The health and capability of our organisation The Commission implemented the outcomes of its organisational review to enable it to be a more effective and aligned organisation, ensure financial sustainability and, therefore, deliver better human rights outcomes. The Commission’s new strategic direction and supporting organisation design will allow the Commission to deliver improved levels of service within existing funding levels. The Commission aligned its capability and resources to deliver on its strategic objectives. This resulted in changes to 35 of 64 roles in the organisation. The new design is a reduction of 6 FTE positions, but there were nine redundancies as not all staff could be re-deployed. We are delivering services differently – with an external focus on issues that have the greatest impact on the human rights of people in Aotearoa New Zealand. Like all organisations we are committed to continuous improvement and delivering services in a way that is value for money. These changes have set a foundation for the organisation to change and respond to its external environment. Financial position In recent years the Commission has spent less than its budget, and thus added to its reserves. This has enabled the Commission to maintain its current programme in the context of a static baseline and rising costs. The Commission has taken concerted action to ensure financial sustainability. This year, the Commission adjusted its long term financial plan to ensure ongoing financial sustainability beyond 2018–19. The revised plan looks to reduce costs to overheads through changes to our physical footprint and to IT and information management and looks at how people costs are managed. The Commission continues to use reserves to support this long term financial plan. These will be used to fund operational activities, such as the National Plan of Action for human rights; information, communication and related technology; and as a contingency for unexpected human rights activities. The plan is being closely monitored against results, and will continue to be adjusted as needed to meet the overall goals. The plan is supported by a prudent reserves policy. In its 2013 audit, the Commission continued to meet the highest ‘very good’ Audit New Zealand grade for its financial systems and maintained its ‘good’ grading for its performance setting and reporting. 38 Human Rights Commission