‘Uncharted territory’: 60pc of public servants work from home, state of the service report finds
Public Service Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer says ‘active consideration’ is being given to how costs can be saved given the findings.
Australian Public Service Commissioner Gordon de Brouwer says “active consideration” is being given by Finance to possible savings that could be made as a result of more than 72,000 public servants working from home – describing the trend as “uncharted territory”.
Promoting the 2022-23 state of the service report, Mr de Brouwer told The Australian the growing number of public servants working from home had “implications” for resources, property management and “how you also design workplaces”.
He said public service agencies would implement different flexible work arrangements, but stressed any working from home arrangement would need to suit the best interests of agencies and teams as well as individuals.
“Is it always smooth?” he asked. “Absolutely not. We are learning around how to do this.”
The 2023 APS employee census has revealed that 57 per cent of the 127,436 APS staff who completed the survey had access to working from home arrangements – up from 46 per cent in 2021.
Mr de Brouwer also told The Australian that efforts were being implemented to rebalance the Australian Public Service to reduce reliance external contractors and that some tasks, such as preparing cabinet submissions, were now only conducted by APS staff.
In 2021-2022, the public service employed about 53,911 external employees on a full time equivalent basis at a cost of about $20.8bn.
Mr de Brouwer said the most recent state of the service report provided an “honest” look at the public service, finding that the APS had increased by about 7 per cent to 170,332 public servants across 239 job roles in 596 locations since June 30 2022.
Positive findings included that 92 per cent of respondents to the APS 2023 Employee Census said they understood how their role contributed to the community, while 84 per cent believed “strongly in the purpose and objectives of the APS”.
Mr de Brouwer said 89 per cent of respondents believed their supervisor treated people with respect, 76 per cent of APS staff felt their work gave them a “sense of accomplishment” and that the gender pay gap had narrowed to 5.2 per cent.
But he said there was “still a way to go” on a series of fronts, with bullying and harassment rates still “too high” at 10.4 per cent and only 67 per cent of staff reporting that their immediate supervisor called out unacceptable behaviour.
He said that critical areas requiring improvement were for SES officers to work better as a team within and between agencies.
Women now make up a total of 60.4 per cent of APS employees. The state of the service report also showed that 3.5 per cent of APS staff were Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander; 5.1 per cent were employees with a disability; 8.7 per cent identified as LGBTIQA+; 7.7 per cent were employees who “consider themselves to be neurodivergent” while 24.4 per cent had a first spoken language that was not exclusively English.
In the 2023 Australian Public Service Agency Survey, agencies reported that 555 employees were the subject of an investigation into a suspected breach of the APS code of conduct that was finalised in 2022-23.
The results showed that there were 389 breaches of the requirement to “at all times behave in a way that upholds the APS values and APS employment principles” and 162 breaches of the requirement to “behave honestly and with integrity”.
The largest proportion of APS staff at 38.1 per cent (or 64,943 employees) are based in the Australian Capital Territory.
This is followed by Victoria where 16.8 per cent of APS staff (or 28,546 employees) can be located, with New South Wales being home to 16.6 per cent of APS staff (or 28,285 employees).
PUBLIC SERVICE SIZE AND MAKEUP
The 2022-23 state of the service update shows the size of the public service has increased by 6.9 per cent from June 30 2022 to a total of 170,332 people. Of these, 82.7 per cent work full time, 12.7 per cent work part time and 4.5 per cent are casual.
As of June 30 2023, 23.9 per cent of APS employees were born outside Australia. While this is broadly comparable with the Australian workforce, the state of the service report says it is an objective to achieve “greater representation of employees with diverse backgrounds” at the senior levels of the APS.
The most recent figures show that 3.5 per cent of APS staff are Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander; 5.1 per cent are employees with a disability; 8.7 per cent identify as LGBTIQA+; 7.7 per cent are employees who “consider themselves to be neurodivergent” while 24.4 per cent have a first spoken language that was not exclusively English.
In terms of age, only 5.5 per cent of public servants are aged 24 or below. The report reveals that 20.9 per cent of APS staff are aged between 25-34; 27.4 per cent are aged between 35-44; 27.1 per cent are aged between 45-54 and 19 per cent are aged 55 and over.
The largest proportion of employees in the APS by classification are those in the APS 6 band (22.9 per cent of staff) followed by those in the EL1 band (20.2 per cent).
There are 1.4 per cent of staff in the SES band 1 category, and only 0.5 per cent in the SES bands 2 and 3 categories.
GENDER PAY GAP AND FEMALE REPRESENTATION
Women now make up a total of 60.4 per cent of APS employees and, since 2018, the APS gender pay gap has narrowed from 7.8 per cent to 5.2 per cent.
The Australian Public Service Commission says the gender pay gap persists due to the distribution of women and men across the classification structure and the predominance of women at the APS 3 to APS 5 levels.
However, in June 2023, women were in 55 per cent of Executive Level roles, compared to 51 per cent in June 2019. Women were also in 53 per cent of SES roles in June 2023, compared to 46 per cent in June 2019. For the first time, women reached gender parity at the SES Band 2 level.
The Australian Public Service Commission completed the first substantial review of the Maternity Leave (Commonwealth Employees) Act in more than 40 years earlier this year, suggesting that new legislation be passed to better advance women’s economic equality.
The recommendations included 6 weeks paid pregnancy leave, 18 weeks paid parental leave for new parents, paid leave for still birth and pregnancy loss, salary increment and employer superannuation payments during parental leave and paid lactation breaks.
The government is considering all review recommendations.
COMPLAINTS AND CODE OF CONDUCT BREACHES
Mr de Brouwer told The Australian that he was “frank” about where the public service was weak and needed to improve, arguing that supervisors needed to do a better job in calling out poor behaviour.
He cited the 10.4 per cent of respondents to the 2023 APS Employee Census who indicated they had been subjected to “harassment or bullying in the workplace in the last 12 months”.
This was up from 9.7 per cent in 2022, with Mr de Brouwer saying this was “still too high”.
The big agencies with the largest proportions of respondents who said they had perceived harassment and bullying in the workplace were the Department of Veterans Affairs (12.8 per cent) and the National Indigenous Australians Agency (13.1 per cent).
In the 2023 Australian Public Service Agency Survey, agencies reported that 555 employees were the subject of an investigation into a suspected breach of the APS code of conduct that was finalised in 2022-23.
The results showed that there were 389 breaches of the requirement to “at all times behave in a way that upholds the APS values and APS employment principles” and 162 breaches of the requirement to “behave honestly and with integrity”.
Only 3.2 per cent of respondents to the 2023 APS employee census said they witnessed potential corruption, with 90.7 per cent saying they had not and 3.8 per cent saying there were “not sure”. An additional 2.3 per cent said they would “prefer not to answer”.
Of those who claimed to have witnessed corruption, the overwhelming majority at 62 per cent said the corruption they had witnessed was “cronyism” or the “preferential treatment of friends, such as appointing them to positions without proper regard to merit”.
A smaller proportion of 4.1 per cent said they had witnessed the unlawful disclosure of government information.
Reflecting on the PwC tax leaks scandal – in which a former partner at the firm shared confidential government information that was used to help avoid new tax laws – Mr de Brouwer told The Australian there was “no circumstance in which that is acceptable”.
“On that issue we were shocked,” he said. “And it’s unacceptable.”
PUBLIC SERVICE BY LOCATION
The largest proportion of APS staff at 38.1 per cent (or 64,943 employees) are based in the Australian Capital Territory.
This is followed by Victoria where 16.8 per cent of APS staff (or 28,546 employees) can be located, with New South Wales being home to 16.6 per cent of APS staff (or 28,285 employees).
Queensland is home to 12.7 per cent of APS employees (or 21,557 staff) while no other state or territory represents more than 10 per cent of the overall total of employees.
However, a small proportion of 0.8 per cent of APS staff (1,407 employees) are based overseas.
OUTSIDE CONTRACTORS
The state of the service report refers to the APS Audit of Employment which was completed in May and which brings together information on the use of external labour by 112 agencies employing staff under the Public Service Act.
It found that in 2021-22, these 112 agencies employed an external labour workforce of 53,911 employees on a full time equivalent basis at a cost of $20.8bn.
By comparison, the direct employment of public servants in APS agencies over the same time period was 144,271.
The report said that this implied that, in 2021–22, the total Australian government workforce (public servants plus external labour) was around 37 per cent larger than the workforce measured by public servant numbers alone.
REBALANCING THE APS
The government is embarked on a reform campaign to rebalance the public service. In the October 2022 budget, Finance Minister Katy Gallagher said the government was hoping to achieve savings of $3.6bn over four years from “reducing spending on external labour, advertising, travel and legal expenses”.
The state of the service report said that rebalancing the workforce would “take time” and that APS workplaces would use the “best possible mix of internal and external expertise to deliver in complex operating environments”.
However, Mr de Brouwer told The Australian that there was now a focus on ensuring that some tasks were the exclusive domain of public servants rather than external consultants. He said the primary example involved “cabinet documentation”.
“If you are preparing a cabinet submission, there is a range of materials that could have a regulatory impact,” he said. “You don’t put that out to people who don’t work in the government.”
Previously, external consultants could be involved closely with cabinet documentation so long as they were subject to the proper clearances.
WORKING FROM HOME
The 2023 APS employee survey has revealed that 57 per cent of 2023 APS Employee Census respondents said they worked away from the office or from home at least some of the time.
Last year’s employee census showed a significant increase in public servants working from home, with 55 per cent of 120,662 respondents saying they had such arrangements in place – a rise of 9 per cent since 2021.
The Australian has also accessed data showing that more than 17 per cent of Finance Department staff already worked four out of every 10 days from home, while the Department of Infrastructure had nearly 37 per cent of its staff working from home for at least two days a week.
Earlier this month, the public sector union believed the commonwealth would achieve major property savings and reduce rental costs under negotiations aimed at allowing more staff to work from home.
For example, the Department of Infrastructure said the cost of renting office space for its employees amounted to $24m a year.
Community and Public Sector Union national secretary Melissa Donnelly said earlier this month that working from home arrangements were the “most important conditions issue that our members want to see progress on”. She pushed for public servants to be dealt in to any talks about how the savings could be spent.
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