Goal 4: Be a Highly Effective Organisation

Annual Report 2013-14

Stakeholder Engagement

Tourism Tasmania regularly communicates with Tasmania's tourism industry and relevant stakeholders to keep them informed of the activities of Tourism Tasmania and any business opportunities being made available to them.

Tourism Tasmania uses a range of channels to communicate with stakeholders including Tourism Talk – a fortnightly newsletter for industry, Industry Advisories – email news notification distributed to all members of the Tiger TOUR database, and through website publishing, RSS broadcasts and twitter feeds.

During this financial year, a total of 10 Industry Advisories were distributed on topics including campaign launches, announcements from the CEO and the publication and analysis of research outcomes.

Tourism Tasmania continued to use video messages to communicate to stakeholders and over the year produced four video messages from the CEO and Director of Marketing. These included the production of an 11 minute video to inform stakeholders of Tourism Tasmania's new approach to marketing. In addition, Tourism Tasmania produced a collection of six videos to support the launch of Tourism Tasmania's recently redeveloped travel website, Discover Tasmania.

Tourism Tasmania also used video communications to announce the launch of the Go Behind the Scenery – Spring campaign and to inform and encourage participation by Tasmania's tourism industry in Tourism Australia's Restaurant Australia global campaign.

Further communications support was developed to assist all Tasmanian tourism operators in the transition to a new MyTigerTOUR self-authoring product database.

Tourism Tasmania continues to publish a corporate website to keep stakeholders informed of the activities of the agency, the outcomes of research and to provide online services to enable them to register for workshops and other corporate events. In 2013-14 there were 90 887 visits (66 106 unique visits) to the corporate website.

Tourism Tasmania also publishes a Trade Resources website to assist in the delivery of information and tools to distribution partners to help them sell Tasmania. This year, Tourism Tasmania expanded the website's content to include three training modules to help educate travel agents about the destination. The modules are an integral part of Tourism Tasmania's Tassie Specialist Training program.

Tourism Tasmania supports the Minister for Tourism and the CEO of Tourism Tasmania in preparing speaking points and media releases on funding announcements, tourism industry events, new product openings, Tasmanian Visitor Survey results and other Tasmanian tourism initiatives.

To keep the public informed of the activities of the Agency, Tourism Tasmania also provides regular briefings, fact sheets and research data to Tasmanian and interstate media and responds to requests for comment or statistics on tourism issues in the state.

Business Services

The Business Services team manages the flow of government and ministerial information into and out of Tourism Tasmania on behalf of the Minister, undertakes contractual and procurement oversight and provides Board Secretariat Services for the Tourism Tasmania Board and the Audit Finance and Risk Committee.

It also plays a vital role in providing timely and accurate budget and financial information and advice, as well as maintaining a high level of financial controls to ensure accountability for government resources.

Internal Management Audit

Tourism Tasmania conducts its own internal audit program. Audit topics are selected by the Audit Finance and Risk Committee (AFRC) and resulting programs of work and timelines developed by management with input from the internal auditors. The results are reported back to the AFRC with agreed management actions and treatments. The progress of the agreed management actions are reported to the AFRC at each meeting.

Audits commenced and overseen by the committee this year included a review of the business continuity management processes used to protect Tourism Tasmania's online assets and data repositories, a review and evaluation of Tourism Tasmania's management of its relationship with grant funding and a review and evaluation of Tourism Tasmania's management of its relationship with the regional tourism organisations.

The AFRC also undertook a biannual review of the AFRC Charter and a biannual self-assessment of the function of the AFRC.

Risk management

Tourism Tasmania is committed to taking a comprehensive approach to managing risk using a Risk Register framework, a process that requires the identification of business risks arising from its strategic direction and operating environment. Tourism Tasmania's risk register is reviewed annually by the AFRC and subsequently presented to the board for endorsement. Management report quarterly to the AFRC on the risk treatment plans and on any new or escalated risks and the appropriate processes to manage them.

In June 2014, three-quarters of Tourism Tasmania staff participated in an overview of risk management at the project level, which included work-shopping of a current Tourism Tasmania marketing project that reinforced staff knowledge of risk and risk assessment. The Risk Register updated in August 2013 will be reviewed again in September-October 2014.

Workplace Health and Safety

Following changes to Work Health and Safety legislation from 1 January 2013, Tourism Tasmania renewed its focus on health and safety and educating staff on the shared responsibilities required to protect staff at work. In October-November, fifteen Tourism Tasmania managers completed a two-day Manager WHS Awareness Training on raising awareness of health and safety issues in the workplace.

Following this, all Tourism Tasmania staff participated in training in Workplace Health and Safely (WHS). The training sessions, held in groups of 6 to 10, were to inform staff of the new responsibilities and terminology arising from Australia's harmonisation of Work Place Health and Safety Laws. Following the facilitated session staff completed an online training assessment that covered three modules - Law and Responsibilities for WHS, Hazards for WHS and Consultation and Reporting for WHS Induction.

Values

The Department of Economic Development, Tourism and the Arts developed a whole of agency values team in September 2010. All department staff are guided in the work they do by the department's three core values - we act with integrity, our people matter and we make a real difference.

Tourism Tasmania has representation on the values team that meet on a bi-monthly basis and twice yearly with the Executive Team. The values continue to be embedded into systems and process across the department including in the recruitment and selection process.

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