Webinars

Healthy Country, Healthy Communities: Environmental Health in Action

Rania Michaels: Welcome everyone to the Careers at Council ‘What do you do at Council?’ webinar series. My name is Rania Michaels, Workforce Development Officer at Local Government NSW, and I will be your host for today. Please note this webinar is being recorded and your mics and cameras have been turned off to avoid any background noise. 

I would like to begin by acknowledging the Gadigal people of the Eora nation and the traditional custodians of all the lands on which we meet today, and I pay my respects to elders, past, present and emerging.
Our webinar today is focused on environmental health careers in local government and how these roles play an important part in protecting and promoting community health. I’m pleased to have with us today our guest speakers, Sarah Ainsworth, Business Manager, Environment and Health and Makayla Cole, Aboriginal Trainee Environmental Health Officer, both from Goulburn Mulwaree Council.
But before we dive into our discussion, I’d like to give you all a brief introduction to Careers at Council. Careers at Council is an initiative of the state and territory, local government associations, and it was created by councils for councils. 

It’s been established by industry to inform and attract local government’s future workforce, and as you’ll see, it’s much more than a jobs board.
You can access Careers at Council content through various channels. You can go to www.careersatcouncil.com.au or you can join our community by following Careers at Council on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram, or by subscribing to our YouTube channel.
There are 14 career areas at Council available on the platform where you’ll discover a wide range of roles and opportunities tailored to various skills and interests, all contributing to the betterment of our communities.
Within the dedicated environment career area page, there is information on the diverse career areas available in environmental health management, waste management and also environmental health, which is the topic of our conversation today. So if you’re passionate about community safety and well-being, you’re sure to find a role here that aligns with your interests and values. The page highlights career pathways and study options and the qualifications required.
It also has a real stories from council employees that are making an impact all around Australia. It has job listings and it has a suite of resources to guide your next steps, including industry bodies and course directories. We encourage you all to explore it, share it with others, and consider how your skills and passions might contribute to sustaining and building better local communities.
The employees stories that we feature on Careers at Council offer insights and experiences shared by current council employees, giving you a glimpse into what it’s like to work in local government. These stories include personal experiences, a look into day to day activities, career growth and skill development, insights, work environment and culture, and community engagement. They provide the opportunity for job seekers to gain a better understanding of the diverse and rewarding career opportunities available in local government.
Careers at Council is going from strength to strength. More than 10,000 jobs have been posted on the website to date and our scope spans those 14 unique career areas I mentioned earlier. And currently we have 648 active jobs. To narrow down your search, you can use the category and location filters or you can do a keyword search, for example environmental health and view the job opportunities available.
Joining the Careers at Council community is a great way to explore job opportunities. You can sign up and apply for jobs, and if you don’t immediately find what you’re looking for, you can register for job alerts. You can attend our webinars such as this one, view our Vodcast and council videos, and you can read employee stories and connect with us on social media.
OK, it’s now time to move on with our discussion. And while you listen, you’re welcome to post any questions using the Q&A feature and we’ll get to these questions a little bit later on.
I’ll stop sharing there now.
OK, Sarah and Makayla, thank you again for joining us today. I would like to start with asking Sarah a few questions. You are a Business Manager, Environment and Health at Goulburn Mulwaree Council.
Sarah, what inspired your career in environmental health and how has your journey informed your approach to workforce development in this field? 

Sarah Ainsworth: So I suppose like a lot of school leavers, I wasn’t entirely sure what field I wanted to go into. So I started a science-based degree and fairly quickly found that I probably wasn’t going to have a great deal of job opportunities moving forward with that degree or the job opportunities that were going to be presented may not have been what I was looking for. And I was fortunate enough to find one day when I was at home, a traineeship advertised in environmental health. So I threw my hat in the ring and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I came through a traineeship in local government, in environmental health, and I think that that really laid the foundation for a wonderful career and I think that traineeships in local government, regardless of whether they’re in just environmental health or engineering or any of our related fields, it gives you the opportunity to really see what you’re learning at university or in your certificates or diplomas in practice in real life and you get paid to do it. So that’s one of the things that I think local government does really, really well is we have these grow your own programs that start with the foundations of traineeships and cadetships, and then they move into, you know, your career progression. You know, you could go from being a trainee in local government to ending up the general manager. 

Rania Michaels: It’s great and that’s really important for those regional and remote areas of Australia too. And in your role as business manager, how do you align environmental health initiatives with broader council workforce and capability strategies? 

Sarah Ainsworth: So one of the benefits of environmental health is that the functions that our environmental health teams undertake in local government are critical. Often they’re legislated, so councils are required to perform those functions. And I think that one of the real easy sells that environmental health professionals and environmental health teams across Australia don’t do well sometimes is selling the fact that all of the services we provide, whether it’s food premise inspections, skin penetration, premises monitoring, emergency management, disaster response, mosquito monitoring – they’re all functions that assist in the betterment of the community and they have a real on the ground impact on public health and environmental health and improving outcomes for the communities that we live in and that we serve. And I think that that’s a really key message that, you know, these functions whilst they are legislated and often regulated, we need to sell that better and we need to promote the functions that we do in the diversity of the functions that we provide for our communities, because we do have a huge impact and a huge benefit to those people. 

Rania Michaels: That’s great. It’s almost like a, it’s a role that just gets done and no one really knows that it’s being done, but you’re in the background and you’re doing all these amazing things for your community.  

Sarah Ainsworth: Absolutely. 

Rania Michaels: What would you say are the most pressing workforce challenges in environmental health today, such as skill shortages or retention and how is your team addressing them? 

Sarah Ainsworth: Yeah. So like a lot of local government professions, we do have a critical skill shortage for environmental health officers. We’re in one of the top five critical skill shortages across local government. So it’s a real issue for us to attract and retain, particularly in regional areas.
So what we’ve had to do here and in our experience here in Goulburn is really betting in those ‘grow your own’ programs that start with, you know, having trainees or cadets and having the options within your team to allow them to progress.
So whether that be having environmental health officer positions, senior environmental health officer positions, coordinators and then positions like mine, you know, you can start as a trainee, but you can see where your career is going to take you. And I think that that’s one of the key factors in local government is that we do do ‘grow your own’ really well and it’s essential for us to continue doing that because you cannot expect to be able to recruit to your qualified professional positions if you don’t grow your own, if you don’t contribute to that process. You know, our grow your own program now that we’ve got here really beds in that succession planning and being able to drive forward, you know, making sure that we’ve got the people to fill our professional positions by training our own. The other thing that we’ve found is really good is prioritising our staff benefits when we are doing recruitment. So, you know, making people see us as an employer of choice, which includes demonstrating that, you know, we contribute to professional development opportunities, we provide membership to professional organisations as an employment benefit. But not only that, I think that another thing that we need to do a little bit differently and that we have been doing a little bit differently here in Goulburn, is looking outside the box when we’re going into recruitment.
So yes, it would be great to advertise an environmental health officer position and fill it straight away with someone who has got a relevant degree and the associated experience in the role. But I think more than that it’s finding the right personality and the right fit for your team and also finding someone who’s got the key personality traits or characteristics to be able to do the role. Because we will, local government is great, we will provide you with all of the on the job training. It’s finding the right person for that position and so what we’ve been able to do here really well is find people who have got maybe general science degrees and then putting them through the post graduate qualifications in environmental health to make sure that they’ve got the relevant tertiary qualifications to be able to do the role and then supplementing that to move forward. 

Rania Michaels: Yes. And that actually leads me into my next question because we do get caught up on all the technical skills or the qualifications required for a role. But what are some of the soft skills that are currently most in demand for environmental health roles in local government? You talked about communication and someone’s personality. Can you tell us a bit more about that? 

Sarah Ainsworth: So definitely good communicators. We have to deal with difficult situations a lot of the time, and that might be you know the fact that yes, we are a regulatory role and whilst you do have to have the skills to deal with you know negotiations and you know a certain sense of bargaining to achieve an outcome, you also have to have the educational component. So you need to be a clear communicator. You need to be able to interact with all aspects of the community and also I think you need to be able to communicate really clearly to your audience. We deal with a lot of legislation in our roles and you can’t rely on just the legislation to be able to effectively communicate to people why they need to do a certain thing that you’re asking them to do. I think that another key skill for environmental health officers is being adaptive. Our roles are so diverse. They’re dynamic and we get a lot of, very high workload and a lot of tasks that sometimes don’t quite fit in other areas of council. So we may have never dealt with something like that before. So I think it’s really important that you’re adaptive and able to think on your feet and maybe be a little bit curious in exploring what other options might be available. 

Rania Michaels: They’re all important. So those technical skills, qualifications that are mandatory is a given. But yeah, like you, like you mentioned, those personable and having some tact as well in how to engage with the community is very important.
OK, you told us you talked us through how you support early career professionals and trainees. What about those, what about those transitioning from other sectors, how does how does council support those career pathways? 

Sarah Ainsworth: Yeah. So I think what we touched on just briefly is looking for attracting talent into local government and into fields like environmental health from areas where there just aren’t the career opportunities available. So I think that we need to become a bit more savvy in marketing our professional opportunities in local government and talking about the fact that you know a lot of roles in local government are dynamic, they’re diverse, environmental health sure is, and we’re in demand. If you’re, if you’re a science graduate from any number of degrees, you might find yourself in a position where you know your only option is laboratory work or you know as a field officer with a very narrow focus. So if you’re looking for a really diverse career, some people might not know to look at local government because they just don’t understand the breadth and scope of what we actually deliver on the ground. So I think that that’s one of the things that local government really has to put up in lights is the diversity of the roles and the functions that we undertake across Australia because I think that that would certainly highlight to a lot of these people who may have, you know, gone down a certain career pathway and found themselves that they actually can’t get a position in their chosen field, that there is absolutely a position for you in local government and you know the example that we’ve applied here through putting science graduates through the postgraduate qualifications in environmental health, we will back you and provide you with those opportunities to get the qualifications and on top of that, you get trained in the field, so you get to see that theory in practice. And I think that that’s a hugely rewarding and beneficial career pathway for a lot of people. 

Rania Michaels: Exactly, great answer and that’s exactly what Careers at Council strives to do is championing those career areas and educating people that there are so many diverse roles available in local government.
OK. How would you say your team is integrating Indigenous leadership and cultural knowledge into workforce planning and environmental health service delivery? 

Sarah Ainsworth: So I think that being able to partner with NSW Health through the Aboriginal Environmental Health Officer Training Program has really been the cornerstone for us exploring and expanding into particularly aboriginal or indigenous environmental health functions and matters that might affect our community. I think that it’s also being quite beneficial as part of that broader Aboriginal Environmental Health Officer Training Program, we come together and we share experiences and you know, there’s really unique issues that are presented by different communities. Obviously we are regional, but there’s also trainees that are from remote areas of NSW covered by this program, so it’s good to see how environmental health and the functions and the programs that might be applied in other areas are translatable to Goulburn and I think that we’re very new to being in this space where Michaela’s obviously our first identified trainee for our area and that’s really enabling us a great avenue to explore how our environmental health functions can be adapted to assist with improving environmental public health considerations for our Aboriginal communities in our local area. 

Rania Michaels: That’s wonderful. And a great segue to introduce Makayla. Makayla, you are an Aboriginal Trainee Environmental Health Officer at Goulburn Mulwaree Council. We’d love you to tell us what inspired you to pursue a career in environmental health? 

Makayla Cole: Well, I originally didn’t even know that this sector existed. I’ve always been passionate about the environment and sustainability and a family friend knew that, and he found the job and recommended it to me and told me to apply for it. And when I was reading through, like the description and just all the different things that we get to do, I thought that it would be something I could see myself in and not only that be something I could enjoy doing. 

Rania Michaels: Yeah, that’s great. Go family friend! As much as we as much as we get, you know, as much as we try to get into schools and universities and educate students about these pathways, there’s always people we’re going to miss. And that’s really lucky that you had some support into your early career start that way. Can you share a project with us where collaboration with Aboriginal communities led to improved environmental health outcomes? 

Makayla Cole: For me, I get to go on this project. I’m supposed to go I think once every six years; it’s the housing for health project. It’s run by the Aboriginal Environmental Health Unit and it’s run all across the state. There’s other companies who do it across the country and throughout different countries in the world, but for NSW we do it in Aboriginal communities and we do two different survey fixes and the survey fix 1, so we go in the houses with the Aboriginal communities and check the plumbing and the electricity, the structural integrity, just making sure that it’s OK and it doesn’t have any environmental health issues like mould or can have mosquito breeding areas. That like the hot water and the cold water  is running OK and that there’s like nothing damaged with the house. After that survey we allow typically about six months between then and the second survey, and there’s contractors and just a bunch of people who go through the houses and fix everything that we’ve identified was wrong. In the second survey we go back, do the whole process over again. And just to make sure that everything’s OK, nothing new came about it, and that everything did get fixed, and then the teams they consist of the trainees in my program, so other Aboriginal Environmental Health Officer Trainees and then also the members of the Aboriginal community that we’re in, so they come with us to do the inspections and the surveys. And this program helps the people who live in those communities by giving them, like proper housing and cutting out environmental health issues and like human health issues, through like infectious diseases and mosquito breeding and mosquito diseases. 

Rania Michaels: That’s wonderful, Makayla. It sounds like a really feel-good project to be a part of and and it would, yeah, you’re really just making an impact, aren’t you?  

Makayla Cole: Yeah. 

Rania Michaels: How does an Aboriginal identified role help you connect with culture? 

Makayla Cole: It allowed me to consider the different functions of Aboriginal environmental health and just normal environmental health. There’s so many different functions that are done through the Aboriginal Environmental Health Unit. There’s different problems as well. Specifically with the housing, that’s it’s a big issue in NSW. The diversity of Aboriginal representation, sorry, allows for there to be like Aboriginal considerations. So for the people within my role and even myself, we get to be a connection between council and the Aboriginal community within our local government areas. Things like the housing for health project allows us to have deeper understanding and a deeper connection with other Aboriginal communities and sometimes our own Aboriginal communities, depending on where it’s placed and this role with the Aboriginal Environment Health Unit allows me to connect with the other trainees and learn more about their cultures, their languages and even my own.
So it’s, it’s really helpful in my opinion. 

Rania Michaels: That’s wonderful. Now moving on to workplace culture, because we at Careers at Council, we always talk about how amazing and supportive the local government workplace culture is. What kind of training and mentoring has been most valuable to you in your development so far? 

Makayla Cole: For me, one of the biggest ones is being able to work while doing the degree.
Throughout, like being able to go on inspections with the rest of the team, learning the background, learning what we do behind the scenes before the inspections, learning all the legislation before I have to do the university courses is really helpful. It also allows me to put practice into theory or even the other way around with university. Sometimes I learn the theory first and get a bit confused or I’m learning it at the same time so I can put the theory into practice and get a deeper understanding of environmental health. I also get to work alongside and learn from other local government agencies such as the Public Health Unit and the Food Authority. And it really allows me to have a broader understanding of environmental health in local government as well as state government. 

Rania Michaels: I’d imagine your team is quite supportive as well in your journey. 

Makayla Cole: Yes, they’re very supportive. 

Rania Michaels: What advice Makayla would you give to other Aboriginal people considering a career in environmental health? 

Makayla Cole: My biggest thing is to go for it. It’s not just for high school leavers, it’s for anyone and everyone. There is other trainees out there who are a lot older than I am. There are some around the same age. We’re all from different ages. We’re all experiencing new things if you can’t get into a traineeship, even just being able to do the degree the scholarships out there where you can get funding for it, you get to learn on the job and it’s you also get that massive support from just being an Aboriginal person in environmental health, it’s very helpful and it’s very eye-opening and it’s something that I think if you’re thinking of doing it you should do it. 

Rania Michaels: That’s some great advice. Sarah, I’ll throw that question to you as well – what advice would you give to someone considering a career in environmental health within local government? 

Sarah Ainsworth: So I think we’ve touched on it a couple of times, just that if you don’t want to do the same thing every day, if you want a career that is diverse and dynamic and that you can actually have a benefit and an impact within your local community, then environmental health is definitely the place for you.
The other thing is that there’s always jobs available in environmental health. We’ve got a real skill shortage at the moment. We’re all across local government looking for environmental health professionals and I think that if any of the items that we’ve touched on resonate with you, then you know there’s plenty of places that you can go and learn more about environmental health. So that includes the Environmental Health Australia website has got a huge amount of information on environmental health and NSW Health website also has a huge amount of information on environmental health functions.
And really details the critical functions that environmental health officers do and the work that we do in our local communities. So yeah, there’s a lot of information out there. And yeah, go and do your research. And if it’s something that you’d like to explore, local governments are happy to host work placement students in environmental health areas. So that’s how we have had quite a few people come through our area. It’s also essentially free labour. So anyone who’s thinking about hosting career placement opportunities, you can give them projects to do within the scope of environmental health initiatives. And that’s a huge benefit to your organisation in that you can start to further some of those initiatives with additional resourcing that is essentially free through work placement programs and as Makayla said, NSW Health offers a huge amount of support for Aboriginal people who would like to explore environmental health opportunities and that’s both through the traineeship program and their stand alone scholarship program to put people through the environmental health degrees. 

Rania Michaels: Yeah, thank you. That kind of answers my, the next question I had was how can students or early career professionals gain exposure to environmental health work before formally entering the sector. So we had touched on people not knowing that the sector even exists but there’s, there’s other ways we can, I guess, educate people and through career fairs or talking to students at schools. Is there something that the council has been doing in that space? 

Sarah Ainsworth: Yeah. So I think that there’s this, this increasing realisation across local government that we need to get out there and we need to be seen. So we have been participating in career days in our local area, but also more broadly professional organisations, you know, specifically associated with environmental health such as Environmental Health Australia. They routinely attend your career days. Also they offer free student memberships so you can attend their free member training, which is often webinars. Whether you are in that field or not, and that gives you a really good exposure to the sorts of things that environmental health officers in local government in particular are looking at every day. So yeah, there’s a range of things going on and a range of promotions going on. And I think that you know the work that LGNSW has done with with career promotion and also you know Careers at Council you know webinars like these we’re all doing our part trying to make sure that we’re getting these opportunities out to the broader public so that they know these careers exists. 

Rania Michaels: Yeah, exactly. And you’ll now have this webinar as a resource to share as well. I’m going to wrap up my questions. Looking ahead, what are some emerging areas in environmental health that future professionals should be aware of or should be preparing for? 

Sarah Ainsworth: So there’s a lot of emerging issues at the moment with environment and health that really relate back to our changing climate. So you know we’ve got in local government functions across emergency management and disaster recovery. You know we’ve got more instances of these sorts of events occurring, so your floods and your bushfires. And that’s calling on our workforce to be more adaptable and to have more skills and resources in those areas. Additionally, again, the effects of our changing climate, you know our area never had participated in mosquito monitoring programs because we just hadn’t been exposed or identified as an area that had mosquito borne illness, but that all changed a couple of years ago and we’re now routinely part of the mosquito monitoring program run by NSW Health. So I think that because environmental health officer roles are so diverse and so dynamic and we are bedded also and related back to legislation, there’s a real requirement for environmental health professionals to be constantly ensuring that they’re doing that continuing professional development, that they’re staying abreast of you know emerging issues, you know, we see things from time to time because we regulate matters under the Public Health Act. There’s always new, weird and wonderful body modification procedures that, you know, come across our desks or the next health fad, you know, like float tanks, that there’s something that you know should possibly be captured under the Public Health Act that’s new and emerging and hasn’t been captured yet, so you know, we’re needing to be adaptive and responsive to new issues and in a changing environment. So there’s quite a bit going on in the environmental health space that we need to be aware of, but the best thing about local government is that you know you’re surrounded by such a generous community in local government, regardless of whether you’re in environmental health or building surveying or engineering. One thing that I can attest to is, you know from when I was a trainee right through till now the local government community is so generous with their knowledge and their time, and it really is a community and a network in that we all share our resources. We all share our knowledge and I think that that’s something that is one of our massive strengths is that you know, if you come across an issue in your day to day work, whether it’s new and emerging or something, routine and you haven’t dealt with it before, you can guarantee that there is another local government organisation that has dealt with it and that will happily assist you. So I think that that’s another thing that we need to better, better lean into and lean on each other when we’re facing these new and emerging issues. 

Rania Michaels: That’s lovely. That’s a nice finish there from you, Sarah. And it’s interesting to hear about how climate change can just change the way you work in, in the space of two years, two years did you say? Yeah. So you would have seen quite a quite a bit of change over your career throughout the years. OK, that ends my questions for Sarah and Makayla. I will have a look and see if any participants have any questions for us. Feel free to type in your questions in the Q&A feature of the webinar. We do have one here. The question is, are there any opportunities for migrants or women returning to the workforce? 

Sarah Ainsworth: So I think that there are opportunities for visas for critical roles such as environmental health, so we are captured under that category. But it really would be dependent on whether your council supports those positions or can support sponsorship of those positions, so there certainly are opportunities for migrants in that across the globe. There’s professional organisations, particularly for environmental health, that accredit degrees and those accreditations are transferable if you bring your qualification and it is recognised by the professional body in Australia, which is Environmental Health Australia, so yes, there are opportunities for your qualification to be recognised here and as such you can then practice environmental health. And women returning to the workforce. I think that as a mother of two and being through two lots of parental leave, local government is incredibly supportive with flexible work arrangements and returning to work from parental leave periods. And so I think that if you, if you’re looking for a role that you can have a good work-life balance and it will also allow a certain level of flexibility if you are a woman returning to work, I think that local government presents a great opportunity for you. 

Rania Michaels: Thank you. A question here for Makayla. If you were to speak to a bunch of high school students, what would you tell them if they’re considering a career in environmental health? 

Makayla Cole: I’d probably tell them to do a bit more research, figure out what degree they’re going to do if there’s scholarships for them, if there’s any traineeships that they fall under the category for, really just doing a bit more research on their own end and finding out what support’s there for them. 

Rania Michaels: OK, great. I’ll just check again and refresh to see if there’s any other questions.
I think that’s all we have for today. OK, well, on behalf of Careers at Council and Local Government NSW, I’d like to thank you both Sarah and Makayla for volunteering your time to be on our webinar today and also sharing your experiences and your career journey with us. Thank you again and thank you to everyone listening in. 

Sarah Ainsworth: Thank you. 

Makayla Cole: Thank you.