People

Employee development and capability

Leadership development

Leadership capability remains a key priority and supports our people delivering success for Downer. Our programs are underpinned by the LEaD (Leadership Excellence at Downer) Capability Framework and focus on leaders at all levels of the business.

Downer’s Executive Development Framework focuses on the growth of senior leaders within our business. The program provides support to leaders to build capabilities to deliver our current and future business goals. Senior leaders are engaged through annual leadership events, where the alumni come together to challenge current and emerging business requirements and to maintain their formal executive network across the business.

Leadership development remains a key priority for Downer. We recognise that our middle leaders are the vital link between frontline people and our executive leadership teams. Our LEaD2, Leadership Delivering Success program has been developed to meet the needs of our middle leaders and support them to effectively and competently balance their leadership, management and operational responsibilities to elevate our leadership and operational results.

We have also continued to build the Industrial Relations capability of our operational managers through structured training programs. This important lift in capability positions managers and human resources professionals to better support and engage employees, minimise our exposure to industrial disruption, lost time and revenue, and better service our customers.

We have an annual performance and development review process. As part of this our employees plan development goals and activities. Based on this, we identify the formal development needs that include safety, leadership and project management and other capability to increased business performance.

The table below represents Downer’s progress completion rate for those employees that have been identified for each capability program.

View table

Capability program

% complete of all identified employees

Executive development

73%

Middle leader

87%

Frontline leader

85%

Emerging leader

88%

Safety leadership

82%

Critical risk

100%

Project management

87%

Security Awareness

73%

Capability program

% complete of all identified employees

Executive development

73%

Middle leader

87%

Frontline leader

85%

Emerging leader

88%

Safety leadership

82%

Critical risk

100%

Project management

87%

Security Awareness

73%

Environmental awareness training includes:

  • 128 employees and a total of 1,024 hours in Accredited Advanced Environmental Awareness training, targeted at Project Managers, Construction Managers, Supervisors and Zero Harm Advisors
  • Development of Environment & Sustainability E-Learns on Waste Management (including Hazardous Waste), Water (stormwater, effluent management) and Planning & Approvals.

Downer’s strategic capability is underpinned by customised frameworks and programs that support current and future capability and our performance requirements. Our programs align to Downer’s Pillars of Safety, Delivery, Relationships and Thought Leadership, and promote behaviours that deliver Downer’s Purpose and Promise.

Strategic learning and development goals include:

  • To increase leadership capability and build skills to enhance business relationships
  • To develop our Zero Harm culture through increased leadership capability and employee knowledge and commitment
  • To embed project management excellence and build capability of project management against identified key drivers of business performance
  • To increase skills to strengthen business and commercial acumen.

Constantly striving towards achieving these goals ensures our leaders have the skills, knowledge and attitude to deliver our organisational goals.

Capability development

Safety

Downer’s key initiative and the foundation of our Zero Harm commitment is ‘Our Safety Focus’. Each year employees and contractors undertake the safety training program, which is now in its fifth year. Of participating divisions, we achieved a 95 per cent completion rate across all employees. It reinforces the importance of safety leadership and focus for our key critical risk activities.

This alignment has provided a platform to drive greater focus for the safety of our people and personal accountability to make our workplaces focus on key safety behaviours and actions that are relevant to their work environment. Zero Harm and safety leadership continues to be a key strategic theme across the entire leadership suite of development initiatives.

Delivery

The ‘Fundamentals for Successful Downer Projects’ training program began in 2014 and continues to equip project managers with the capability they need to implement Downer’s robust project management methodologies for successful project delivery.

Advanced project management skills and knowledge are further developed through our suite of specialist modules and workshops, with an emphasis on the further application of critical elements of project management methodologies required for larger scale project delivery.

Downer’s capability frameworks have been developed to provide a common and consistent description of behaviours, skills, knowledge and abilities required for delivery success in any role across the organisation. These frameworks support the development of a highly skilled, capable and engaged workforce for continued success.

Relationships

Our teams build relationships that create success and we recognise that we need people at every transaction point to ensure consistent delivery. Successful relationships are not just customer facing. We believe our internal relationships are equally as important.

Downer’s capability enables us to unlock value through leveraging the company’s leading market position and strong core business. This is achieved by delivering on our commitments to customers, ensuring our service offering aligns to our customer needs, identifying and realising cross divisional opportunities, and adapting our operating model to maintain healthy margins.

The LEaD (Leadership Excellence at Downer) suite of capability development programs directly upskill leaders to build and sustain relationships that create success.

Thought Leadership

This pillar places Downer at the forefront of industry by attracting and developing the best people and empowering them to have the courage to challenge the status quo.

A critical component of this is diversity and inclusion. We continue to invest in and attract a diverse workforce to produce thought leaders. One such initiative is through our Emerging LEaDer’s program. This structured development program provides our high potential future leaders with a comprehensive development pathway across the business fostering long-term career growth and success. This provides Downer with a rich and diverse pipeline of future leaders and focuses on business-critical leadership skills, while developing core financial, commercial and business acumen for these rising stars.

Our Thought Leadership approach extends to all levels of the business through our other leadership capability development programs including Jawun, mentoring and executive coaching.

Downer’s key initiative and the foundation of our Zero Harm commitment is ‘Our Safety Focus’. Each year employees and contractors undertake the safety training program, which is now in its fifth year. Of participating divisions, we achieved a 95 per cent completion rate across all employees. It reinforces the importance of safety leadership and focus for our key critical risk activities.

This alignment has provided a platform to drive greater focus for the safety of our people and personal accountability to make our workplaces focus on key safety behaviours and actions that are relevant to their work environment. Zero Harm and safety leadership continues to be a key strategic theme across the entire leadership suite of development initiatives.

The ‘Fundamentals for Successful Downer Projects’ training program began in 2014 and continues to equip project managers with the capability they need to implement Downer’s robust project management methodologies for successful project delivery.

Advanced project management skills and knowledge are further developed through our suite of specialist modules and workshops, with an emphasis on the further application of critical elements of project management methodologies required for larger scale project delivery.

Downer’s capability frameworks have been developed to provide a common and consistent description of behaviours, skills, knowledge and abilities required for delivery success in any role across the organisation. These frameworks support the development of a highly skilled, capable and engaged workforce for continued success.

Our teams build relationships that create success and we recognise that we need people at every transaction point to ensure consistent delivery. Successful relationships are not just customer facing. We believe our internal relationships are equally as important.

Downer’s capability enables us to unlock value through leveraging the company’s leading market position and strong core business. This is achieved by delivering on our commitments to customers, ensuring our service offering aligns to our customer needs, identifying and realising cross divisional opportunities, and adapting our operating model to maintain healthy margins.

The LEaD (Leadership Excellence at Downer) suite of capability development programs directly upskill leaders to build and sustain relationships that create success.

This pillar places Downer at the forefront of industry by attracting and developing the best people and empowering them to have the courage to challenge the status quo.

A critical component of this is diversity and inclusion. We continue to invest in and attract a diverse workforce to produce thought leaders. One such initiative is through our Emerging LEaDer’s program. This structured development program provides our high potential future leaders with a comprehensive development pathway across the business fostering long-term career growth and success. This provides Downer with a rich and diverse pipeline of future leaders and focuses on business-critical leadership skills, while developing core financial, commercial and business acumen for these rising stars.

Our Thought Leadership approach extends to all levels of the business through our other leadership capability development programs including Jawun, mentoring and executive coaching.

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