Diversity

Key chapter findings

Workplace diversity continues to be an area of relative strength for the APS, with the majority of employees continuing to agree that agencies are committed to this issue. The employment of women, both overall and at senior levels, has continued to rise. The APS also continues to do well at retaining employees from non-English speaking backgrounds, with representation increasing slightly this year, after having remained generally steady for the last decade, although levels are lower than for the workforce as a whole.

This year’s results suggest that real progress is beginning to be made in reversing the trend of the declining employment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the APS. The number of Indigenous Australians working in the APS has increased and proportional representation has stabilised. The growth in numbers has been across the majority of classifications with the increase in Indigenous numbers at the EL classifications particularly pleasing. The proportion of Indigenous engagements to the APS has grown and the proportion of separations has fallen, although Indigenous employees continue to be overrepresented in separations.

The turnaround in Indigenous employment reflects a wide range of initiatives under the APS Employment and Capability Strategy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employees, and highlights the value of a whole of government approach to this challenge. Agencies are also increasingly putting in place their own measures to improve Indigenous employment, although there is potential for some agencies to take a more concerted approach. There is likely to be particular benefit in developing more comprehensive Indigenous Employment

Strategies and providing learning and development initiatives aimed at developing the skills of Indigenous employees. It will be very important to sustain a strong focus on these issues in the next few years in order to consolidate recent gains.

Progress in the employment of people with disability is less apparent. Although there are ongoing concerns about the quality of the data, the decline in the employment of people with disability is continuing. This is coupled with lower satisfaction with issues relevant to employee engagement and consistently lower rates of job satisfaction for this group.

The results reinforce the importance of agencies taking action against the objectives set out in the MAC report, Employment of People with Disability in the APS. Agencies have made good progress in some areas in implementing initiatives designed to achieve these objectives. In others, however, progress has been relatively limited, especially in the areas of cultural change, accessible training, employment opportunities for people with intellectual disability, and the use of disability networks to advertise vacancies and attract people with disability. Taking action in these areas is critical. Agencies’ capacity to attract and retain people with disability is fundamentally dependent on their ability to demonstrate their commitment to employing and supporting this group once they are in the workplace.

In the area of age diversity, the APS has seen some positive results this year in the increase in representation of young employees. Young employees also have generally high levels of satisfaction with their jobs and with a range of issues relevant to employee engagement, particularly learning and development and career and development opportunities. This is a result that could be leveraged in recruitment exercises targeted at younger people. The high levels of separation, however, suggest that agencies still have to consider how to best support this group, if they are to establish long-term careers in the APS or return to the APS at a later date. A focus on skills development and mobility opportunities is a sensible place to start.

Despite the recent increases in the employment of young people, there is a long-term trend towards an increasing reliance on employees aged 45 years and over in the APS. Growth in numbers of employees in the 55 years and over age group has been particularly strong with many older workers choosing to remain in employment rather than retire and others choosing to return to the APS on a more flexible basis. Initiatives put in place by agencies to encourage retirees to return to the APS, such as alumni programmes, appear to be bearing fruit. However, despite high levels of job satisfaction overall, the lower levels of satisfaction with issues related to employee engagement for workers aged 45 years and over are of some concern. Addressing this dissatisfaction is a priority area of focus for the future.

This year, the data quality of information on the representation of some EEO groups has improved. This is a pleasing result and indicates a growing focus on improving data quality in particular agencies. However, data quality is still much lower than is desirable. Agencies need to continue to give priority to improving data on the diversity status of their employees, both through better collection methods and by fostering an environment in which employees choose to identify as belonging to an EEO group. Better data will provide a more precise picture of both agency and APS workforces, which will allow us to accurately measure the success of our initiatives and identify where we need to provide increased support.