Appendix E Comparisons with Australian State and Territory public services

Panel Engagements

The State and Territory public services noted hierarchy can be perceived as a barrier to innovation and decision-making by their workforces, prompting consideration of introducing fewer layers in their structures. Employees in the Northern Territory expressed the desire for greater autonomy, with leaders now encouraged to push work and responsibility down to lower levels in their structures to increase workforce engagement and development. During the recent crises, ACT found that having fewer layers of decision-making due to the urgent nature of the work was a positive experience.

Descriptive job titles allow stakeholders and employees to easily identify what work an individual is responsible for. The Victorian Public Service is shifting to more consistent and descriptive work titles across the service to increase transparency and rigour. In NSW, classifications do not generally define the work undertaken by an employee, enabling quick decision-making that relies on the subject matter experts.

It is common practice in the public sector for specialist remuneration to be based on their technical expertise, rather than promoting to people managers in order to receive higher remuneration. However, the lack of transparency of this across each service was noted as a consideration. Western Australia and South Australia both modified classification frameworks to allow for necessary role qualifications and a greater focus on attraction and retention. 

Spans of control across the State/Territory public sectors are not consistent and are often not benchmarked. Consultations suggest spans for senior executives generally range from 5-14 direct reports. Consistent factors were identified for consideration when agreeing spans of control, including:

• The context and nature of the work being undertaken.
• The ability to delegate tasks that will build employee capability and ensure employee feels supported.
• The need to build a culture that facilitates actively pushing work down to a lower level.

Most State/Territory public services have leadership training and/or programs in place. Key elements making up their leadership training include:

• Continually investing in leaders and upcoming high performers.
• Addressing risk management in NSW to encourage a culture that facilitates capability development by actively pushing things down to lower levels.
• Having a long standing Leadership Academy in the South Australian public service, to ensure they have a pipeline of future talent and have succession plans.
• Ensuring first time people leaders and managers are provided with leadership training to enable them to perform to a high standard in the Northern Territory public service.

NSW lead by example with their Public Service Commissioner embedding leadership programs, the capability framework and training programs for new executives to the sector. The Commissioner also looks at strategic people matters, ensuring leadership is consistent across their public sector, and oversees the public service’s workforce strategy, reforms, framework and guidance.

Culture was discussed in each of the public sector consultations, highlighting this is typically set from the top down. Leaders should be setting the example for a culture that:

• Encourages mobility across the sectors and ensure the government of the day is served.
• Focuses on collaboration across the sector and for leaders to be stewards of their sector.
• Empowers employees to make decisions and receive the support to do so.

In order to implement wide-scale reforms in the public sectors in Australia, consultations suggested government imprimatur is critical.

• In South Australia, the public service identified a number of drivers for change in their classification system, however noted government support is needed for successful change.
• In NSW in 2011, a Commission of Audit report resulted in a number of major reforms. The change in government gave the authority and created the right environment for change, alongside the political desire to prioritise becoming a world class public service (which is a priority still today).
• In WA, 2017 saw government-driven structural changes and reform as a result of budget restraints and machinery of government changes.
• Victoria opted to pilot structural changes to their executive levels in one department before implementing the reforms across the whole sector. Outcomes of the pilot were presented to their Secretaries Board in 2019, with the pilot being used to show the reform was fit for purpose.

Desktop Research

While there are differences in roles and responsibilities between the APS and State/Territory public services, classification structures across all jurisdictions are broadly comparable (Figure 14). For example, most jurisdictions have distinct classification schemes for the ‘officer’ level and the ‘senior executive’ level, with approximately four senior executive classifications (including Secretary).

+ Excludes Secretary-level or equivalent
* Levels based on Administrative / General stream

A key area of divergence is the handling of specialist roles. Some jurisdictions capture them through separate streams or specific classifications while others include specialist roles within a single classification system. Where jurisdictions have separate streams for specialist roles, some (e.g. Queensland) have a system in place to accommodate transfer within and between classification levels and systems, preserving mobility. Another area of divergence is the differentiation of middle managers. Unlike the APS, most (five out of eight) Australian jurisdictions do not differentiate their middle managers with a separate classification to officers.

Reforms to classification structures in other Australian jurisdictions have tended to focus on the senior executive service. For example, new Executive Classification Frameworks were introduced in New South Wales in 2013, the ACT in 2013 and Victoria in 2019. The drivers for change differed across jurisdictions, from removing remuneration overlap and enabling clearer delineation between levels (VIC), to removing excessive reporting layers (NSW). There is limited reporting on the effectiveness of various reforms; however, the importance of implementation support (including appropriate resources and funding) was consistently highlighted as a key success factor during consultations.