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WORKPLACE CONSULTATION

The APS Values include the establishment of workplace relations that value communication, consultation, cooperation and input from employees on matters that affect their workplace. These consultative arrangements are critical to achieving good quality results and underpin productive working relationships. Consultation practices amongst agencies can be expected to vary given differences in agencies’ size and the nature of their businesses.

EMPLOYEES’ PERCEPTIONS OF CONSULTATION

Regular staff meetings, if well run and focused, can be an effective part of the consultation process and support genuine and constructive staff engagement. The employee survey asked employees how often they attended meetings at their section/unit/team level and how often they attended meetings at the broader work area level (e.g. branch or group level). The results from this year’s survey were very similar to last year’s results–that the most common experience of employees is to attend regular meetings at the section/team/unit level, with fewer employees attending regular meetings at higher levels.

Almost three-quarters of employees reported attending staff meetings at their team/section level on a regular basis (i.e. monthly or more often). Only two per cent reported that they never attended such staff meetings and a further 23% indicated that they attended these meetings on an ad-hoc basis. SES staff were more likely to report that they attended regular meetings at this level (89%) compared to EL staff (76%) and APS 1—6 staff (72%). Of the agency-specific results available for 22 large agencies, the variation in results was again considerable. For example, the percentage of employees reporting that they never attended meetings at their team/section level or only did so on an ad hoc basis varied from a high of 47% to a low of eight per cent. The large agencies with significantly higher percentages of employees reporting attendance at regular meetings at the section/unit/team level were CRS and CSA–both also achieved this result last year.¹⁹

One-third of employees reported attending meetings at the branch/group/division/office level on a regular basis (i.e. monthly or more often) with six per cent reporting this type of meeting as being ‘not applicable’ to their circumstances. Eighteen per cent of respondents to the employee survey indicated that they did not attend this level of meeting and a further 42% indicated that they attended these meetings on an ad-hoc basis.

The employee survey asked respondents if they were satisfied that the meetings they attended provided a forum to contribute their views on issues that impact on their work and also asked their satisfaction level with the overall say they have in decisions impacting on their work. Compared to last year’s results employees reported being slightly more satisfied in response to both questions. For example, 49% of employees were satisfied with their overall say in decisions that impact on their work compared to 46% last year. The percentage of employees reporting that they were dissatisfied fell from 28% to 22%. Levels of satisfaction in employees’ overall say in decisions varied considerably by agency from a high of 65% to a low of 43%. In DFAT and FaCs over 60% of employees were satisfied.

Consistent with last year’s survey results, employee satisfaction with overall say in decisions was correlated with a number of factors, including:

• attendance at regular staff meetings at both the section/team level and the broader workplace level (for example, 62% of employees who attended a weekly meeting at the section/team level were satisfied with their overall say in decisions compared to only 11% of employees who reported never attending such meetings)
• perceptions of their supervisor’s ability to manage people (employees satisfied with their overall say in decisions were much more likely to consider that their supervisor was highly effective at managing people and vice versa)
• overall job satisfaction (employees satisfied with their overall say in decisions were much more likely to have a high overall job satisfaction rating and vice versa).

AGENCIES’ POLICIES ON WORKPLACE CONSULTATION

The agency survey asked agencies about whether they had policies in place requiring regular staff meetings in their agency (at the section/unit/team level and the branch/group/division/office level). The percentage of agencies having polices requiring section/team meetings increased from 49% last year to 54% this year. This may help to explain the increase in employee satisfaction levels discussed above given the strong correlation between attending meetings and employees’ satisfaction with overall say in decisions that impact on their work.

The percentage of agencies requiring higher level meetings and having an agency consultative body remained fairly constant over the year at 64% and 87% respectively. It is interesting to note that large agencies continued to be least likely to have policies requiring meetings or have agency consultative bodies compared to small and medium agencies–which is the opposite of what might be expected given the greater difficulties of communication sometimes experienced in larger agencies.

Of course, not having a formal policy requiring meetings does not necessarily mean that regular staff meetings do not occur in these agencies. However, it is interesting that of the large agencies that reported that they did not have policies requiring regular staff meetings at the immediate and broader work levels, two-thirds had under half of their employees satisfied with their overall say in work decisions.

The survey results show that the extent to which agencies regularly consult their employees on workplace issues continues to vary widely. However, the increase in agencies requiring section/team level meetings on a regular basis is positive and may be linked to the increase in employees’ satisfaction levels observed in the past year. The wide-ranging results of large agencies indicate that some agencies, particularly those with low levels of employee satisfaction with their say in workplace decisions, should be devoting more effort to encouraging consultation in the workplace.

19 The question is not directly comparable in 2003 and 2004, as in 2003 SES respondents were not asked this question.