The Great Barrier Reef is listed as a Natural World Heritage Area stretching more than 2,300km along the northeast coast of Australia.

Challenge

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) is the principal adviser to the Commonwealth Government on the care and development of the Great Barrier Reef. The GBRMPA wanted to improve their community engagement and encourage a culture of best practice. This is about sharing knowledge and building trust and understanding with the community along the Great Barrier Reef coastline. A strong partnership between the communities and GBRMPA will improve business results through better management decisions, greater levels of voluntary compliance to policies and better stewardship of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

Objective

GBRMPA needed an agreed framework of what working in partnership with the community meant in terms of behaviours and attitudes (both internal and external), tools and processes. The information to build the framework was to come from both staff and directors of GBRMPA.

Solution

Impact Australia worked with GBRMPA to:

•    Illuminate - assess the current culture towards community engagement through an all staff survey.
•    Develop - facilitate a senior management workshop to work through the issues raised and develop future strategy.
•    Implement - communicate a strategy for a culture change towards best practice community engagement and support the directors as they empowered their staff to undertake this in their jobs on a daily basis.

GBRMPA chose to work with Impact Australia as we offered a neutral and formal way in which to bring the ideas, problems and barriers to the fore. Impact provided experience of driving culture change combined with a practical based solution. Our involvement effectively depersonalised the process and enabled a greater focus on the problems rather than the people.

Result

Following our intervention the GBRMPA benefited from a common vision highlighting what community engagement means for their business.

Impact’s all staff survey was a comprehensive and multidimensional report. The resulting senior manager workshop unified that team. In turn, this led the directors to define the behaviours, attitudes, tools and processes that will best improve community engagement and communicate how this will be incorporated into everyday business.

Read more about Impact's approach to Transforming Organisations