WESTLOCK – The Town of Westlock has tweaked its employee training and development policy, a document that spells out how the municipality supports staff career development, along with the expectations placed on supervisors and the workers participating.
At their May 23 meeting, town councillors voted 6-0 (Coun. Murtaza Jamaly was absent) to approve the amended Training and Development Policy P-26-2008, a document they viewed at the May 15 committee of the whole meeting.
In her briefing to council, CAO Simone Wiley said since its initial passage in 2008 when Bruce Lennon was mayor and Norm McInnis was town manager, the policy has not been back in front of council and needed some refinements to, “ … make it more clear in some areas for the staff who are utilizing it.” Ultimately, the policy statement reads: “The Town of Westlock values their employees and believes in the development of our workforce to enhance employee engagement, commitment to town and to ensure continued excellence of our organization.”
“It isn’t new, it just needed some tweaking as clarity was lacking on the development side of things in terms of workshops,” Wiley explained.
Fundamentally, the document is meant to encourage staff to continue their professional development with Wiley calling it, “important to us an organization” while Coun. Laura Morie said she likes that “our organization supports growth from within.” As it stands, the town’s career development program includes everything from coaching to job-shadowing and cross-training, professional development and refresher courses, or remedial training.
“Overall, I think the organization has a mix of where people are at in their career paths. There are some who are at the start of their path and others who are happy with where there are at and that’s fine, too,” said Wiley.
Mayor Ralph Leriger noted that it can be “tougher for us as a smaller shop” to offer advancement within, while Wiley noted that cross-training can also be difficult because “you’re taking them away from their daily job and no one is doing it for them.”
“Attraction and retention is a good policy that serves us well. We want to make sure our folks are well trained and happy,” added Leriger.
