Defence

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Workforce planning: APS critical categories

Planning the Defence workforce is an essential component of building Defence’s capability to meet Government objectives. Traditionally within Defence, workforce modelling and planning has been confined to the Services. With about 20,000 Australian Public Service (APS) employees in Defence, there is a need to develop and validate appropriate workforce planning models to ensure that this component of the workforce is effectively managed and developed. It will contribute to planning, and subsequent strategies, across the total workforce. Jennifer Copland and Suzie Dinham explain.

Defence civilian personnel play an important role in the delivery of capability by directly supporting the Australian Defence Force (ADF) through acquisition of materiel, intelligence, delivery of services and providing advisory and administrative support, thus freeing up uniformed personnel for military operations. Planning the civilian workforce is vitally important.

The important contribution of the Defence APS to Defence’s capability is reflected in the Defence Strategic Workforce Plan 2007-17. At the strategic level, the Plan identifies workforce risks for both the military and civilian components and articulates potential remediation actions. The Plan identifies that the APS modelling capability is a key outcome.

An APS workforce modelling capability is being developed in the Directorate of Workforce Modelling, Forecasting and Analysis, within the Personnel Executive, Australian Defence Headquarters. The role of the new APS section is to provide quantitative analysis to complement workforce planning efforts on Defence-wide issues; to provide reports on separations, demand, hires and transfers; and, to provide a workforce profile analysis to Senior Committees.

An early focus of our work has been to identify the skills that we are short of in the Defence APS. This led to a provisional list of nine APS critical categories, identified through consultation with Groups and data from the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR). These provisional categories are:

In each Service, Group and Executive, the workforce consists of different occupations or employment categories. Some categories are more critical than others, and shortages in these occupations can have greater impact on the delivery of business services and products.

People are the key to sustaining the APS workforce, with public servants directly contributing to Defence capability.

Planning the civilian workforce in Defence has been made easier by the introduction of the Defence APS Employment Category Construct (DAPSECC). DAPSECC assigns an occupation to Defence APS positions, with the exception of scientists in the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. Currently there are 161 occupations used under DAPSECC, some of which have less than 10 positions coded against them.

A key difference between civilian and military workforce planning is that DAPSECC codes civilian positions to an occupation only and not the personnel occupying a position, i.e. occupational categorisation depends on the duties of the position, rather than the skill-sets of the person occupying the position. This provides some challenges in that many positions reach across two or more occupational categories and initial categorisation has varied between Groups. Separation rates for critical categories cannot as easily be determined, as separation rates apply to personnel not positions.

Ultimately, coding people with a single, accurate occupational classification is required.

With first iteration of the DAPSECC project finalised, the Directorate is able to progress with its civilian workforce modelling and assessing APS critical categories.

A framework for using objective and subjective measures for assessing and further refining APS critical categories has been devised, and agreed, through the Personnel Steering Group. The key advantage of this framework is that all categories will be compared under the same criteria, which improves the objectivity in the decision making process. The following variables will be used in the assessment framework:

• Capability Value. This assessment will identify the relative importance the occupation has to Defence capability.
• Recruiting Performance. Some occupations will be harder to recruit than others. This assessment will identify the level of difficulty to recruit occupations in Defence.
• Geographic Assessment. This will assess the relative problems in staffing civilian positions in different locations across Australia, measuring each occupation by location.
• DEWR Indices. Input drawn from the DEWR Job Outlook Key Indicators website will be included for each occupation. Indicators will include:
  • - unemployment within the occupational category;
  • - historical seasonally adjusted employment growth for the occupational category in the medium-term (five years) and the long-term (10 years);
  • - job turnover for the occupational category;
  • - vacancy levels; and,
  • - job prospects.

Consultation with all Groups and Executives in Defence is currently underway to seek input for each variable. Once this input has been received, a Preliminary Assessment of the APS critical categories will be prepared. The Preliminary Assessment will be completed by mid-April 2007, and the results will be presented to the Groups and Executives who will be required to confirm the proposed list of critical categories. This review will occur on an annual basis. Further review of the process will occur as workforce modelling for the APS matures.

By accurately identifying APS critical categories, capability pressures on the civilian workforce will be identified and strategies can be developed and implemented in partnership by Groups and the Personnel Executive to improve workforce numbers and skills within the critical categories. The DeCA 2006-09 makes provision for the Secretary to declare an employment category to be of strategic significance to Defence capability, and to direct financial and other measures to ensure maintenance of capability in those categories.

The Directorate is keen to engage with the stakeholders across Defence and holds a quarterly workshop with workforce planners from all Groups. Suggestions and input for these workshops are welcomed. Further information for the workshops can be found on the Directorate’s website at http://defweb.cbr.defence.gov.au/dpedwpe/wma(aps).htm.

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