff said they felt safe at work, falling to 70.8 per cent in quarter two (October-December 2019).
The report said the local government benchmark is 75.1 per cent.
The report also stated there was a “significant increase” of staff reporting “exposure to psychological stress factors” relating to councillor behaviour and/or council decisions in November and December.
“The decision by [Simon Overland] to take personal leave and the subsequent council decision to terminate the chief executive officer impacted on the organisation in relation to increased numbers of staff reporting psychological stress and taking unpaid leave,” the report stated.
The report also noted that a WorkSafe investigation was underway in relation to reported bullying complaints involving councillors and officers.
However, some councillors rejected suggestions councillors had impacted on the wellbeing of staff.
“It must be noted that our protocol … is that councillors are not allowed to interact with staff members at all … the only staff members that we can interact with directly are our directors,” mayor Emilia Lisa Sterjova said.
“So there is a bit of confusion here as to how councillors could have impacted on the wellbeing of the 1200 staff members in the organisation.”
Cr Sam Alessi said it was important councillors took note of the report because what was happening with the staff was an “absolute tragedy”.
“We have had record numbers of staff going off on all sorts of stress leave and other sorts of leave because of certain events involving certain councillors,” he said.
Crs Sterjova and Mary Lalios said it was important that the health and wellbeing of councillors was prioritised, noting that the report was written without input from councillors.
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