Chapter 7: Leadership and management

Abbreviations

A list of the abbreviations used in this report is available in the Glossary

Key chapter findings

Effective leadership is fundamental to the performance of the APS. SES composition and experience varies widely between agencies. Agency heads need to manage carefully their SES leadership group to ensure its effectiveness. SES officers need to invest in themselves and plan their careers carefully if they are to consolidate to the maximum extent possible. Unfortunately, this is not always the case and this chapter presents a mixed picture about the APS’s leadership and management performance.

There are areas where the APS is doing particularly well. Positive results include employees’ satisfaction with their immediate supervisor, both in terms of their people management skills, and in relation to the management attributes that they view as most important. The fact that almost three-quarters of SES employees recognise their role as part of a broader APS-wide leadership cadre is also positive. This is likely to be bolstered among the leadership cadre as a whole, by the embedding of MAC’s One APS— One SES statement, which has a particular focus on helping the SES to understand their role in promoting a strong common identity across the APS.

There has been a focus, both in individual agencies and at a whole of government level, in developing programmes to improve the capability of the APS leadership group. In particular, agencies are continuing to take an active and targeted approach to leadership development, particularly for the SES feeder group. More than half of APS agencies have used the Commission’s ILS, and the overwhelming majority have found that it has assisted them in improving leadership capability. Reflecting this eff ort, employee satisfaction with leadership development opportunities has increased, although it still shows room for further improvement.

In general, employees’ perceptions of their senior leaders were not as positive as their views about their mnagers. To a large extent this result is to be expected, and is consistent with results from other surveys where employees tend to rate senior leaders lower than their immediate managers. It is understandable that employees may be more positive about their immediate supervisor, with whom they have daily contact, than the senior leadership of their agency which may seem more remote. Many junior employees may not fully appreciate the role of senior leadership, and on a number of questions the low levels of satisfaction reflect a high neutral response, rather than a high actively dissatisfied response.

The phrase ‘senior leaders’ was not defined in the employee survey, and for some employees it may include employees outside of the SES. Nevertheless, when combined with data from APSED which shows an increase in the number of SES employees with limited experience, the employee survey results appear to have particular significance for the SES group. They suggest that some APS agencies may need to work harder at ensuring both that they have senior leadership of the highest quality, and that the interactions of their leadership team with more junior employees in the agency reflect this quality. This is particularly so given that, of all the employee engagement factors, issues related to senior leaders and culture and immediate supervisor showed the strongest relationship to job satisfaction.

The employee survey results suggest that the traits that employees most value in their senior leaders, and where agencies may want to concentrate their efforts, are in communication, integrity and fairness, and judgment and decision-making. The results also suggest that there are continuing concerns about the ability of leaders in the APS to shape strategic thinking. In this regard, it is heartening that almost three-quarters of SES employees place a high priority on leadership development in this area.

There are some very positive signs of improvement in the area of performance management. Performance management systems are now firmly embedded in agencies and there is evidence that formal performance feedback is providing employees with necessary assistance/guidance and helping to address their learning and development needs. Feedback seems to have been effective in providing employees with a clear understanding of their role, and to have been increasingly concentrated on behaviour as well as outcomes. Perceptions of performance pay also seem to be improving slightly.

That said, this is the area, both in relation to the provision of feedback and in dealing with underperformance effectively, where employees were most critical of their immediate supervisors. Performance across agencies, particularly in the area of performance pay, continues to be highly variable, but the good results in some agencies suggest that employee perceptions can be further improved.

The marked differences in the composition of the SES leadership group across agencies means that agencies will need to take different approaches to developing their SES and ensuring the capability of their leadership group. For agencies with strong internal labour markets this may mean encouraging greater use of mobility options, as well as mechanisms of external review to bring ‘fresh eyes’ to their operations. For agencies with relatively inexperienced SES it may mean investing in more formal leadership capability development programmes. For agencies with many SES new to the agency it may mean finding ways to ensure that they can develop the technical understanding they need to bring a sufficient breadth of knowledge to their work. For all agencies, however, a continuing focus on the capability of their leadership group will be critical to their ability to achieve outcomes for the Government and the community.

Next page: Organisational capability