Finance is committed to building excellence, encouraging innovation and developing its people. Two of the Department's goals are to become a high performing organisation to better enable Finance to deliver its outcomes, and to become an employer of choice. Finance's progress in achieving these goals is supported by our people management practices. Indeed, human resource (HR) management is a key lever that assists the Department in meeting its objectives.

Finance's HR management framework is based on the concept of the employee life cycle, and sets out strategies and policies for all aspects of employment with Finance, from attraction to separation. Employee benefits and conditions are outlined in Certified Agreements (CAs) and AWAs. The key result areas within Finance's HR framework are:

• recruitment and retention;
  
  
• development and performance;
  
  
• remuneration and recognition.

STRATEGIC PLANNING

Finance's ability to deliver against its key HR result areas is enhanced by the Department's strategic partnership with PwC. This partnership was formed in 1999 and covers the provision of the full range of HR functions for the Department.

The strategic partnership covers four essential HR service areas:

• transactional—payroll and leave processing;
  
  
• administrative—compensation case management and recruitment;
  
  
• value-added services—training and development;
  
  
• strategic—HR policy development and organisational change initiatives.

The partnership initially focused on the delivery of transactional and administrative services. In 2000–01, PwC began to implement a range of strategic HR services also covered by the partnership.

Work is continuing on developing the range and quality of all services. There are clear benefits to Finance from this partnership: the Department has exceeded its savings target of 15 per cent; payroll and transactional systems and services have improved significantly and are virtually error-free; and Finance has tapped into the capabilities of PwC internationally for higher value strategic services.