What makes The Spastic Centre a great place to work...

 

Working at TSC is more than a job. It’s an experience.

When you join The Spastic Centre, you become part of an organisation that recognises employees as its most valuable asset.

Working at The Centre offers many additional benefits relating to work-life balance, rewards, learning and organisational culture.

In 2008, TSC was recognised as one of the country's most female-friendly employers through the Employer of Choice for Women Awards.


Balance

Wellness Program

The Spastic Centre, in conjunction with PEAK Health Management, has introduced a new staff initiative - a corporate wellness program. PEAK Health Management is Australia’s leading, and most successful, corporate health management company.

PEAK takes a holistic approach to health and wellbeing. Health is not just a state of being medically well; it encompasses other areas of health such as mental wellbeing, nutritional wellbeing and so on.

The Wellness Program takes a multifaceted approach and aims to inspire employees to improve their health and wellbeing through the provision of health screenings, information sessions, massage, passive exercise classes and annual flu vaccinations.

Leave

To support employees to maintain a desired work-life balance, The Spastic Centre provides the following additional leave benefits:

Family Leave Day
This day is provided to employees to allow them to attend an important family event or function.

Full time and part time employees who work 15.2 hours a week or more, and have six months of continuous service, are eligible to receive one day of paid leave to spend time with a member of their family.

This benefit does not apply to casual staff and employees on contract who have worked for periods of less than 12 months. The employee becomes entitled to the Family Leave Day after they have successfully completed their qualifying period. The day must be taken before the employee’s 12 month anniversary day, otherwise it will be lost. The Family Leave day does not accumulate. Only one day every 12 months can be taken.

As per other leave, the employee must discuss and seek approval for the date of the proposed leave with their manager prior to taking this day.

Work-Life Bonus Day
This bonus leave day is a reward for employees who have an annual leave balance of 38 hours (or pro rata for part time staff) or less on the day before their anniversary date.

Full time and part time employees who work 15.2 hours a week or more, and have 12 months continuous service, and have taken their full annual leave entitlement, are eligible to receive one extra day of paid leave.

This benefit does not apply to casual staff and employees who have worked for periods of less than 12 months.

The day must be taken before the employee’s next 12 month anniversary day, otherwise it will be lost. The Work-Life Bonus Day does not accumulate. As with other leave, the employee must discuss and seek approval for the date of the proposed leave with their manager prior to taking this day.

The ‘Big Break’ Pre-purchased Leave Option
This option allows employees the opportunity to plan for an extra long break so they can travel, study or undertake a special project.

The purchase options offered are:

Full time and part time employees, who work 15.2 hours a week or more, are eligible to participate in these options. Employees are able to start their salary deductions for pre-purchased leave at the time of their appointment. These options are not available to casual staff.

Salary deduction for part time employees will be based on the hours of duty at the time of the application and will only be varied to take into account salary movements. An employee’s salary for superannuation will not change as a result of participation in this scheme.
Employees are permitted to withdraw from a pre-purchased leave option at any time. However, this will render the employee ineligible for further participation in any option for a period of 12 months.

Pre-purchased leave can be taken in conjunction with annual, long service leave and parental leave. Annual leave loading will not be paid on any purchased leave. Pre-purchased leave counts as service for all purposes. Employees continue to accrue their normal entitlements whilst on pre-purchased leave (e.g. annual, sick and long service leave). They will be expected to take up their normal duties on returning to their pre-purchased leave.

The manager has the right to decline or renegotiate an employee’s application for pre-purchased leave if the proposed dates for its use conflict with operational requirements and or reduce service delivery to clients and their families.

Where an employee is promoted, or transferred to another team or work site, they will have to confirm or renegotiate the timing for taking the pre-purchased leave with their new manager.

Paid Parental Leave
For employees who have one year but less than three years of continuous service, the entitlement is six weeks. This will be paid as follows:

For employees who have three or more years of continuous service, the entitlement is 12 weeks. This will be paid as follows:

Employee Assistance Program
The Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a free, voluntary and confidential service for employees of The Spastic Centre and their families.

The EAP assists employees and their family members to deal with personal, family and work issues that affect their quality of life. Through access to qualified and experienced counsellors, employees and their immediate family have the opportunity to identify problems and find ways of resolving them.

The EAP is managed on behalf of The Spastic Centre by Access Programs, a subsidiary of Centacare.

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Rewards

To successfully attract and retain employees with the appropriate competencies, The Spastic Centre:

Each of these activities form part of the human resources management function.

Flexible Remuneration Packaging

The Spastic Centre is committed to employing and retaining highly skilled and motivated employees. Part of this involves the provision of adequate and equitable remuneration for the services provided by its staff.

Remuneration packaging is a flexible, alternative remuneration strategy that The Centre offers its eligible staff, and one that has mutual benefits for both the employee and the organisation.

For its non-award positions, The Centre has analysed individual positions taking into consideration all aspects of the job. Benchmark remuneration levels were then determined, allowing the organisation to remunerate its staff at close to the recommended market rates - thereby maintaining parity and ensuring that it remains as competitive as possible.

In regards to award positions, The Centre’s own two awards are also able to offer employees salary packaging.

Meal Entertainment

This is a voluntary program that allows employees to salary sacrifice so that they can utilise an ATO (Australian Tax Office) approved, tax-free meal entertainment benefit.

An employee can salary sacrifice up to $10,000 a year (tax free) and spend it on food and drink at cafes and restaurants and on taxi fares going to and from the cafes and restaurants at which they are dining.

This benefit can also be used to pay for the food and drink at a specially catered birthday or engagement or wedding party and reception. The employee can also use the benefit to pay for all their café and restaurant meals when they are away on holidays.

Income Protection Insurance

Permanent full and part time employees (working at least 15 hours a week), and who are AMP CustomSuper plan members, receive free income protection insurance.

Employees meeting this criteria will, if they become temporarily disabled (after a 3 month waiting period), receive a salary continuance benefit.

The benefit will provide the employee with a monthly income of 75% of their salary for a maximum period of two years.

Discount Offers

Some of The Spastic Centre’s sponsors and supporters offer discounts and special deals to employees and their families.

The Spastic Centre, however has no control over and makes no representation or warranty as to the accuracy, completeness or quality of the offers or the goods and/or services to which they relate.

Accepting any of the offers is at the employee’s own risk. Should an employee intend to pursue any offer, they should make enquiries necessary to verify the information contained in the offer and to reach a decision regarding its merits based on their individual circumstances.

Some past and present employee discounts and offers involve:

Recognition

The Spastic Centre strives to be recognised as a good employer and in doing so is committed to recognising and celebrating the efforts of all employees. To achieve this, The Centre supports a system that not only recognises an employee’s length of service but also their achievements and contribution to the organisation. The Spastic Centre also recognises that it is important to celebrate personal events such as farewells and weddings with other work colleagues

Employees reaching the following milestones are formally recognised:

A number of different awards are also presented to employees in recognition of their personal contribution to the work of The Spastic Centre. They are:

  1. The Outstanding Staff Award
  2. Are you being served? Customer Service Award
  3. The Einstein Award - for good ideas
  4. The PIER Award - for those who embody the organisation’s core values
  5. The Best Newcomer - encouragement award for new starters
  6. TSC Quiet Achiever Award
  7. The Greenfeet Award – for best environmentally friendly idea adopted across the organisation
  8. Cultural Diversity Award – recognising staff diversity.

A list of award recipients is maintained on the Spastic Centre’s Intranet site.

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Learning

Professional Development

The Spastic Centre provides each employee the opportunity to develop new skills or refine existing skills relevant to their role through internal and external training.
As a Registered Training Organisation (RTO), we offer nationally accredited training packages (Certificate III and IV in Disability Work, Aged Care and Frontline Management), which meet the Australian Quality Training Framework. All employees participate in a wide range of internal training courses. In addition, we support employees to gain skills and knowledge externally through:

Supporting good work practice, based on sound research, is an important part of the way The Spastic Centre delivers its services. It also has a role to ensure that research is shared widely across the organisation. In particular, therapy employees are:

Career Opportunities

To support the selection and promotion of the right employees for development and advancement within the organisation, The Spastic Centre has developed defined role families and levels.

Each role family represents a cohort of roles with similar competencies, such as therapists, carers, management, etc. Each level outlines the required competencies and skills needed for that role, allowing employees to easily identify the skill set needed to progress within the organisation.

By linking the role levels to their annual performance appraisal, employees have the opportunity to:

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Culture

The Spastic Centre’s values are Integrity, Passion, Excellence and Respect. It uses the Macquarie University’s Voice Project to run regular climate surveys to measure employee engagement and to ensure that The Centre’s values are reflected in the organisational culture.

The survey results show that the staff have placed The Spastic Centre in the top 18% of organisations in Australia when it comes to their passion and engagement with the organisation.

When staff have been asked what has been their most positive experiences as an employee with the Spastic Centre, the following responses are representative of many replies:

When staff have been asked what are the three greatest strengths of The Spastic Centre, the following responses are representative of many replies:

 

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