DRAMATIC change is on the way at the top of Coffs Harbour City Council as 30 executive jobs have been replaced by 16 new positions as part of the council's recently adopted Transition to Sustainability (T2S) strategy.

Thirteen of the new positions, for three directors and 10 group leaders, are now being advertised internally and externally .

"These are critical leadership roles which have been identified as absolutely essential to giving us the best opportunity to think, work, manage and lead differently," council general manager Steve McGrath said.

Mr McGrath said even though all senior managers had been part of the process, it had still been a difficult time for all of them and for him when the time came to tell them the new roles were being advertised and their positions were disappearing.

Three more positions for business unit managers will be advertised late in the second quarter of 2015.

Mr McGrath said the council had engaged an external firm to assist in conducting the search for candidates and they aimed to have the recruitment phase completed in December, although whether people would be in their new roles by Christmas was yet to be seen.

The three new directors will form the council's executive leadership team under Mr McGrath and they will in turn head teams of group leaders.

Nine of the new group leaders will report to one of the three directors, while the group leader for governance services will report directly to the GM.

Assessments for the director of sustainable communities; director of business services and director of sustainable infrastructure will begin from November 3, followed by interviews from November 10.

Mr McGrath said next year would see a different phase of T2S, which involved identifying, and creating efficiencies and looking at elements of job redesign and incumbencies on a case by case basis.

Process mapping and re-engineering of the council's work will continue throughout 2015 and into 2016, assisted by external leadership, development and support programs, work which is being put out to tender.

T2S, which has been budgeted to cost $1.7 million, including the costs of all redundancy payments, aims to save the council $3.2 million annually at the end of three years by taming a fresh look at everything the council does and trying to make it more efficient.

A substantial part of this saving will be through reductions in staff numbers.