Webinars

Building a future-ready workforce with LAUNCH

Kelli Wells: Welcome to the Careers at Council Local Legends: Community Career Stories webinar series. My name is Kelli Wells, Senior Media Officer at Local Government NSW and I’ll be your host today. 

We’re really excited that you’re joining us today for what promises to be a very insightful and engaging session. Please note that we’ve got all the cameras and microphones switched off just to avoid any background noise or distractions.
Before we begin the webinar, I want to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and all the traditional custodians of the lands on which we meet today and pay my respects to Elders past, present and emerging, and I also extend a very warm welcome to any First Nations people who are joining us this afternoon. 

Our third webinar of this series, it’s an insight into a comprehensive apprenticeship and trainee program called LAUNCH, which has grown into a really robust initiative supporting skill development and career progression within the community.
And to showcase the program, we’re really pleased to welcome our guest speaker for today’s session, Jessica Parker. Jessica is the Senior Organisational Development Advisor at Cessnock City Council and you can see Jessica there on your screen.  

Jessica Parker: Hi everyone. 

Kelli Wells: Her expertise and insights are going to be really valuable for everyone and provide us with a much deeper understanding of how the structured program, offering training, development and hands on experience across departments, can help lead to a future ready workforce that’s aligned to council needs. So we’ll crack on with the webinar.
Before we actually dive into the discussion today, in the chat with Jessica. I just want to give you a brief rundown on Careers at Council. Throughout the webinar, we really do encourage you to actively participate, by asking questions and sharing your thoughts, and you’ll be able to submit your questions using the Q&A feature and we will get to those at the designated Q&A section towards the end of the webinar. 

Careers at Council – it’s an initiative of the state and territory local governments associations, and it was created by councils for councils. And it’s been established by the industry to inform, attract and retain local government’s future workforce. So it’s definitely much more than simply a jobs board.
Accessing Careers at Council is really easy. You can check it out via our Local Government NSW website, portable touchscreen device and smartphones. Careers at Council also has a dedicated LinkedIn and Facebook page, so they’re very much on socials. As well as an active YouTube channel for sharing videos of the various job roles that are available in the sector.
It is really handy to know that all the webinars that are part of the Council webinar series, they’re all being recorded, as I mentioned earlier, and they’re available for councils and job seekers to have a look at on our dedicated webinar page and our YouTube channel. And you can also read the transcripts there as well. 

All of the member councils are provided with the opportunity to shine a light on their exceptional work and their achievements through the Council Spotlight section, which you can see there. This section, it covers a range of topics including innovative projects and success stories that highlight the positive impact that councils are having on their communities. The Council spotlight, it also aims to inspire and inform current and prospective employees as well as community members about the fantastic work and the valuable contributions that are made by dedicated teams.
This is really exciting. We’re really excited about the growth of our job alerts registrations. We’ve now got 9,487 at last count, with growth from January to June of 13.9%.
And over the last 12 months, we’ve actually seen growth of 27.2%, which is just fantastic.
We’re growing every day and our member councils have now got access to a talent pool of more than 10,000 candidates. So that’s really encouraging.
You can… Excuse me, I skipped a slide, bear with me.  

We’ve also established a Careers at Council member network and that’s available to all employees of member councils who’ve subscribed to the Careers at Council platform.
We currently have 52 members, so if you want to join the network and get on board, please just send an email to [email protected]. And joining Careers at Council, joining that community is a really great way to explore job opportunities and connect with local government communities across Australia so you’ll be able to sign up for job alerts, attend our webinar series and view our vodcasts. Gosh, vodcasts! Read council spotlights, join the careers at council member network and you can also connect with us on social media and become part of this fantastic community.  

Now I think it’s time to get Jessica and her experiences ready for you. Bear with me.
OK. Thank you, Jessica, for joining us today. 

Jessica Parker: Thanks for having me. 

Kelli Wells: Appreciate that that you’re a very busy, busy person and it’s wonderful to have you here. So can you just first of all tell us a bit about your role at Cessnock City Council and your career journey and how you’ve started and how you’ve ended up where you are now. 

Jessica Parker: Yeah, sure. So I started at Cessnock City Council in 2021 and my first role here was an advisor for organisational development and learning and development, a little over 12 months ago, I became the senior advisor. So part of that, the role here is that I look after all of the learning and development and training needs for the organisation, but also managing the leadership program, succession planning frameworks, our study assistance and of course managing the apprentice and trainee program. Before working in local government, I did work in mining for a little bit over seven years and… 

Kelli Wells: Wow. 

Jessica Parker: Yeah, and I predominantly worked in safety and training and working alongside people and culture to produce a lot of initiatives and implement programs. I completed a Bachelor of Human Resource Management. Absolutely loved it and decided to continue my study last year and do a Grad Cert in Organisational Development and Leadership. So working at council I get to use a lot of the skills that I’ve developed over mining and the early stages of my career here at Cessnock so it’s great. 

Kelli Wells: That’s fantastic. It’s quite a trajectory that you’ve had.  

Jessica Parker: Yeah, definitely. 

Kelli Wells: So what inspired the creation of the LAUNCH apprenticeship and traineeship project and how did you become involved with that? 

Jessica Parker: Yep, so when I first started here, there was already a framework, an existing framework, and so there was some good bones. It just really needed to be made into a more holistic program, which we have done now. And we’ve done that over time. In 2023, we decided to give it a name, give it some branding and really round it out. So now we offer a three-day onboarding process. So we’ve got all of the apprentice, trainee and undergrad positions starting at the same date so that they can all attend an onboarding week together. The first three days are filled with training workshops and information sessions, so they’ll go through not only safety inductions and our overall organisational induction, but they’ll hear from past participants as well as go through cultural awareness training, first aid and CPR. We also have a meet and greet with the managers morning tea and they have a pizza lunch with the supervisors. So not only can they, you know, hit the ground running with feeling empowered with knowledge, but they get to network and make some friendships and connect with the cohort. So that was one of the things we incorporated to the program. Over time we also saw the need to develop our supervisors and give them the skill set they need to be able to manage and coach and mentor the apprentices and trainees, so that was another thing that we incorporated into the program. We also make sure that we give them the skills they need when the program finished, so that includes interviewing skills and job application skills. So yeah. 

Kelli Wells: That’s great. So it’s quite a holistic approach that you’ve been taking there, yeah. 

Jessica Parker: Yeah. We want to take them on a journey and we want to give them skills throughout that journey. We want them to, if they do leave our organisation, we want them to feel like they’ve built a real skillset for future jobs. 

Kelli Wells: That’s excellent. With the program design and the implementation, how is the LAUNCH program structured to support the job seekers, young job seekers and career changers as well? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah. So I’ve touched on it a little bit just before, but we really like to have that onboarding process set up so that people, if they are transitioning from school into the workplace, which can be quite scary and quite different, they feel supported and they’re given a lot of knowledge. When someone’s changing careers, maybe they’ve gone from the private sector to public, we’re making sure that they’re given, you know, the knowledge that they need as well. But focusing on developing our supervisors to help with the transitions is really important. We also work really closely with local schools and local service providers to make sure that we are meeting the challenges and barriers that might be out there. Or young job seekers and people transitioning to different work. 

Kelli Wells: That’s excellent. What departments or roles are typically involved in the program and how do you ensure that there’s a diverse range of opportunities? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah. So we are really intentional about offering a diverse range of opportunities. We predominantly have a lot of apprenticeships in our open space and community facilities business unit. They offer a range which includes painting apprenticeships, plumbing, carpentry, parks and gardens, landscape, construction. So that’s where our focus in a lot of the jobs has been. But we’ve been in lots of consultation with the organisation and many different business units have jumped on board and so we have a variety now. So environment and waste undergrads, people working in the people and culture team, IT undergrads, traineeships in business support and customer relations, traineeships at our performing arts centre, traineeships at our visitor information centre, just to name a few.  

Kelli Wells: Wow. 

Jessica Parker: So it’s good as we’ve been building, I guess, the capabilities with our staff to manage apprentices and trainees, more business units have jumped on board and wanted to have that opportunity. 

Kelli Wells: That’s, that’s fantastic. So it’s basically so diverse, it pretty much goes over the entire organisation. 

Jessica Parker: Yeah, almost. Yep. 

Kelli Wells: Wow. And with that, how do you actually integrate the professional development with the hands-on experiences with the program? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah. So with the hands-on learning, we do have all of our positions regardless if it’s an apprenticeship, traineeship or cadetship, they will go through a rotation. So we believe that is the best way people can be exposed to a majority or most of the tasks, processes and learnings that they should be, so for example, our civil construction apprentices, they will rotate between construction teams and maintenance teams being exposed to all the different tasks and also being exposed to different people and building a different skill set outside of that. Our engineering undergrads, they’ll rotate through the works and infrastructure directorate and get to work with different teams, we’ll be, they’ll look at what they’re doing at uni and then align that to the team that they’ll be working with, so they might work with the project management team or they might work with their stormwater engineers on the next rotation.  

We also, throughout the program, do a couple of professional development sessions. So we do that quarterly and some of the topics that we have completed in the past are being fit for work, wellbeing, study techniques and setting people up for success with studies. So that’s how we include professional development along with the hands-on learning. 

Kelli Wells: Oh, that’s excellent. And what about the impact that it has and the outcomes? What are some of the indicators that you use to measure the success of the program? And can you share any of the key metrics such as completion rates or employment outcomes and possibly even department retention? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah.
So we have some quantitative and qualitative metrics that we use. To start with the numbers, so we are really proud to have an 85% completion rate, so people from start to finish of their apprenticeship, traineeship for cadetship, which is awesome.  

Kelli Wells: Wow. Yeah. 

Jessica Parker: And we also have in the last financial year had ten of our LAUNCH participants go on to gain ongoing employment with us and some of which in the previous financial years have gone on to become supervisors and leaders in our organisation. So we feel like that’s a really good indicator of the success.
We also, with the qualitative indicators, we have regular check-ins with the apprentices and trainees just to make sure that things are going as they should and they’re giving us feedback. So we have that feedback loop. We also have really good discussions at the end of the program with those participants because we want to know how it’s been for them, what we can improve on, and you know what their thoughts are around the program and they can have some input as they’re leaving.  

Kelli Wells: Oh wow. 

Jessica Parker: So yeah. 

Kelli Wells: That’s fantastic and it’s very encouraging to hear about the staff retention rate. We know that that can be a challenge, particularly in some key areas in councils. Can you share a particular success story? I know that you’ve just mentioned quite a few of the, ten of them had gone on to become supervisors and leaders. 

Jessica Parker: Yes. 

Kelli Wells: Can you tell us possibly about one of those? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah, sure. So a couple do come to mind, and there’s one in my team that I think the story is really great and I’d like to share. So our undergrad, she started with us as a safety and risk and people and culture undergrad. She was a superstar, did amazing things and was also very well supported throughout the program, and has just finished leading a project where she was the head of this project, and got to implement our new safety system for our whole organisation.  

Kelli Wells: Isn’t that fantastic? 

Jessica Parker: So it was really, yeah, it was really great to see. She did an amazing job, we’re all very proud. And now that that project has finished, she’s working as our people and culture officer, so supporting the whole people and culture business unit. It’s great, yeah. 

Kelli Wells: That’s excellent. And what about the program and its contribution to local economic stability, workforce development, because it would, I’m imagining, have a significant impact at that level as well. 

Jessica Parker: Yeah. So it’s we have, we like to develop, well create local jobs for local people. We do have, I would say 90% of our LAUNCH participants are locals or have, you know grown up here or gone to school here, which is really great. We also try to use a lot of local training providers so that we are keeping, you know, keeping things in our local community. And, yeah. 

Kelli Wells: And it’s excellent. The fact that doing it with, providing those opportunities for local people, you don’t end up with as, you can help stem that brain drain going from your town and young people can stay and create a life for themselves there. 

Jessica Parker: Yeah.

Kelli Wells: Speaking of that community involvement. How does the program help foster a sense of community and belonging among the participants? And I’m guessing because a lot of them are local you would see that impact. 

Jessica Parker: Yes. So we work closely with the local schools. I have for the last few years, have attended the schools before we advertise and I speak with the students and I give them an opportunity to ask questions about what it’s like to work at council. We really want to encourage young people to look at local government and our council as a great learning opportunity and career journey for them. So we’ve put together books on some of the different directorates as well as careers that you can have in local government, what the pathways are. So I think working with the schools and actually getting there face to face and answering questions and talking to them and explaining what the opportunities out there are, has really given us a great relationship with the community and being able to develop positions based off some of those interactions as well. 

Kelli Wells: Oh, that’s fantastic. And you were mentioning before that you’ve got that feedback loop with the with the participants. What sort of feedback have you received from the apprentices and the trainees and the staff about its impact? 

Jessica Parker: We get a lot of feedback from the team saying that they really enjoy having apprentices and trainees as part of the team because of the dynamics, and I’ve had a couple of people reach out saying that they’ve really enjoyed the learning they’ve got out of supervising an apprentice or training and the personal development that they’ve had. 

My most recent bit of feedback I had from a trainee was one of our trainees who’s just completed their traineeship and they reached out to say how supportive they felt throughout the journey. They had a few challenges and there was a bit of, there was some challenges around study and being able to complete study and they felt that we made really good adjustments and helped to support them and you know, helped to develop them in the space of being able to study and manage their time and take on that personal and work balance. So it was yeah , a really, really good bit of feedback to hear -makes it all worth it. 

Kelli Wells: It’s it does, doesn’t it? And speaking of challenges, you never grow in a situation when things are comfortable. The challenges help us grow. What challenges did you come across when it came to launching the program, scaling the program? And how did you actually deal with those? 

Jessica Parker: I think one of the biggest problems with having a program for apprentices and trainees is the resources behind it . So I up until about 18 months ago or nearly two years ago actually, it was a one-woman show and I found that because of a lot of the admin, a lot of the stakeholder relationships and was all centralised. It was really hard to increase the number of participants, the workload was quite a lot, so one of the, that was a huge challenge. And one of the things that I think has really helped to be able to facilitate a program of this size is the development that we’ve given our supervisors, and the ownership we’ve given them. So our supervisors will be there at sign up. They’ll be there with the apprentice network provider during sign up. So they understand the process from right from the beginning. They also sign off the training plans, they have regular check-ins. So without them, the program, we wouldn’t be able to do what we do. And especially wouldn’t be able to have, you know, 25 apprentices and trainees and undergrads at the moment. So. 

Kelli Wells: Oh, that’s fantastic. How do you address skill shortages and generational engagement through this initiative? It’s always a bit tricky. 

Jessica Parker: Yes, definitely. So we, with LAUNCH, we wanted it to have a branding that was quite youthful, but could also speak to the different generations. So we feel that our branding reaches a lot of people, but we’ve also we have a bit of a media campaign that we do leading up to the advertising, and while we’re advertising, so we have videos that were produced, they’re on the ads, we have social media posts that will go out that you will see soon because we are advertising as of today. 

Kelli Wells: Very good, good plug. 

Jessica Parker: But also as I mentioned before, building the capabilities of our supervisors to be able to communicate with the different generations as well as going to the schools and engaging with students face to face as well. We do attend a lot of careers, expose a lot of job fairs, we will go and speak wherever you want us to, wherever you want us, so that we can engage with as many generations as we can. 

Kelli Wells: That’s wonderful! And future plans for the LAUNCH? 

Jessica Parker: I’d love to see it keep increasing and providing more of a variety. I’d really, really like to see some trainees at our waste management centre. That would be great. I think some more focus around supporting students with ADHD and things like that. That’s really. We feel like we maybe don’t have the right resources there yet, so building upon that. Further developing our supervisors and teams to manage the different LAUNCH participants. And I think building a bit of a resource hub as well that our supervisors and apprentices and trainees can access at any time and do a little bit of that self-paced learning or development. 

Kelli Wells: Oh, that’s fantastic. What advice would you give to other councils that might be looking at implementing something similar? 

Jessica Parker: My advice is consultation with the teams that may be wanting to have these apprentices or trainees, or if there’s not teams wanting it, consulting with them and finding out where the what the fears are, what the barriers may be, that they can foresee. Because without them and without, you know, their help, you won’t be able to have a program that succeeds. So you really need to get consultation from them, find out everything you need to as well as work with your local schools, work with your local providers, network. Training Services NSW has been a really amazing contact for me, they really do help with anything that we need. So yeah, building those relationships and yeah, that’s what I would say. 

Kelli Wells: That’s fantastic. Thank you very much. We could probably take some questions now, if anybody has any questions, feel free to put them into the chat. 

I think it’s definitely, Jessica, the kind of program that a lot of councils would be interested in. It’s, I know that there has been, I think, post COVID there was a lot of staff turnover and particularly in the rural and regional areas and they may benefit greatly from a program like this. 

Jessica Parker: Yeah, yeah, it’s really. I’m so proud to see where it is at the moment and I’m really excited to see, you know, where it can go. 

Kelli Wells: Hmm. Oh, that’s wonderful. We don’t appear to have any questions. We may end up getting some. If you do think of a question later on, don’t hesitate to email that. Oh, here we go. I do have a couple of questions. People getting in at the last minute.  

With the quality of the training. This is from Devika. How do you validate the quality of the training? I know that you were talking about some of the quantitative and qualitative assessment that you do. How do you go about that? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah. We do ask for feedback all the time, so it’s important for us to get feedback with whatever we’re doing and we will use that to either, you know, alter things that we’re doing, but also when we can see changes in the organisation, so I feel like if I’m getting less phone calls or less enquiries from apprentices. I’m hoping that that means that the training for the supervisors is working and they are, you know, supporting them the way that they should. But yeah, really just getting feedback is how we validate our, our training and seeing changes in the organisation, you know, some things are not quite tangible, but we do see a fair bit of change in the culture and we hope that that’s because the training initiatives that we’re doing are adding value. 

Kelli Wells: Oh, that’s wonderful. We also have another question and it is fairly related there when you’re talking about the staff to support the trainees. Rania has asked how many staff members in your team are needed to manage the 25 trainees and apprentices. It’s a good question. 

Jessica Parker: Yes, great question. So there’s two of us that do that. Like I said, we do rely on the teams and the supervisors to have, play a great part in that as well besides myself and the learning and development advisor, we have people and culture business partners who are always there to help support and if we need a hand, they’re there to support us through that as well. 

Kelli Wells: Oh, that’s excellent. And another question here. How do you ensure RTOs are delivering the appropriate units, and do you participate in designing the actual training plan? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a really good question. So we always look over the units that have been put forward for training plans, we’ll meet, we get our coordinators and supervisors to have a look at what the units are to make sure we can facilitate them and that they make sense for us. So that’s really important. It’s a really important part right in the beginning to get that right. 

Kelli Wells: Hmm. I imagine, yeah, it’s quite a bespoke process of, of targeting exactly what it is that you need. 

Jessica Parker: Sometimes it can be, yeah, definitely. But you’ll find that with some trades there are things that you may not be able to facilitate internally in your organisation. So you may need to look at that and you may need to work with another council that might be able to help facilitate that and maybe share, share some of that learning. 

Kelli Wells: And that is a great idea to actually, you know that sometimes sharing those resources is a really good way to get a really great outcome for both. I have another question. Do you how do you ensure that supervisors are actually delivering the skills – this is a tricky question – actually delivering the skills and not just ticking a box to say that they’ve done it? 

Jessica Parker: I think we have a lot of trust in our staff and I think that’s part of our culture here, is trusting, being open and honest and I think it would be, when we have the check insurance with the apprentices and trainees and undergrads, there’s no supervisor in the room. I’m asking them pretty much flat out, you know, how are you being supported? Are you learning what you need to? And things like that. So I would really hope that because of the culture we have here that we’re trying to build that people would be, would feel safe enough to tell us if they weren’t being shown the right things or they felt like they weren’t getting the right amount of training. 

Kelli Wells: Yeah, that’s excellent. Because they do, there is that need to have a supportive culture where you do feel safe to have those candid and courageous conversations. Particularly I think with younger, younger people in that environment. So it’s great to hear that that’s a measure that you’ve got in place. 

Now I don’t seem to have any more, oops sorry, I think I just saw one pop up. 

That’s a good question. How are you confident that your learners are job-ready after they graduate? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah, I can. I can honestly say that I think that we’ve got great people here supervising and mentoring those trainees, apprentices and undergrads. And I think our, the structure behind the program sets people up really well and we do, we do like to focus on giving them those skills for after so like interviewing, being able to apply for jobs. Yeah, I can honestly say in the last couple of intakes isn’t there’s no one that I wouldn’t be, you know, really quite sure they would do well in the next part of their journey. 

Kelli Wells: Yeah. Oh, that’s fantastic.  

I did just notice something else. Come in here. Bear with me. So this is from, forgive me, I’m not sure if it’s your first name or your surname Makim Lily or Lily Makim. They ask: Do you offer units of training or skills that are not nationally recognised, such as use of systems in your training plans under the LAUNCH program? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah. So we will follow a training plan and most of that is what is nationally recognised, but within our own internal programs and training that we have, we do focus on some, like professional development type training, yeah. 

Kelli Wells: Oh, that’s excellent. And Kajal has asked: I have studied urban planning from India and I’ve moved here in Sydney. Open to relocate. I’m looking for work experience in development and planning field mainly in development assessment team. How can this program be helpful or any suggestions in and around this topic? 

Jessica Parker: Yeah, sure. So we do offer undergrad positions, so I’m not sure if you said you were still studying or you finished studying, but if you were studying and you’re in your second or last year, then there’d be, look out for undergrad positions. If you’re wanting work experience, then you can definitely contact us and we can see what we can do. 

Kelli Wells: That is excellent and obviously we’ve got the email address that I provided earlier, the Careers at Council, and they’ll be able to contact you as well and to everybody, keep an eye out for those social posts and the advertising blitz that Cessnock will be doing.  

I don’t believe there are any more questions at the moment. No, but thank you all for your questions. They were fantastic.
Let me, oh no, that wasn’t a question. 

That’s, I think that’s all we’ve got time for at the moment. Jessica, thank you so much for volunteering your time to share your insights and experiences. I know that we all gained a lot of value out of that. The LAUNCH apprentice and trainee program, it’s a wonderful initiative and yeah, it’s been really valuable learning more about what your council is doing in this area. It’s a really innovative program, so I think it’s great to know that people are out there kicking goals like that. And I also want to thank all of you who joined us online for today’s webinar, I’m sure you’ll be taking back some great information for your teams. And don’t forget to check out the Careers at Council social media pages, like and follow to stay updated. And if you want to refer back to this webinar later, of course it’s being recorded and it will be posted and available for you to have a look at as well as the transcript. Thank you, everybody, and thank you, Jessica, it’s been a pleasure having you. 

Jessica Parker: No worries. Thank you for having me. 

Kelli Wells: No problem at all. And thank you everyone. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon. 

Jessica Parker: See you later. Thanks, Kelli.