APS Workforce Strategy 2025
The APS Workforce Strategy establishes the first whole-of-enterprise approach to strategic workforce management, enabling effective delivery for the government and Australian communities.
Delivering for Tomorrow: the APS Workforce Strategy 2025 (the Strategy) is an APS Reform initiative agreed by the Government in its Delivering for Australians Reform agenda. It recognises that our people – and the capabilities they bring – are our key asset in delivering for the Government and the Australian people.
The Strategy represents an enterprise-wide view on how to equip the APS workforce to tackle immediate and emerging challenges, and highlights three key areas of focus through to 2025:
- Attract, build and retain skills, expertise and talent
- Embrace data, technology and flexible and responsive workforce models
- Strengthen integrity and purposeful leadership.
The Strategy identifies a suite of actions under each of the three focus areas. The Australian Public Service Commission (the Commission) will work with agencies to coordinate delivery of key outputs across the service. Agencies will continue to implement initiatives in line with existing or future workforce planning processes.
The Strategy does not replace agency-level strategic and operational planning processes. Rather, it is designed to support APS agencies to identify and build the workforce and capabilities needed for the future.
To support implementation, the Commission and the National Skills Commission will develop annual APS-specific skills forecasts. The forecasts will be published through the yearly State of the Service Report, commencing in 2021.
The Centre of Excellence for APS workforce planning capability in the Commission also supports agencies in developing robust workforce planning approaches and capability. Further information can be found on the Workforce Planning Centre of Excellence page.
The Strategy includes a dynamic implementation plan. It outlines the sequence of actions which will be implemented and monitored through to 2025. The Commission will work with the Chief Operating Officers Committee, lead and partner agencies to progress the initiatives and report progress to the Secretaries Board annually.
Video transcript
[Peter Woolcott AO, Australian Public Service Commissioner]
The release of Delivering for Tomorrow: The APS Workforce Strategy 2025 is a significant milestone in our APS workforce development and planning.
We are a large and utterly crucial enterprise with some 150,000 people across the country and abroad. Our people perform some of the most diverse job roles and functions of any enterprise. This is both a collective strength and challenge.
Despite the breadth, we are an enterprise united in our purpose and committed to service. Delivering for Tomorrow aims to build on this collective purpose and outlines a one-APS approach to managing our workforce.
Like all enterprises, key challenges we face are the demand for skills and talent, the disruption of new technologies that impact on our workforce and the sheer pace of delivery.
The Strategy sets out a series of actions responding to these challenges, and building on the one-APS ethos. It focuses on how best to attract, mobilise and develop our capabilities. It is about both utilising technology and developing our capability and leaders for the future.
To be positioned to respond to increasing complex and interconnected challenges in the future we must be an agile and collaborative workforce.
We must work as one enterprise, across traditional boundaries and jurisdictions – taking an outcomes-based approach to delivery, with the Australian people in the centre of all we do.
We must equip our workforce to maximise the use and potential of data and technology as we strive towards a world class digital government.
We must also build these capabilities for ourselves - through attracting the skills we need to deliver and through reskilling ourselves in emerging roles we have not yet dreamed of.
This Strategy seeks to provide the overarching framework to do just that.
Workforce planning will be critical to identifying skills gaps in the workforce and addressing these gaps through capability development, reskilling and upskilling initiatives.
It will take a coordinated effort to achieve these objectives.
The Strategy includes a dynamic implementation plan, which outlines the sequence of actions which will be monitored through to 2025. An evaluation plan will also measure the success of these actions, and allow us to adjust our approach along the way. This will ensure that the expected benefits are realised.
Bringing this Strategy together has been a significant exercise. It reflects the valued contribution of many stakeholders both within and outside the APS. I thank all those that have shaped this thinking during the extensive consultation and engagement processes.
I look forward to seeing the impact that the Strategy has as it is implemented across the APS. I commend the Strategy to you. Together, we can transform the APS workforce for the future.
HR Practitioners
The world of work is changing, and Delivering for Tomorrow: APS Workforce Strategy 2025 helps us prepare for the change. This is how you can start using the strategy….now
Senior Leaders
The world of work is changing, and Delivering for Tomorrow: APS Workforce Strategy 2025 helps us prepare for the change. This is how you can start using the strategy….now
APS employees and managers
APS employees and managers – the world of work is changing, and Delivering for Tomorrow: APS Workforce Strategy 2025 helps us prepare for the change. This is how you can start using the strategy….now