Selection Criteria
Key Selection Criteria
- 'Public Sector Values' as detailed in Organisational Values section above
- 'Specialist Expertise in OHS' as detailed in the Required Capabilities section above
- 'Customer Focus' as detailed in the Required Capabilities section above
- 'Relationship Building' as detailed in the Required Capabilities section
- 'Planning and Organising' as detailed in the Required Capabilities section above
Key Accountabilities
Direction setting and supervision
- Establish and maintain a safe and healthy workplace which conforms to compliance standards, and supports responsible workplace behaviours
- Provide employees with the leadership, information and guidance required to achieve outcomes and to ensure that these meet compliance requirements
- Model Victorian Public Sector Values
- Monitor team and individual performance and take action to remove obstacles and address issues
- Clarify priorities and delegate activities to maximise team productivity and achieve quality outcomes
Expert program advice and support
- Prepare reports, briefings and correspondence relating to OHS issues as required
- Provide advice and support to schools and service providers about OHS policies, functions and systems (e.g eduSafe Plus)
- Provide advice on the appropriate interpretation and implementation of Department OHS management system and policies
- Undertake research / investigation to respond to more complex OHS related enquiries
- Provide OHS services to support high quality outcomes
Service delivery, quality improvement and integration
- Implement and support strategic OHS and change initiatives, including support for schools to fully utilise eduSafe Plus
- Manage and support DE OHS activities and policies with a focus on continuous improvement
- Provide information and advice to principals and school leaders on changes to OHS policies and procedures
- Assist in the development of OHS policies that support safety and wellbeing strategies and plans to meet legislative requirements
- Develop local strategies to ensure OHS activities and priorities are aligned to and support the vision and strategic intent of the Department
Emergency management
- Provide agreed emergency management planning services
- Liaise with Security and Emergency Management Division and Regional emergency management stakeholders to collaborate and resolve complex OHS matters and support the best possible outcomes for schools
Stakeholder Management
- Relationship management in schools and with relevant regional staff, Victorian School Building Authority (VSBA) (as required)
- Engage with internal and external stakeholders including Legal Division, VSBA and WorkSafe to consult and respond by developing solutions to identified OHS risks
Program delivery and digital system use
- Deliver the OHS Services Program to schools, with a focus on delivering hands on help to schools to complete OHS and emergency management tasks
- Support schools with the effective use of eduSafe Plus, as the department's digital OHS system
- Demonstrate knowledge base and skills in the use of technology/digital platforms for OHS and EM including eduSafe Plus
Required Capabilities
Leadership
- Motivates others to deliver on goals and objectives
- Builds team commitment by demonstrating personal conviction
- Translates organisational strategy into meaningful long-term plans and objectives for own area of responsibility
Planning and Organising
- Develops and implements systems and procedures to guide work and track progress
- Identifies more and less critical activities and operates accordingly, reviewing and adjusting as required
- Identifies processes, tasks and resources required to achieve goals
- Recognises barriers and finds effective ways to deal with them.
Influence and Negotiation
- Adapts the content, style, message or tone of a presentation to suit the audience and plans how to tackle objections
- Negotiates and implements a well-planned course of action to achieve a specific impact
- Sells own ideas by linking them to others' values, needs and goals
Specialist Expertise in OHS
- Sound technical health, safety and wellbeing knowledge with significant understanding of relevant legislation and codes
- Knowledge of contemporary health, safety and wellbeing theory and practice
- Ability to act as a coach or mentor to own staff and colleagues to support and improve their OHS practice, professional development and work effectiveness
Organisational Awareness
- Understands issues and pressures to which the Department and schools has to respond
- Understands the reasons behind the Department and schools climate and culture.
Stakeholder Management
- Finds innovative solutions to resolve stakeholder issues
- Identifies and responds to stakeholder's underlying needs
- Identifies issues in common for one or more stakeholders and uses to build mutually beneficial partnerships
- Uses understanding of the stakeholder's organisational context to ensure outcomes are achieved
Personal Qualities
Developing Others
- Appropriately delegates responsibilities to further the development of others
- Empowers others by investing them with the authority and latitude to accomplish tasks
- Actively seeks to improve others' skills and talents by providing constructive feedback, coaching and training opportunities
Customer Focus
- Actively seeks to meet customer needs
- Committed to delivering high quality outcomes for clients
- Listens to customers
- Seeks ways to improve services
Flexibility
- Accepts changed priorities without undue discomfort
- Adaptable
- Open to new ideas
- Recognises the merits of different options and acts accordingly
Relationship Building
- Builds trust through consistent actions, values and communication
- Establishes and maintains relationships with people at all levels
- Forges useful partnerships with people across the Department and schools
- Minimises surprises
- Promotes harmony and consensus through diplomatic handling of disagreements
- Proven ability to build positive and productive relationships with principals, school leaders and staff in complex areas (or local leaders and staff in other workplaces)
- Actively seeks to meet customer needs
- Committed to delivering high quality outcomes for customers
Qualifications
- Essential: Relevant qualification in Occupational Health and Safety or equivalent professional experience
- Desirable: Relevant qualification in Emergency Management Planning or Risk Management or equivalent professional experience
Role
- Position title: Senior OHS Service Officer, NWVR - Bendigo/Swan Hill
- Group: Employee Safety, Wellbeing and Inclusion Division, People and Executive Services Group
- Region: North Western Victorian Region
- Location: Bendigo or Swan Hill
- Classification: ES1-5
- Employment Status: Ongoing
- FTE: 1.0
- Salary range: $123,123 - $145,228 (inclusive of 30 days LPA).
Note that Salary shown includes 30 days of additional attendance required, as compared to standard Education Support roles under the Victorian Government Schools Agreement 2022. This means the successful candidate will be entitled to four weeks of annual leave, to be taken during periods as agreed with their manager.
Role Purpose
The Senior OHS Service Officer is a senior role within the regional OHS Services Team, providing high quality advice and OHS and emergency management services to principals, school leaders and employees.
Reporting into the OHS Services Manager, the Senior OHS Service Officer partners with schools to complete OHS and emergency management planning tasks, and to provide advice on managing OHS hazards.
This role is a leader in the team providing supervision, guidance and mentoring to other members of the team to ensure the delivery of consistent, hands-on service to schools, to help achieve safer school environments and reduce principals' OHS & emergency management workload. The Senior OHS Service Officer role-models customer-focused service and responsiveness and leads in building and maintaining strong relationships with schools, regional offices, contracted external providers and other key areas of the Department.
To view the position description, see: https://www.schools.vic.gov.au/Position_descriptions
Responsibilities
Key responsibilities for this role include:
- providing pre-OHS Assurance Assessment services including reviewing and updating the school's OHS Management System documents and processes and completing tasks for the school
- attending OHS Assurance Assessments to assist and support school leaders during the Assessment
- providing post-OHS Assurance Assessment services including working with schools to action and close management actions and completing tasks for the school
- providing services to schools with elements of emergency management planning and supporting schools' effective use of the department's digital systems
- providing proactive service to schools in non-OHS Assurance years including regular check-ins with schools and help with managing OHS and emergency management planning tasks
- responding to service requests and supporting with complex OHS matters
- supporting school leaders to effectively use the department's digital OHS system, eduSafe Plus
- coordinating and provide referrals to other department services
- leading the implementation and delivery of targeted and intensive OHS initiatives.
As a leader in the team, the Senior OHS Service Officer:
- provides supervision, guidance and mentoring to OHS Service Officers in their team
- supports the Manager, OHS Services with complex OHS matters and advice and service for schools
- leads in building a positive team culture of responsiveness and customer-focused service for schools.
This role requires travel across the region to undertake school visits, and a current driver's license is mandatory. This role will also involve work within regional office locations, including attending the relevant primary office on a regular basis to connect and collaborate with other staff.
Diversity and Inclusion
The department is committed to diversity and inclusion and developing a workforce that is representative of the community we service. We value diversity and inclusion in all forms - culture, gender, religion, ethnicity, LGBTIQA+, disability and neurodiversity. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander candidates are strongly encouraged to apply for roles within the Department. The Department recognises that the provision of safe, respectful and inclusive workplaces is essential to high performance and promotes flexible work and diversity across all schools and Department workplaces. It is our policy to provide reasonable adjustments for staff with disability (see Workplace adjustment guidelines).
Additional support and advice on the recruitment process is available to Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander candidates from the Koorie Outcomes Division (KOD) via [email protected]
Applicants seeking part-time employment are encouraged to apply for any teaching service position and, if they are the successful candidate, request a reduced time fraction. Such requests will be negotiated on a case-by-case basis and will be subject to the operational requirements of the school.
Child Safe Standards
Victorian government schools are child safe environments. Our schools actively promote the safety and wellbeing of all students, and all school staff are committed to protecting students from abuse or harm in the school environment, in accordance with their legal obligations including child safe standards. All schools have a Child Safety Code of Conduct consistent with the department's exemplar available at:
https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/child-safe-standards/policy
DE Values
The department's employees commit to upholding the department's Values: Responsiveness, Integrity, Impartiality, Accountability, Respect, Leadership and Human Rights. The department's Values complement each school's own values and underpin the behaviours the community expects of Victorian public sector employees, including those who work in Victorian Government Schools. Information on the department values is available at:
https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal/values-department-vps-school-employees/overview
- Applicants should keep a copy of the position description as it cannot be accessed once the job has closed.
- Candidates are advised that the key selection criteria must be addressed. Visit http://www.careers.vic.gov.au/vacancies/tips-for-applying for guidelines and tips for applying for government positions and addressing key selection criteria.
- If you need assistance or adjustments to fully participate in the application or interview process for this role, please contact the person listed under `Position Contact'
- Successful applicants are subject to a satisfactory criminal record check prior to employment. New DE employees are required to meet the cost of the criminal record check.
- A current employee Working with Children Check Victoria is required for this role.
- If appointed from outside DE, successful applicants may be required to complete a pre-employment health declaration.
- A probationary period of up to 6 months may apply for a person appointed to an ongoing position from outside the Public Service or the Teaching Service.
- All DE employees are required to comply with relevant legislation, including legislation regarding the management of Departmental records, the Code of Conduct for Victorian public sector employees and Departmental policies and procedures in the conduct of their employment.
- Standard public service terms and conditions apply. Information about DE's operations and employment conditions can be obtained from the following websites: https://www.vic.gov.au/education/ and https://www2.education.vic.gov.au/pal
- To support DE's commitment to its Environmental Management System, DE employees are expected to always act in an environmentally responsible manner.
- A current driver's licence is mandatory for this role.
Location Profile
Employee Safety, Wellbeing and Inclusion Division
The Employee Safety, Wellbeing and Inclusion Division (ESWI Division) vision is to create safe, healthy, respectful and inclusive working environments for Department employees to thrive and succeed.
The ESWI Division performs it functions through teams that span from prevention, through to response and recovery, along with strategy, advice and support, and diversity and inclusion. These teams adopt a holistic approach for supporting the health, safety and wellbeing of our workforce across schools, central and regional offices. This includes Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and Workers' Compensation policy advice and support, for both physical and mental health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion initiatives.
The objectives of the ESWI Division are to:
- promote positive wellbeing in working environments
- prevent against known and expected risks to health, safety and wellbeing
- respond swiftly and effectively to manage potential issues as they emerge and prevent injuries
- support employees to recover from injury and illness, and return to work
- promote respectful and inclusive workplaces that upholds equal opportunity and prevents discrimination, bullying, harassment and sexual harassment
- promotes human rights and workforce diversity and inclusion.
OHS Implementation Services Branch
The OHS Implementation Services Branch provides Victorian government schools with systems, resources and expertise to support schools to manage occupational health, safety and wellbeing, with the objective of reducing administrative workload for schools by providing targeted service, support and advice. The Branch includes the operational Statewide OHS Services Team, the OHS Services Statewide Systems and Support Team and the eduSafe Plus Team.
The Statewide OHS Services Team is made up of four regionally based teams that provide on the ground OHS services and support to schools, including:
- support with tasks in preparation for OHS Assurance assessments and with completion of post audit actions
- support with emergency management planning tasks
- proactive regular and risk-based OHS and emergency management planning support through onsite visits
- delivery of targeted OHS initiatives
- responsive support to service requests
- support with building OHS and emergency management planning capability in school leadership.