APS Employee Census 2024 results

Date published:
25 November 2024

Introduction

The Australian Public Service (APS) employee census is an important process in collecting information on:

  • employee engagement
  • workforce composition
  • senior leadership
  • immediate supervisors
  • workplace culture
  • inclusion and wellbeing
  • ways of working
  • general impressions of the APS.

The department uses employee census results to assess and monitor staff engagement and understand what is important to our people, what we are doing well and what we can focus on improving.

All reporting is subject to strict privacy rules.

All agencies are required to publish their action plans in response to the census. Our action plan has been developed in consultation with staff and executive, focusing on 4 main themes: communication, change, workload management, and effectiveness and efficiency.

We will continue to track the progress of our actions over the year.

Census Action Plan 2024

Our 2024 Census Action Plan builds on our progress from our 2023 plan.

We aim to be a model employer by providing a safe and inclusive workplace that promotes wellbeing. Our goal is to ensure we have an engaged, high-performing team that can do our best work.

What we do well

Our 2024 Census results highlighted our strengths:

  • Our people: our team is happy to go the extra mile at work when required and suggest ideas to improve our way of doing things.
  • Wellbeing: communicating what is on offer in terms of health and wellbeing.
  • Non-monetary benefits: such as leave and flexible work arrangements.
  • Flexible working arrangements: giving flexible work arrangements reasonable consideration.

Our approach

In all that we do, we are:

  • Curious: embracing learning, accepting failure and building feedback into our everyday work life.
  • Connected: broadening and deepening our ties with each other and our stakeholders.
  • Collaborative: working together to solve challenges.
  • Caring: supporting staff wellbeing and ensuring we thrive and reach our full potential, both individually and as a team.

Communication

We will increase connection and communication across the department and our locations. This continues our work from the 2023 DISR Census Action Plan.

We will:

  • Target and deliver all messaging in line with our communication strategy.
  • Review engagement across communication platforms and prioritise preferred channels.
  • Increase connection across locations with events including virtual sessions, team building activities and drop-in meetings with travelling senior executives.

Change

We will improve our change management resources and capability, continuing our work from the 2023 plan.

We will:

  • Ensure our change management toolkit is used for all activities that have a significant impact on structure or business activities.
  • Uplift the capability of our managers. All Executive Level staff leading change management activities will receive foundation training.
  • Promote the change support function in our people branch. Develop a resource library for staff to share ideas, insights and experiences with change management.

Workload Management

We will provide a safe and inclusive working environment for all our people.

We will:

  • Implement workload management strategies. We will document these in our business risk registers.
  • Conduct regular business and workforce planning to ensure we’re prioritising the right work and appropriate resources are allocated to it.
  • Invest in manager capability with clear role discussions about workload management, training, effective communication and proactive management of the right to disconnect.

Effectiveness and Efficiency

We will improve workplace efficiency with innovative solutions and simplified processes.

We will:

  • Streamline processes and approvals within our systems.
  • Review authority and decision-making responsibilities so they’re assigned at the appropriate level. Decision matrices will support key departmental activities.
  • Assess and update departmental delegation instruments to ensure decisions are made at the right level.