Workforce profile

Type of work

For the past two years, the State of the Service employee survey has collected data on the type of work performed by APS employees. The largest proportion, 23% of respondents to the employee survey this year, reported being involved in service delivery to the general public. Corporate functions occupy more than one-fifth of employees (22%, up from 19% last year)—the only significant change of note from the 2005–06 results. Other common categories include exercising regulatory authority, administrative support and policy.

Table 2.3 shows how the type of work performed across the APS varies by classification. APS 1–4 employees report that they are most likely to be working in roles where they are delivering services to the general public; EL 1s are most likely to be in corporate services or policy roles; and SES employees are in policy or programme design and/or management roles.

These questions will continue to be asked in future surveys so that trends in the type of work being undertaken can be monitored.

Table 2.3: Employee identified type of work by classification, 2006–07
Type of work	Classification
Type of work	APS 1–4 %	APS 5–6 %	EL1 %	EL2 %	SES %	Total %
Policy (e.g. development, review and/or evaluation)	2	10	22	17	29	10
Research	2	6	6	12	4	5
Programme design and/or management	1	10	19	17	25	9
Service delivery to the general public (e.g. call centres, shopfront/counter service)	41	15	4	2	6	23
Exercising regulatory authority (e.g. vetting visa applications, seizing illegal goods on arrival to Australia)	13	13	10	9	6	12
Legal (including developing and/or reviewing legislation)	2	3	6	7	10	3
Corporate services (e.g. HR, finance, IT, ministerial and parliamentary processes)	14	29	24	32	14	22
Administrative support/clerical (e.g. executive/personal assistant)	20	6	2	0	0	11
Other	4	8	7	4	6	6
Source: Employee survey