The release of the overall insights of CSIRO’s recent culture survey has underscored the difficult task ahead for senior leaders to rebuild staff confidence in the organisation’s vision, mission and strategic direction.
An examination of the survey detail at the business unit and enterprise team level demonstrates how deeply the malaise has spread, with some sections of the organisation returning some truly parlous ratings.
In a letter to the Staff Association responding to concerns over the impact of rolling job cuts, CSIRO Chief Executive Doug Hilton said that he and the Executive Team were “now working on better understanding the survey insights to further to develop enterprise-wide actions to leverage our key strengths and address opportunities for improvement.”
There are some units that where culture ratings have remained relatively robust, such as Mineral Resources, Energy and NCMI. CBIS is stable.
Some enterprise services teams – such as Legal and Science Connect – are strong. And maybe it’s no surprise (given the success of the campaign run by staff and the union to roll back ARIBA) that the results from Finance showed improvement across the board.
It’s a mixed picture at Data61 but fairly stable overall, especially given the unit’s well documented budget problems and the imminent prospect of significant job cuts. Rating at IM&T are down but not in freefall.
Speaking of cuts, it’s not real good over in Health and Biosecurity – where ratings have fallen roughly in line with the organisational par – but perhaps not as bad as was expected.
While all survey scores from Space and Astronomy are still incredibly low there has been consistent, if marginal, improvement.
Both Environment and Manufacturing recorded under average results. However, indices relating to involvement and consistency improved, suggesting that staff are trusting each other in the absence of confidence in senior leaders.
The results from Agriculture and Food – one of the largest cohorts in CSIRO – are particularly poor and represent a significant problem for senior leaders of the business unit.
Staff confidence at Science Impact and Policy seems to have collapsed. It’s a similar story in the Investment team. Anywhere that does the vision thing (Strategy, Strategic Partnerships, Strategic Delivery) has been smashed. Results in Corporate Affairs are down too.
But the massive decline across all ratings in Governance are scarcely believable and truly shocking. Two years ago, the team recorded some of the strongest ratings across the organisation. Since then, the fall has been calamitous, with results now in single figures across all indices.
