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Last updated: 11 October 2005
Managing and sustaining the APS workforce
3. Workforce trends
Findings
3.1 The APS workforce has been evolving to become the increasingly multiskilled, flexible and intellectually agile 'graduate' workforce that is needed to meet the emerging challenges of the 21st century. The conditions under which APS employees work are more family-friendly and can promote a greater work-life balance. The participation of women has improved. The participation of Indigenous people, after improving up to the mid-1990s, has recently been in decline, as has- more sharply-the participation of people with disabilities.
3.2 APS employees now pursue careers within a narrower band of classifications, with staff typically entering at higher levels than in the past and advancing fairly rapidly within the same agency to a point at which they are likely to remain for an extended period. The declining rate of interagency mobility has the potential to result in some dissatisfaction, for example, in regional networks outside Canberra, and to give rise in future to a reduced breadth of APS experience among senior managers.
3.3 Although most new entrants to the APS now possess tertiary qualifications, graduate programmes remain strong in most agencies, even though-on average-the staff they recruit and develop do not appear to progress in their careers at a faster rate than other recruits.
3.4 Over the next decade, a high proportion of the APS workforce- especially senior managers-will be at or beyond the comparatively low typical retirement age for APS employees. At the same time, the Australian labour market is projected to begin to tighten and there will be more intense competition among employers for a limited pool of younger, skilled workers who are increasingly looking for challenges, meaning and learning from their employment experiences, and who are expecting that the more mundane aspects of traditional public service work will be removed through office automation and business process redesign.
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