Who are we now?

In 1984 the typical SES employee was male, aged 47, had worked 20 years in the APS in two different departments and was called John.

In 2009, the typical SES employee is male, aged 49, has worked 20 years in the APS in two different departments and is called Peter.

So over the last twenty-five years some things have not changed very much while others have changed significantly.

The table below compares some key SES demographics.

SES	October 1984	June 2009
Source: APSED
Total ongoing employees	1,651 (1.2% of APS)	2,845 (1.9% of APS)
Band 1/Band 2/Band 3	73% / 23% / 4%	75% / 20% / 5%
Median age	47	49
Women	85 (5%)	1,054 (37%)
Indigenous	3 (0.2%)	16 (0.6%)
Disability	4.7%	2.7%
Engaged from outside APS in the previous 12 months	32	110
Worked in two or more agencies	54.8%	54.6%
Median length of APS service	20 years	20 years
Median length of 2nd division or SES service	5 years	4 years
Located in Canberra	75%	75%

The main demographic differences are in size, composition and age. SES employees today comprise nearly 2% of the APS compared to just over 1% in 1984. Women now make up nearly two out of five SES employees compared to 5% in 1984. Projections indicate that in ten years time, the number of women and men will be the same.

SES employees, including the main EL2 ‘feeder’ group, are also older overall than in the past. Seventy percent of SES will be eligible to retire in the next ten years.

Today’s SES employees have a very wide range of roles and responsibilities. SES employees manage large programs, projects and workforces to provide policy and specialist advice, or can be in charge of relatively small groups. They can be focused on service delivery, policy advice, corporate management, contract management, regulation, program administration and so on. Increasingly they have significant cross-agency coordination roles.

When compared against other countries with similar systems of government, Australia’s federal public service measures up as highly professional, effective, efficient—and honest. A recent British report that found:

…87% of Australian citizens expressed satisfaction with Federal government services. …[and] listed our public service third in a long list of similar countries—ahead of Canada, New Zealand, the USA and the UK—for its independence from political interference and its capacity to give impartial advice.²⁶

An organisation’s leadership group sets its tone and culture, and affects its capacity to do its job. There’s no doubt the SES has made a significant contribution to the international reputation of the APS.

What do SES employees think about the role they play and the contribution they make?

In the latest State of the Service report,²⁷ 92% of SES employees reported moderately high to high levels of job satisfaction, an extremely high result for any organisation. SES employees also reported a very high sense of pride and achievement in their work (93%).

When asked to nominate up to two factors influencing their decision about where they would be in the next five years, nearly two thirds of all SES (65%) nominated ‘availability of interesting work’ as the most influential, and 27% nominated ‘the ability to achieve outcomes and results’.

The importance of intrinsic rewards to the SES can probably be best summed up by the responses to a recent Commission survey of all current SES employees that asked, what were the most important factors motivating them to go ‘above and beyond’ in their current roles.

SES employees overwhelmingly identified ‘the opportunity to make a difference’ as the key factor (64%). The second most important factor was ‘leading by example in the workplace’ (10%). Remuneration was ranked as important by only 1% of SES employees.²⁸

Extract from SES census survey 2009

Reasons to go ‘above and beyond’ in current role	Band 1%	Band 2%	Band 3%	All %
Opportunity to make a difference	61	71	78	64
Leading by example in the workplace	11	7	11	10
Remuneration and other employment conditions	1	2	–	1

SES today, however, also work longer hours than ever before. In this year’s State of the Service report,²⁹ 92% of SES employees sampled reported working 80 hours or more in the last fortnight and 43% reported having worked 100 hours or more.

One of the primary reasons for establishing the SES was to develop a distinct leadership group with a unified sense of professional purpose and ethics. How well has this objective been achieved?

When asked, just under 40% of SES employees ‘definitely’ saw themselves as part of a broader APS-wide leadership cadre and 44% considered themselves ‘somewhat’ part of this group. The proportion of those most likely to view themselves as ‘definitely’ part of a broader leadership group increased as band level increased.³⁰

A high proportion of SES employees see ‘breaking down silos across the APS’ as a very high priority. This indicates that while many SES employees may not have a sense of formal membership of a ‘cadre’, there are strong common motives to achieve whole-of-government solutions through collaborative approaches.

 

Next: Into the future: the next twenty-five years