Social Welfare staff opt for severance

Press, 23 September 1987, Page 4

Social Welfare staff opt for severance

PA Wellington About 30 staff at the Social Welfare Department’s head office have opted for voluntary severance rather than radically different new jobs, a spokesman says. The department is not reducing staff numbers over all, but it is reorganising its divisions and looking for a different type of staff. So far, 78 positions from the social work services and the benefits and pensions divisions have been declared surplus. Sixty-two positions have been created in the new programmes and services division. Staff in this new division were expected to be more policy-oriented than before, said the deputy director-general, Mr Rob Laking. Many staff were choosing voluntary severance rather

than taking on a different type of job.

“Some of them would feel more comfortable in the administration of a given set of rules than in examining and implementing fundamental change,” Mr Laking said. Staff in the new division still needed some technical expertise, but the new positions were geared more toward policy rather than administration. The final numbers of Social Welfare staff choosing voluntary severance were unavailable because the last date for deciding whether to stay and change jobs, or to take the money and leave, .had not yet passed.

Some staff who had taken voluntary severance had *. been expected to make the transition easily, but had decided the

voluntary severance option was too attractive, and sought jobs elsewhere.

More positions in other Social Welfare head office divisions are expected to be declared surplus. Six months ago, the Director General of Social Welfare, Mr John Grant, said 110 head office jobs would be shed by 1989.

Mr Laking said that the jobs were being redistributed, rather than reduced. Having set up the programmes and services division, which dealt with policy and delivery of services, Social Welfare was now looking at its administrative support services, he said.

“Many administrative support staff worked in head office,” he said, "and we are going through that side now.”