Workforce resilience at Yarra Valley Water
How does climate change impact on the workforce and its resilience?
We are researching this question in collaboration with Yarra Valley Water, Victoria’s largest water service provider.
Through our research, we find that climate change impacts the operations and staff in through several risk pathways. For example:
- Through increasingly intense and extensive infrastructure maintenance peak periods, especially in relation to pipe failures in reactive soils and sewer spills.
- As essential service providers, Yarra Valley Water staff regularly need to respond to extreme weather events like storms, bushfires, landslides, and floods, which occur with increasing frequency and intensity.
These pressures create increasing stress for staff, with fewer opportunities for recuperation and proactive action. These ongoing pressures also shift the nature of work. Our research is action-oriented, aiming to generate knowledge that helps to diagnose and resolve problems.