ABC Federal Budget 2017

The ABC will announce the details of a major restructure tomorrow, and preliminary results from a union survey shows most staff don’t trust management’s direction for the public broadcaster.

Managing director Michelle Guthrie will announce the details of the restructure to all staff tomorrow morning, and it’s expected to abolish the long-standing “silos” of TV and radio as it pushes towards prioritising digital content. Guthrie is expected outline new divisions that would include news and investigative reporting, entertainment and culture, local and regional, and original content. Within those divisions, genre teams will make content for TV, radio and online.

In public addresses this year, Guthrie has repeatedly pushed the line that her plans for the broadcaster are not about cutting jobs, but about shaping the ABC to serve all Australians — not just the over-55 and children age brackets.

But those assurances haven’t allayed concerns staff have about repeated budget cuts, restructures and redundancies, and morale is low. Earlier this month, the ABC announced 11 staff would take a voluntary redundancy, and last week senior 7.30 reporter and staff-elected board director Matt Peacock told his colleagues he was one of those.

In an email to all staff, Peacock said he hoped to play an active role in the ABC’s transformation:

“It’s been a very tough five years, as everyone in the ABC knows, with cutbacks, attacks from the ABC’s enemies, reorganisations and redundancies — as all the while those of us remaining continue to get quality programs to air and online. Hopefully we are about to enter a better period of increased Australian production, less over-management, more creative and specialist content and engaged workforce. We aren’t there yet, but these are goals the managing director Michelle Guthrie has set herself and they are backed by the board. I wish her every success.”

Union survey finds staff unsettled, unmotivated 

The union representing most staff (expect journalists) at the ABC, the CPSU, has been conducting a staff survey and preliminary results based on 770 responses show that many of the staff don’t have confidence in the ABC’s leadership. Only 10% have reported they trust the direction senior leadership is taking the ABC, and 13% have reported senior leadership’s communication about restructures so far this year as good or excellent.

CPSU ABC section secretary Sinddy Ealy said morale was low, and staff felt that those making decisions had little understanding of how the organisation ran on the ground.

“There have been 12 restructures this year, which doesn’t include what they’re about to announce. People don’t understand what the changes are for. There’s an enormous amount of instability in the workplace,” Ealy told Crikey.

Only 26% of those surveyed were happy with the way their career is tracking at the ABC, and 70% don’t know what skills the ABC will need them to develop. The survey also found that 72% of staff reported dangerous levels of workplace stress.

The ABC has also conducted its own survey of staff, which has already closed. An ABC spokesman said workplace health and safety and employee wellbeing were “key priorities” for the ABC. “The policies and practises we have in place are designed to ensure the ongoing safety of all ABC employees through regular training and awareness campaigns,” he said. In a statement, he said the enterprise agreement allowed employees to raise concerns about workload and stress with their managers, and referred to the 2015 ABC engagement survey, which found 79% of employees agreed the ABC was meeting expectations.

NOTE: This story has been updated to include a statement from the ABC.