Home page
> Management Advisory Committee > Employment of people with disability > Executive summary > Next: Better practices
‹ Previous page

Last updated: 30 August 2006

Employment of people with disability in the APS

Executive summary

Employing people with disability makes business sense (Chapter 1)

Attracting staff in a tight labour market

Providing a work environment which attracts applicants with disability and supports the career aspirations of successful applicants makes good business sense.

It allows agencies to tap a pool of increasingly qualified applicants and encourages a supportive and flexible workplace that is attractive to all applicants.

Compliance with the APS Values

As cogent as the business case is, however, it is not the only imperative. Particularly important in the APS context is the obligation imposed on agency heads and all APS employees to comply with the APS Values.

The APS Values of particular relevance in the present context are those which relate to:

providing a workplace that is free from discrimination and which recognises and utilises the diversity of the Australian community it serves
promoting equity in employment
providing a reasonable opportunity for all eligible members of the community to apply for APS employment
making employment decisions based on merit.

Legal compliance

APS agencies, in common with all Australian employers, also have legal obligations under the Workplace Relations Act 1996 and the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 to ensure that, in their employment processes, they do not discriminate against people with disability.

Objectives

The Management Advisory Committee (MAC) has agreed to eight objectives for promoting the employment of people with disability and identified a range of better practice strategies for meeting those objectives. Individual agencies are to pursue those objectives, tailoring strategies to their particular circumstances.

For ease of reference, the objectives and better practice strategies are collated in the section of this report entitled ‘Better Practices to Promote the Employment of People with Disability’.

Cultural Change (Chapter 2)

An important component of any strategy to promote APS employment opportunities for people with disability will be to dispel misconceptions about the capabilities of people with disability and to dispel misconceptions that the APS performance culture cannot accommodate and support the employment of people with disability.

Leadership

The necessary cultural change requires the collective and individual leadership of agency heads and managers. That leadership also requires commitment to practical strategies to address the employment disadvantage people with disability face.

Management

The second step to achieving cultural change—management—requires that agencies ‘mainstream’ those strategies into their organisational policies, guidance material and training programmes, so they are an integral part of day-to-day planning and decision-making.

Assurance

The third step—assurance—effectively uses accountability mechanisms, such as the Australian Public Service Commission’s annual State of the Service Report, to assess agencies’ performance in bringing about that change.

Access to APS employment (Chapter 3)

Compared to other applicants with the same educational qualifications, people with disability are commonly disadvantaged by a lack of accessibility to job advertisements and the recruitment process; employer perceptions of their ability; and a lack of relevant work experience.

Levelling the playing field for people with disability

APS agencies with better outcomes in employing people with disability address this particular disadvantage by developing links with organisations specialising in placing people with disability in employment, including the National Disability Recruitment Coordinator and the Disability Employment Network (formerly known as Disability Open Employment Services). Those organisations identify and support suitably qualified applicants with disability during the recruitment process, including the reasonable adjustments successful applicants with disability require to the workplace.

At the same time, the better performing agencies ensure their recruitment processes are accessible to applicants with disability. This includes accepting applications in different formats; allowing sufficient time for people with disability to lodge applications; and ensuring that selection criteria reflect only the inherent requirements of the position and do not unnecessarily exclude applicants with disability.

Officials procuring the services of recruitment agencies should satisfy themselves that those service providers have appropriate arrangements in place to support and encourage applications from people with disability.

Agencies should also ensure their direct testing arrangements make the reasonable adjustments required by candidates with disability and that delegates and members of selection panels receive appropriate training in their obligations when considering applicants with disability.

Improving access to APS work experience opportunities

Another area of continuing disadvantage for many people with disability is that they are less likely to have access to employment opportunities during their education. As APS merit selection processes involve a comparative assessment of the capacity of applicants against the selection criteria, applicants without prior experience find it more difficult to demonstrate that capacity.

To address that disadvantage, agencies could usefully provide opportunities for people with disability to access training schemes and mentoring arrangements in the APS and, by so doing, better equip people with disability to compete on merit.

Employment of people with intellectual disability

People with intellectual disability experience particular difficulties accessing the APS workforce. Their particular employment disadvantage is acknowledged by the special employment measures under clause 4.2(6)(b)(ii) of the Public Service Commissioner’s Directions 1999. Those measures allow people with intellectual disability to be appointed to the APS without having to compete against applicants who do not have an intellectual disability.

However, they are seldom used and agencies are encouraged to consider whether they can offer more employment opportunities for people with intellectual disability through this avenue.

Supporting APS employees with disability (Chapter 4)

Once appointed to the APS, employees with disability need support to reach their career goals and maximise their effectiveness. The better practice support strategies of the better performing agencies have a number of components.

Making reasonable adjustments

First, agencies’ premises and the work-related communications and information their employees need to carry out their duties are accessible to employees with disability. Agencies are encouraged to undertake an assessment of the access requirements of their staff with disability to ensure the reasonable adjustments they require to premises and to the workplace are being met.

While not necessarily targeting the needs of their employees with disability, the more effective agencies also encourage flexible working arrangements such as home-based work (or ‘teleworking’), job-sharing, part-time work, flexible working hours, and purchased leave arrangements (including 48/52 leave), which incidentally benefit their employees with disability. Australian Workplace Agreements (AWAs) can offer a useful vehicle for tailoring a flexible work arrangement that is particularly suited to an employee’s individual needs.

The better performing agencies also provide access to learning and development opportunities relevant to the career goals of employees with disability. Where employees with disability are frustrated in accessing these and other opportunities, the support of an advocate or mentor within the organisation can be valuable.

Supporting managers (Chapter 5)

To reduce the perceived complexity, cost and risk involved in employing people with disability, managers need access to information and support, adequate funding, and appropriate organisational policies.

Reducing the complexity, cost and risk for managers

In some large agencies, specialist disability coordinators provide a central point of support, while in smaller agencies the duties of the position commonly include other workplace diversity and Human Resources (HR) responsibilities. Important to the position’s success, however it is structured, is that it is adequately resourced to find solutions to the needs of employees with disability; has information at hand to answer queries from staff and managers or be in a position to access that information; and be able to work with organisations specialising in placing people with disability. The existence of the position and the services it offers should be publicised to all staff.

A one-stop information shop called JobAccess, incorporating a website and an information line to address the need for specialist information, has been developed by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR). It commenced operation on 3 July 2006.

The Australian Public Service Commission also publishes a range of better practice guides on employment-related issues. The Commission will incorporate into those guides advice on specific issues relating to the employment of people with disability that agencies can adopt or modify as they choose.

Agencies should also ensure managers have access to adequate resources to fund the reasonable adjustments required by staff, desirably through a centralised funding source.

There may be times when the productivity of an employee with disability is below that expected due to the effect of his or her disability. In those circumstances there are a number of avenues open to managers including, in the first instance, redesigning the position to promote more effective performance or, in appropriate circumstances, a productivity-based wage assessment if the person is eligible for the Supported Wage System.

Managers play an important role in supporting staff with mental illness in the workplace. But managers, in turn, need information on how to do that effectively. Training programmes, such as the beyondblue National Depression in the Workplace Program, as well as employee assistance programmes and/or expert case managers, help managers (and all staff) identify helpful behaviours to support their colleagues.

Ongoing disability awareness should also be an integral part of the management training, induction sessions and other learning and development activities conducted by agencies.

Monitoring agencies’ performance (Chapter 6)

‘What gets measured, gets valued.’ Thus, measuring agencies’ performance in improving employment opportunities for people with disability will be an important component of any cultural change strategy.

To do that effectively, it is first necessary to establish a ‘base-line’ against which improvements can be demonstrated. However, the limitations of APS data on the numbers of employees reporting a disability make this difficult.

The current situation

APS employment figures are drawn from the Australian Public Service Employment Database (APSED) which, in turn, relies on data from agencies’ HR systems. That data indicates that, at June 2005, people with disability represented 3.8% of ongoing APS employees, down from 6.6% in 1986.

However, the provision of data on disability by APS employees is voluntary. Information from other sources, including focus groups exploring reasons people choose not to disclose their disability status, the staff surveys of some agencies, and the Australian Public Service Commission’s annual State of the Service Employee Survey, indicate the APSED data is under-reporting the actual number of people with disability in the APS.

Nevertheless, the trend is noteworthy. Fewer people with disability are being recruited into the APS, and existing staff with disability are leaving at a faster rate than they are being recruited.

Reasons for decline in numbers of APS staff with disability

The decline has corresponded with APS organisational and structural changes over the past 20 years that have been accompanied by declining numbers of APS 1–2 positions; the outsourcing of corporate services such as mail handling, printing and cleaning; broadbanding and multiskilling; and an emphasis on a more educated workforce. The changes have lifted individual performance and organisational productivity. However, they have come at a cost. Direct APS employment opportunities for groups with lower average skill levels, including some people with an intellectual disability, have greatly reduced, although some have been employed by contractors providing outsourced services to the APS.

At the same time, opportunities for skilled people with disability have also reduced, with declining numbers of employees with disability at all levels in the APS, including Executive Level (EL) and Senior Executive Service (SES) employees.

Defining ‘disability’

One reason for the difficulty in accurately measuring agencies’ performance in employing and retaining people with disability is that agencies presently use differing definitions of ‘disability’ to develop recruitment and retention policies and to collect employee data.

The most appropriate definition for developing APS recruitment and retention policies is the definition of ‘disability’ adopted by the Disability Discrimination Act 1992. However, that definition can be difficult to operationalise in the practical process of data collection. A better choice for data collection purposes is the definition of ‘disability’ adopted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in its 2003 Disability, Ageing and Carers Survey. That definition provides the basis for the most recent disability data used by analysts in Australia and its comprehensiveness and clarity make it easy to use in practice.

A consistent definition of disability will not, by itself, overcome the under-reporting of disability. People with disability (particularly those with mental illness) can be reluctant to identify themselves as having a disability because of past experience with, or fear of, discrimination. Cultural change that results in a more accepting and supportive environment for employees with disability should result in greater self- reporting over time.

In the meantime, a clear written statement about why personal and employment data (including data on disability) is being collected and how it will be used will go some way to addressing the existing concerns of people with disability around disclosure.

Measuring progress

Agencies are to demonstrate continuous improvement in recruiting and retaining people with disability, against the performance indicators that are most appropriate to it.

Reporting progress

As regular reporting plays an important role in achieving cultural change, agencies are to report annually on their success in meeting the goal of continuous improvement via the annual State of the Service Agency Survey and State of the Service Report.

In light of the outcomes of the 2008–09 State of the Service Report, the Management Advisory Committee will, at that time, review agencies’ progress in meeting that goal.