From our Executive Director Corporate Services
Gabrielle Sutton
Executive Director Corporate ServicesEach year we continue to build and support capability within APC so we can achieve our strategic priorities.
We’ve been remarkably productive over the last year despite the continued disruption caused by the pandemic, including innovative approaches to ensure that we can continue to provide services and maintain a strong corporate culture despite these challenges.
Focus on Our People
COVID continues to impact our working and personal lives. Enduring lockdowns and severely hampered operational restrictions have taken its toll on the workforce and our stakeholders. Our focus on wellbeing included an upgraded Employee Assistance Program with our new provider ‘Exhale People’ and provided all staff with a wellbeing allowance.
Throughout this time, APC has maintained a diligent focus on protecting our people, our culture and our general wellbeing. We have taken care to ensure our staff are able to effectively work from home (WFH) and stayed connected through our various virtual means and posting regular tips on how to effectively WFH. We were fortunate to have a brief return to the office for the second half of the year, allowing for our team to participate in an in-house yoga program, a staff BBQ in November and a Christmas lunch. However, the recent re-emergence of lockdowns demonstrated our capacity to adapt, remain resilient and continue to deliver.
Professional Development
We’re passionate about collaborating, learning and creating. Although it has been a difficult year to attend events and training, we have done what we could, when we could. Our investment in professional development and team building activities during the year included:
- SharePoint training on implementing Workflows
- first aid and fire warden training
- participation in the 2021 National RAP conference
- cultural safety training
- coaching in writing and content creation
- technical skills in Adobe InDesign, Illustrator, Office 365 and SharePoint.
Improving our Organisational processes
Office Refurbishment
APC took the opportunity for a mid-lease office refit to cater for the organisations current and emerging needs. With our lease remaining until 2028, the pandemic provided an opportunity to undertake this work in 2020-21 which minimised some disruption. As our team returned to the office (albeit briefly) we were able to begin to enjoy the new layout and operational efficiencies that this brought. We all look forward to fully utilising this once the current round of lockdowns are relaxed and we again return to our office environment.
As part of supporting indigenous businesses, APC engaged Winya as a supply nation Registered Indigenous owned office furniture company to complement our office with furniture in a unique indigenous fabric.
ICT Transformation
We continue to modernise our ICT platforms with our CRM at the centre of these enhancements. APC has continued to work on improving our enabling capability and this included upgrades to key corporate systems, including finance and payroll. APC also engaged external consultants to review our service costing methods and have begun working through contemporary methods of cost attributions to support our increasingly complex business model. This will allow us to more accurately reflect the true cost of services and continue to ensure financial integrity.
There is no greater test of our new IT backbone than operating in remote conditions through the ongoing pandemic. With many more of our operations becoming necessarily online and virtual, and our people required to work from home much of the year, our recent investments to move to cloud based secure environments, and ongoing partnerships with our technology partners has proven to be a strong and effective platform. It is difficult to comprehend how APC could have operated as seamlessly without the foresight of these investments to embark on the ICT modernisation program a few years ago.
Social Responsibility
As well as loving a social gathering, we are also quite the philanthropic bunch. The isolation of the pandemic has stretched this commitment, but the proactive virtual connections when we could not gather in person has demonstrated the strength and resilience of our team and culture.
When we can, we undertake staff led fund raising activities, but this last year has brought some challenges in this regard. We make an annual donation to Pharmacists Support Service (PSS), and have joined PSS as a member. This service provides a listening ear over the telephone to pharmacists and pharmacy interns and students and strongly aligns to our mission.
We also make a corporate donation at Christmas each year. This year we donated to Home In Queanbeyan, a loving home for people living with mental illness.
“In a nutshell, HOME seeks to gently and persistently love people back into life. There is nothing more important than shining a light on the dignity of another person.”
We’re maintaining our stance on sustainability. We are an accredited ACTSmart organisation, engaging in a Business Recycling Program. Our aim is to minimise waste and contribute to decreased greenhouse gas emissions.
We were also able to repurpose furniture and equipment no longer required through our refurbishment to worthwhile local NFP institutions, including Relationships Australia (Canberra & Region), Koomarri, ACT Shelter, MARSS Australia, and Community Services #1. Our redundant IT equipment was sent to a specialist IT recycling facility for recycling and re-use where possible.
Celebrations
World Pharmacists Day
World Pharmacists Day in 2020 was a limited affair due to the COVID lockdowns. However we were able to distribute cupcakes to all staff members and participate in a virtual meeting
Christmas
We managed to squeeze in a Christmas lunch at Muse in 2020 despite the pandemic, but some unfortunately could not attend so we connected via Zoom to do our best to stay connected. We’re looking forward to when we can reunite more holistically soon and hoping for more options in 2021.
