Appendix C Engagement

The review engaged over 1000 people, including a large and representative cross-section of APS staff, academic experts, private sector leaders and union representatives. Engagement took place through a range of mediums, including workshops and focus groups, public submissions, interviews, meetings and a survey. Figure 12 summarises key engagement statistics, including participant characteristics that were collated from responses submitted through Mentimeter, an interactive workshop polling software.

Figure 12 | Summary of consultations

Workshops and focus groups

Workshops and focus groups were conducted with approximately 298 APS employees across all job groups, classifications, agencies and locations. Through focus groups, we undertook targeted consultation with APS entry level program participants, APS Diversity Champions and representatives from the SES cohort.

• Participants saw the largest opportunities in improving how hierarchy is used, revising classification structures, building specialist talent and enabling and encouraging leadership development.
• Workshop participants identified underpinning structures, specialist roles and leadership commitments as the three areas that would benefit most from change.
• Hierarchy was described as both an enabler and a barrier in the workplace, with examples of participants’ views of the mixed impacts of hierarchy outlined below:

Aggregated messages from each of the workshop streams are provided in Table 2. Note these are not exhaustive and seek to capture the mood and key messages from participating APS employees.

Table 2 | Summary for APS workforce engagements

Survey

A Mentimeter survey was distributed to enable participation by employees who may have been unable to attend a workshop or focus group due to operational requirements. Over 500 responses were received from a broad cross-section of the public service. Questions were based on similar topics to the workshops and focus groups, with responses focused on hierarchy, specialist roles and the impact of classification.

Results were analysed for input into key recommendations, with analytical tools used to conduct algorithmic assessment of text responses. Sentiment analysis of the question that asked respondents “thinking about hierarchy at work, what is one word that sums up your experience?” netted mixed results. 14% of responses were positive words (e.g. necessary, supportive), 27% were negative (e.g. rigid, frustrating) and 58% were neutral (e.g. structured, bureaucratic).

Public submissions

Submissions were received from APS employees across Australia, as well as a limited number of non-APS or former APS employees.

• A small number of submissions were made on behalf of agencies or organisations including the CPSU, IP Australia, the DTA Agile Champions Network and Professionals Australia.
• Relative to other agencies, a larger proportion of submissions (10%) were received from Services Australia staff.[44]

The top three areas of focus advocated in public submissions were underpinning structures (50% of submissions related to this area), specialist roles (37%) and workforce capability (29%).

Key points from agency, union and network groups are summarised in Table 3.

Table 3 | Submissions from key stakeholders

Consultation meetings

The Panel conducted 86 consultations with a broad range of Commonwealth agencies, domestic and international jurisdictions and private sector organisations. Consultations are listed in Table 4.

Table 4 | List of consultation meetings

[44] Information about agencies and location is limited to respondents who disclosed this information in their submission.