The Office of the Auditor General for Local Government today released a performance audit report on the City of Fernie under the topic “Managing the Inherent Risks of Limited Human Resources within Small Local Governments.”

The audit of the City of Fernie’s human resources practices found that the city faces a number of human resources risks, Auditor General for Local Government (AGLG) Gordon Ruth said.

“As a small local government, Fernie has limited capacity and many staff carrying out multiple roles in order to deliver services,” said Ruth. “This creates risks for the city, which it may be able to address by sharing human resources functions with other nearby local governments.”

The audit found that Fernie has an opportunity to take on a longer-term, more integrated approach to planning for issues such as staff turnover, an aging workforce and ongoing capacity issues.

“With a new chief administrative officer in place, the city is well positioned to address the findings and recommendations in our report. By exploring the possibility of shared human resources services with other East Kootenay local governments, Fernie could benefit from valuable services the city otherwise might not be able to afford,” Ruth said.

The report’s 13 recommendations include seven in areas of human resource planning such as staff recruitment and retention and succession planning. Four recommendations are in areas of human resource management such as employee training and development and staff performance evaluation. Two recommendations touch on human resource administration in areas such as human resources policies and procedures and employee information.

The release of this report completes the performance audit process for the City of Fernie.

This is the AGLG’s third of five reports on the topic ‘Managing the Inherent Risks of Limited Human Resources within Small Local Governments,’ following the recent release of reports on the District of Squamish and City of Nelson. The other two reports will be on the District of Port Edward and District of Tofino.

This is the 25th report issued to date by the office of the AGLG, including 21 performance audit reports and four AGLG Perspectives booklets, which aim to provide a wide range of local governments with helpful advice and information relating to audit topics the office has explored.

The Fernie performance audit report is available on the AGLG’s website at www.aglg.ca .

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