Managing and sustaining the APS workforceHome page
> Management Advisory Committee > Managing and sustaining the APS workforce > Workforce trends > Next: Flexible working arrangements
‹ Previous page
Last updated: 11 October 2005
Managing and sustaining the APS workforce
3. Workforce trends
Mobility
The mobility of the APS workforce between agencies is declining, and the nature of interagency movements by staff has been changing.
Prior to the APS award restructuring of the 1980s, the range of positions now covered by the APS 1-6 levels featured a large number of finely graded classifications within a set of overlapping structures. These arrangements provided an incentive for lower level staff to seek promotion opportunities in other agencies, and this tendency was reflected in much higher rates of interagency promotion prior to the early 1990s.
While award restructuring removed many of the incentives for staff to seek interagency promotion, it also removed some of the barriers to interagency transfers at level. Prior to the late 1980s, staff with similar levels of responsibility could be classified differently from agency to agency, for example, section heads could be clerks Class 10 or 11 and branch heads could be SES Levels 1 or 2.
The impact of award restructuring is illustrated in Figure 10, which shows a sharp decline in the rate of interagency promotion in the late 1980s and a continuing decline since that time. Figure 10 also indicates a jump in the rate of interagency transfer at level in the late 1980s that persisted throughout the 1990s.
Figure 10: Mobility rates between agencies, 1984 to 2004
Source: APSED
Since 1999, the rate of interagency transfer has trended downwards to settle at a level much closer to that of interagency promotions, with the result that the overall level of interagency mobility since 2000 has been less than half that of the early 1990s.
The reasons for this decline are not clear, but could include:
- broadbanding of classification levels under some agency certified agreements, which has enabled many staff to increase significantly their level of remuneration while remaining in the one position
- employees increasingly choosing to remain in an agency to access conditions of service promoting a work-life balance
- the more rapid advancement rates discussed previously, which encourage staff to choose promotion opportunities within their agency over the possibility of transfer to another agency
- a growing focus by some agencies on developing their own staff rather than recruiting from other parts of the APS
- in some cases, an increasing emphasis on agency-specific knowledge and expertise, which has promoted subject matter specialisation among staff at middle and higher levels. This can include the stipulation of highly specialised selection criteria for vacancies that can tend to exclude applicants from other APS agencies.
The recent decline in interagency mobility has been strongest among APS 1-6s, who were almost three times less likely on average to move between agencies during 2003-04 than they had been a decade earlier.
The decline in mobility among the executive levels and SES has been at a much more gradual rate but, in combination with the rising numbers of recruits from outside the APS, is beginning to have a significant impact on the breadth of APS experience at senior levels.
Figures 11 and 12 show that, in 2003-04, only one in five of those staff reaching the executive levels, and fewer than half of those joining the SES, had previously worked in more than one APS agency.
Figure 11: Staff joining executive level cadre in selected years: number of previous different APS agencies, 1983-84 to 2003-04
Source: APSED
Figure 12: Staff joining the SES in selected years: number of previous different APS agencies, 1983-84 to 2003-04
Source: APSED
Start of page
