You can’t recruit your way out of this.So start with the people you have.

Intian quantifies the effort going into every activity and maps it to the services it delivers, so you can plan and report on your workforce correctly and iteratively.

Book 20 minutes See how it works

Start with the people you already have. Resolve a misallocation and watch what is left for the vacant position.

0Hours a week freed up

38Hours a week still uncovered

88%

of responding NSW councils reported occupational shortages in 2024-25.

4 months

or more is the normal cycle to recruit a planner, an engineer or a surveyor.

58%

of the workforce has under 5 years tenure, and 16% under a year.

A vacancy isn’t an empty chair. It’s work that has already moved sideways, usually to whoever was closest to it, and nobody has counted what moved or what quietly stopped.

Public Skills Australia, Local Government Skills Audit 2025-26, New South Wales report.

What you get

Every service with the work behind it.

Each service pillar is set up as a strategic initiative and every activity performed is mapped, so effort, skills and gaps are surfaced and known at all times.

Service pillar

Activities

Effort

Accredited

Status

Development assessmentDelivery program priority

18%

2 of 4

Under

Community and library servicesDelivery program priority

3 of 3

Under

Waste and cleansingCore service

24%

6 of 6

Optimal

Parks and open spaceCore service

21%

5 of 6

Over

Corporate and administrativeEnabling

28%

—

Over

Key analysis

More than a quarter of effort sits in enabling work, while development assessment carries 18% against a delivery program priority and is accredited at half of what it requires.

Figures shown are illustrative. Your own mapping comes out of the first survey round.

Where it earns its place

What councils need to show, and where the model does the work.

None of this asks for a new document. It asks for evidence of where the effort goes, which is the one thing a ledger extract and a position list can’t give you.

Workforce planning

Your Workforce Management Strategy reads from a model that updates every fortnight, rather than a document rebuilt each cycle.

Reallocate first, then size the role around what is left
Decide on vacancies and contractors knowing what the team can absorb
Redeploy, train or develop before recruiting for a gap

Service reviews

Model the workforce and cost impact of a service review before committing to it.

Move activities between service pillars and watch the effort shift
Test a redesign against the Delivery Program before anyone is affected
Keep the qualification each activity needs attached as it moves

Rate variations and reporting

IPART’s productivity test and the spending review being designed for rate increases both turn on where the effort goes.

Full cost to deliver each service, by activity and team
Effort split across strategic, business as usual and admin work
One set of numbers for the executive, councillors and community

Org development support

The model is the same with or without an org development team, and only the level of support changes.

Working with your org development team where one exists
Being that capability where it doesn’t
Workshops and redesign sessions when you want them, not on retainer

Intian doesn’t replace your IP&R documents. It gives them a live evidence base, so what you prepare once for compliance stays current for decisions.

How it works

Six steps on a loop.

Discovery shows what is really happening, with execution measuring workforce changes.

Phase 1DiscoverySee what is actually being delivered, by whom and with what qualifications behind it.

Analysis

Onboarding and analysis surveys

Upload the employee list and trigger the first survey across offices, depots and sites.

Mapping

Current state ecosystem built

A living model of activities, teams and the accreditations held against each of them.

Diagnosis

Capability gaps and org health score

Duplicated work, capability gaps and unassigned service delivery initiatives come into focus.

Phase 2ExecutionReconfigure roles and rebalance services, having tested the change before anyone is affected by it.

Improvement

Planning and modelling

Reallocate activities among the people you have, then create the proposed position and size it against what is left over.

Action

Live updates and suggestions

Apply the change, notify the people it touches and see the effect on the model.

Control

Adaptive strategy and KPIs

Organisational health tracked as a live KPI you can report against, feeding back into step 1.

↻ Which is rather the point, because a workforce plan stops at step 3.

You hear it from your people.

Leaders describe the council as it was designed, the people delivering the services describe how it actually runs, and the gap between them is the finding.

You and a key decision maker

Onboarding on site

We set the council up together, adding the detail and uploading the employee list.

Employees, once

Initial activity survey

Your people input their work, their time split and the qualifications they hold, in their own words.

Manager

Audit survey

A manager reviews what came back, adjusts anything that looks off and approves it into the model.

Employees, fortnightly

Pulse survey

A short fortnightly update on activities, time and skills, which is what keeps the model current.

Before you ask

What a general manager usually asks.

How much of my people’s time does this take?

One survey at the start, then a short update each fortnight. Not a timesheet, no logins and answered by link.

We can’t fill the role anyway. What does software change?

Clean up duplication and misallocation first. What the team still can’t absorb is what the position needs to cover, and it’s usually smaller than the role as written.

Who actually has to use it?

Two licences sit with the executive to read the analysis. Everything else runs off the survey automatically, so nobody is doing work to keep it going.

How is this different from our workforce plan?

A plan is true the day it’s adopted. This recalculates every fortnight, and the reporting views export straight out of it.

Worth 20 minutes?

I’ll show you the model running on a council about your size, and you’ll know inside 5 minutes whether it’s any use.

Book 20 minutes Or send an email