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Employee engagement and job satisfaction
Work-life balance and flexible work practices
Work-life balance in its broadest sense is a person’s satisfaction with their ability to manage the interactions between the multiple roles and activities in their life. The ability to achieve an effective work-life balance not only has an impact on employees’ well-being, but it can also directly affect their levels of engagement. Assisting employees to balance their work and life commitments can provide real benefits to organisations through increased productivity, organisational commitment, improved morale and job satisfaction, and reduced levels of absences and turnover.
One way agencies can assist employees in managing their work-life balance is through flexible work practices. Flexible working arrangements has been consistently rated as the second most important job satisfaction attribute for APS employees. Research suggests that many workplaces have already recognised the importance of flexible working arrangements.
Australia has high levels of employees working flexible hours compared with other OECD countries.14 Despite the fact that Australian workers often feel rushed for time, three-quarters of Australians are also satisfied with their work-life balance.15
Agency support for work-life balance
APS agencies provide an extensive range of work-life options for their employees. Agencies generally reported providing between five and 14 work-life options to employees, with the majority offering around 10 different strategies to support employees in achieving work-life balance.
The most common work-life balance strategies available in agencies are part-time work, maternity leave entitlements16 available at half-pay, flexible working hours, and purchased leave (see Table 3.6).
| Work-life balance strategies | Percentage of agencies | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Yes % | Being developed % | No % | No, but measure provided on an informal basis % | |
| Flex-time arrangements for non-APS level employees (e.g. for ELs) | 41 | 0 | 33 | 26 |
| Time off in lieu arrangements for ELs | 72 | 0 | 5 | 24 |
| Time off in lieu arrangements for the SES | 40 | 0 | 19 | 41 |
| Purchased leave arrangements (e.g. 48/52) | 91 | 2 | 7 | N/A |
| Recreation leave entitlement available at half pay | 57 | 3 | 40 | N/A |
| Maternity leave entitlement available at half pay | 98 | 0 | 2 | N/A |
| Paid paternity leave | 66 | 2 | 32 | N/A |
| Paid adoption leave | 76 | 2 | 22 | N/A |
| More than 12 weeks paid ‘maternity’ leave | 49 | 5 | 47 | N/A |
| Paid ‘parental’ leave other than those specified (e.g. maternity, paternity, adoption) | 25 | 1 | 74 | N/A |
| Job share arrangements | 63 | 1 | 21 | 16 |
| Flexible working hours | 98 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Compressed work week (37.5 hrs in less than 5 days) | 32 | 1 | 53 | 14 |
| Working from home | 88 | 1 | 7 | 5 |
| Part-time work | 100 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Other | 54 | 0 | 41 | 4 |
Note: Percentages may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Source: Agency survey |
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There has been an increase in the use of a range of work-life measures over the last 12 months. The proportion of agencies offering purchased leave arrangements, paid adoption leave, more than 12 weeks paid maternity leave, flexible working hours, and working from home have all increased since 2005–06. The proportion of agencies offering time off in lieu arrangements for the SES has also increased for formal arrangements (40%, up from 31% last year).
Strategies least likely to be offered by agencies continue to be paid parental leave (other than maternity, paternity and adoption leave), and compressed work weeks.
Employee satisfaction with work-life balance
Satisfaction with work-life balance continues to be an area of relative strength for the APS. Reflecting the wide range of initiatives offered by agencies, employees were generally satisfied with their access to flexible working arrangements. Four out of five employees (83%) reported that they use flexible working arrangements in their current job. This is a slight decrease compared to last year (86%), but still a positive result. Employees who reported being least likely to use flexible working arrangements were men, EL employees, the SES and those working in the ACT. Those who were more likely to use flexible working arrangements were women, carers, APS level employees, those outside the ACT, part-time employees and young employees (under 25 years).
Most employees were also satisfied with the work-life balance in their current job. Employees’ satisfaction with work-life balance in their current job increased from 68% in 2005–06 to 74% in 2006–07. This result compares favourably with the findings of the Canadian Public Service Employee survey,17 which found that 69% of employees in the Public Service of Canada were able to balance their personal, family and work needs in their current job.
Those employees least satisfied with their work-life balance were men, employees aged 45 years and over, EL employees and the SES. SES satisfaction results (46%) were similar to results in the UK survey of its Civil Service,18 which found that only 48% of senior civil servants thought they were able to strike the right balance between their work and home life.
Consistent with their views about their current job, 71% of employees reported that their workplace supports people to achieve a good work-life balance, a significant increase on last year’s result (63%). Young employees, those from a non-English speaking background and part-time employees were most likely to agree that their workplace supports work-life balance. Those least likely to agree were employees with disability, and EL and SES employees. Agreement levels in the 45 agencies with individual agency-specific results ranged from 50% to 86%.
The APS result on this question compares very favourably with results in State jurisdiction employee surveys. Fifty-seven per cent of Tasmanian respondents, 62% of Western Australian respondents and 55% of South Australian respondents agreed that their workplace culture was supportive of people achieving work-life balance.19
The majority of employees (64%) were also satisfied with the Work-Life Balance factor that emerged from the factor analysis of employee survey questions particularly relevant to employee engagement.20 Although a positive response, almost a quarter of respondents reported a neutral response, and a further 13% disagreed, suggesting that there is still potential for improvement.
Average hours worked in the last six months
The pattern of working hours in Australia has changed in the last twenty years. There has been a growth in both extended full-time working hours and part-time hours. The ABS report, Working Time Arrangements, revealed that 37% of Australian employees usually worked extra hours or overtime and almost half of these employees (48%) were not paid for these hours.21 Research on work-life interaction in Australia22 found that 33% of Australians worked more than 45 hours a week and that there was an association with long working hours and poor work-life outcomes.
In line with these results, 60% of respondents to the employee survey reported working a greater number of hours than their agreed or standard hours in the last six months (20% worked significantly more hours). This was up slightly from 2005–06 (56%). Those working significantly more hours were much less likely to be satisfied with their work-life balance in their current jobs, but those working more, but not significantly more, than standard or agreed hours were just as likely as those working around their standard or agreed hours to be satisfied with their work-life balance.
Classification had a considerable impact on the likelihood of employees working a greater number of hours. Working hours increase significantly once employees become EL 1s but EL 2 employees were more likely to report working ‘significantly more’ hours than were the SES. This is likely to reflect the slightly different wording of the question asked of SES employees, which focused on a ‘reasonable number of hours’ rather than a ‘standard or agreed number of hours’ reflecting the nature of working arrangements for most SES employees.
There was wide variation among agencies with individual agency-specific results in the proportion of employees reporting that they worked a greater number of hours in the last six months, with results ranging from 47% to 89%.
Carer responsibilities
Maintaining an effective work-life balance is particularly important to the job satisfaction of employees with caring responsibilities. The overall proportion of APS employees reporting that they had caring responsibilities declined this year (34%, down from 38% in 2005–06, and similar to the proportion who reported in 2002–03 that they had carer responsibilities).
Not surprisingly, carers are more likely to use flexible working arrangements. Carers were as satisfied as non-carers that their workplace supports people to achieve a good work-life balance, but less satisfied with their current work-life balance.
The majority of carers (62%) reported that they were caring for children aged five through to 16 years of age, with just over a quarter (26%) caring for children under five years. Aged parents were being cared for by 17% of carers and dependent children over 16 years of age by 16% of carers. A small proportion of employees reported that they care for other aged relatives and/or extended family members, partners with acute or long-term health problems and disabled dependants (4%, 6% and 3% respectively).
Women continue to be more likely to report that they had caring responsibilities than did men (38% compared to 30%). Of the diversity groups, this year, only employees from a non-English speaking background reported having greater caring responsibilities than other employees (42% compared with 33% of employees not in this group). EL and SES employees were more likely to report having caring responsibilities than those at the APS 1–6 levels.
14 House of Representatives, Standing Committee on Family and Human Services 2006, Balancing Work and Family: Report on the Inquiry into Balancing Work and Family, Parliament of Australia, Canberra.
15 B. Pocock, N. Skinner & P. Williams 2007, Work, Life and Time: The Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI), Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies, University of South Australia, Magill, SA, <http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/cwl/default.asp>
16 In addition to the requirement to provide 12 weeks of paid maternity leave under the Maternity Leave (Commonwealth Employees) Act 1973.
17 Public Service Human Resources Management Agency of Canada 2005, Public Service of Canada: Organizational Report—Public Service Employee Survey 2005, <http://www.psagency-agencefp.gc.ca/survey-sondage/2005/results-resultats/index-e.htm>
18 UK Cabinet Office, Survey of the Senior Civil Service 2006, <http://www.civilservice.gov.uk/reform/leadership/scssurvey.asp>
19 The jurisdictional comparison data from surveys conducted in 2005–06 and 2006–07 was provided to the Commission by the Department of Premier and Cabinet, South Australia, on behalf of the Commissioner for Public Employment (Workplace Perspectives Survey 2006); Tasmania (State Service Employee Survey 2005); and the Office of the Public Standards Commissioner, Western Australia (Climate Survey 2006–07). The South Australian survey covers all employees employed under the Public Sector Management Act 1995 and the Tasmanian survey covered all employees employed under the State Service Act 2000. The Western Australian Climate Survey involved 14 separate agencies in 2006–07. Each year 10–15 agencies are surveyed with each agency being surveyed approximately once every five years.
20 Full details of the factor analysis, including details of the methodology and questions used, are set out in Appendix 4.
21 ABS, Working Time Arrangements, Cat No. 6342.0, November 2006, ABS, Canberra.
22 B. Pocock, N. Skinner & P. Williams 2007, Work, Life and Time: The Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI), Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies, University of South Australia, Magill, SA, <http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkeinstitute/cwl/default.asp>
