As Australia’s public service sector looks to redesign processes to align with modern ways of working, these thought leaders share their ideas on the way forward.

Hundreds of HR professionals gathered in Sydney on Monday to kick-off the Australian HR Institute’s three-day National Convention. 

Day one focussed on equipping Australia’s public service with the critical skills needed to build resilient and thriving agencies that are prepared to weather future storms, and rebuild and re-think processes that have been disrupted by the pandemic.

Many impressive speakers were peppered throughout the program, including former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Shane Fitzsimmons AO AFSM, Commissioner of Resilience NSW, as well as a range of other experts.

Strong themes emerged in both the keynotes and panel sessions around building the leaders, skills and cultures needed to take Australia’s public service to new heights. Here’s a summary of what the speakers had to say.

The talent we need to cultivate

In a panel session moderated by Convention MC and journalist Mimi Kwa, Tiffany Blight CPHR, First Assistant Secretary, People and Culture, Department of Home Affairs; Suzi Woodrow-Read, Executive Director, Leadership and Capability, Queensland Public Service Commission; and Jo Talbot FCPHR, Chief People Officer, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, shared their thoughts on the future of skills development in the public service.

The pandemic put public servants front and centre of the public consciousness. 

“Before the pandemic people didn’t really think about nurses and teachers as being public servants,” says Woodrow-Read. “Now people have seen behind the curtain and know that [public servants] hold the levers that can shift our society.”

However, even though it’s a sector that offers secure employment in volatile times, it’s also much clearer now just how disparate public servants’ employment experience can be.

“We see people leaving the health and education sector in droves because they’re exhausted,” says Woodrow-Read. “Their value proposition for coming into the sector has been shifted by the pandemic.”

“The World Economic Forum has said that pre-pandemic it would have taken 100 years to reach full gender equality. They’re now saying 132 years.” – Helen Clark, former NZ Prime Minister

The private sector has also caught up with a lot of the offerings that differentiated public versus private jobs, such as flexible work arrangements, she says. This gives people professionals in the public service a clear call to action: now is the time to create new opportunities to attract talent.

This partly comes down to designing more enticing employment opportunities, but there’s also ample opportunity to tap into underrepresented talent.

In Woodrow-Read’s opinion, there’s no shortage of high-quality young candidates coming into the public sector. So she thinks HR should zero in on mid-to-senior career professionals.

Blight agrees, saying that she thinks HR sometimes overlooks existing talent.

“A lot of research points to the fact that there’s still a great deal of interest from that [older] cohort of wanting to continue to engage with learning, and the retirement age is getting older now,” says Blight.

“Nine out of 10 jobs of the future are going to require some form of qualification. In that particular cohort, about 40 per cent don’t have qualifications right now. That group is ripe for investment. The interest is there, the capability is there, they plan to stay in our workforces yet we’re overlooking them.”

The learning cultures we need to build

To make the most of under-represented groups, Talbot suggests thinking about how you create a learning culture in your organisation.

“That needs to be far more focused on bite-sized, just-in-time learning rather than thinking people have to spend years [learning] something. We’ve got to be quicker and to be able to adapt our learning styles.”

So what are the skills that we need to build in our workforces, particularly those working in government agencies?

Digital skills are the obvious answer, says Talbot.

“By 2025 we’re going to need an additional 6.5 million digital workers and we’re going to be competing across every sector for that.”

Woodrow-Read calls out integrity as a key attribute.

“As a public servant, you have power given to you that can change and impact people’s lives. We need people who understand that and use it wisely.”

She also says it’s important to hire people with the ability to work within complexity.

“We have to have leaders who can ‘boundary expand’. A lot of the work of the government is not done in silos. It’s done in-between boundaries. We have to have people who are skilled at doing that.

“We’re also looking for leaders who can set up governance and learning environments that have really quick feedback loops. The people on the ground innovate incredibly well, but that knowledge often gets lost when we get up to a team and organisational level. We need leaders who protect learning and support and advocate for experimentation.”

Want to catch up on another Convention panel? Read HRM’s wrap up of the conversation about how HR can prepare for the future of the public sector.

Talbot suggests that the future of the public service – and perhaps the workforce more broadly – could see less of a focus on people working in siloed teams and more ad-hoc utilization of people’s skills.

“We might not see people working with set teams but bringing people together with different skill sets to focus on solving workplace [challenges].”

Talbot adds that a big part of changing up the learning culture in the public sector is embedding psychological safety.

“Avoid putting punitive measures in place if something goes wrong. Allow for people to experiment with risks,” says Talbot. 

One way she’s seen this work well in the past is by gamifying the learning experience.

“You have challenges where you’re trying to encourage people to do things differently… that creates a culture where people are more willing to come to you with ideas.”

Blight turns the skill conversation back onto HR, saying it’s time the people profession learned the language required for the future of work.

“Years ago, we used to talk about HR speaking the language of finance. [Now] we need to speak the language of our IT colleagues. That’s what’s compelling right now. That’s how we become influential at that executive table.”

The leaders we need to build

The droughts, the bushfires, the pandemic, the mouse plague, the floods, the cost-of-living crisis, the global conflict – crises are coming at us thick and fast.

“I don’t think we can underestimate the extraordinary implications of such significant consecutive disasters affecting communities over and over and over again,” says Shane Fitzsimmons AO AFSM, Commissioner of Resilience NSW.

Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, summarises these challenges as the three Cs – COVID-19, climate change and conflict – and says these are among the most incredible years she’s witnessed in her lifetime.

To respond to this increasingly complex and volatile environment, we need capable, adaptable and practical leaders at the helm of both our government agencies and organisations.

“We certainly learned a great deal about leadership styles during the pandemic. There were some simply shocking examples of leadership, but there were also some stellar ones,” says Clark, who was also recently appointed Co-Chair of the independent panel for pandemic preparedness and response, undertaken by the World Health Organisation.

“I don’t think we can underestimate the extraordinary implications of such significant consecutive disasters affecting communities over and over and over again.” – Shane Fitzsimmons AO AFSM, Commissioner of Resilience NSW

What set apart the wheat from the chaff, according to Clark, were the world leaders who were quickly able to assemble a strategy and a plan, and then invite people to follow along.

“I also think transparency, empathy and openness are incredibly important.”

Clark also suggests that it’s important to leave your ego at the door when leading in any circumstance, but especially when leading through a crisis.

“You want leaders who say, ‘I want to be open to the best advice… and that was the case with Jacinda Ardern [regarding her response to COVID-19]. She was out there six days a week holding press conferences at the height of it all. What she was able to demonstrate was that if you stick to a plan, you could beat this thing.”

Fitzsimmons also focused his keynote on the leadership skills HR can help to cultivate at both a government and organisation level, focusing on six main traits:

1. Authenticity

“We need to have a good look at the person we see in the mirror and understand what our strengths are,” says Fitzsimmons. “What are our natural traits and behaviours? What are our limitations? What are our worries?

“[As leaders], we have to own and understand our limitations and our nuances because the people around us already see them; they value them and respect them. What people don’t want to see is the poser who pretends to be somebody they’re not,” he says.

The more authentic leaders can be about what they’re doing and, more importantly, why they’re doing it, the more likely employees are to buy into the leadership agenda.

2. Humility and empathy

The core of this is not taking yourself too seriously, but taking everything you do seriously, says Fitzsimmons.

“Remember that we are leaders amongst a group; we are part of a big team. And more and more we’re part of a multi-agency or organisational environment. 

“The more we can understand and connect and relate to our teams, colleagues and subordinates… the more we can understand what matters to them and what motivates them. That’s really important.”

3. Mutual respect 

One of the values that was instilled into Fitzsimmons as a kid was that “manners cost you nothing, but a lack of them can cost you everything”.

“As I transitioned into adult life and leadership life, I saw that manners comes down to mutual respect and genuinely encouraging and inviting in different perspectives, experiences, skills and attributes to what you’ve got and what your immediate team has got, particularly in times of crisis.”

The benefit of this diversity of thought is the many different solutions it can bring to the table. 

“Make sure people understand that challenging the status quo and challenging your initial thoughts is okay; it’s helpful. Indeed, it’s critical that we’re not just accepting the loudest or most common voice in the room.”

4. Act quickly

Indecision infuriates and frustrates people, says Fitzsimmons, but most people are happy when a decision is made and explained to them, rather than no decision at all.

People don’t expect leaders to get it right all the time. As Clark says, even the best and most capable leaders didn’t always get it right when navigating the pandemic. However, they do expect you to do something.

Fitzsimmons reinforces this. “In the workplace, in times of crisis, one of the biggest deflators of morale, optimism and hope is the procrastination of management… Doing nothing is invariably not an option. Doing something is critical. Let’s not let the pursuit of perfection stand in the way of meaningful progress. 

5. Hold people account for  poor behaviour

Calling out poor performance is probably one of the most critical things leaders can role model, says Fitzsimmons, referring to the oft-told saying, ‘The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.’

Inspired by this time spent as a mechanic in the early part of his career, he uses the analogy of a flat tyre to convey how to handle inappropriate behaviour or attitudes in the workplace.

“Sometimes it’s as simple as putting a tyre badge on, pushing the trigger and re-inflating the tyre because it’s just gone down over a period of time. Soft, subtle intervention gets that tire back up and running. 

“Sometimes, of course, when we try to reinflate that tyre, we might identify a puncture. So we’ve got to be a little more decisive and intrusive with our interventions. If we plug it effectively, we can inflate it again and away it goes. But sometimes there are too many plugs in the tyre and we’ve actually got to get rid of it and replace it with a new one,” he says.

“Now a flat tyre is one thing on a unicycle, but if it’s a flat tyre on the front wheel of your bus that’s driving your team around then the reality is that it’s holding up everyone until someone gets out and fixes it.”

6. Presence matters

Leaders need to know when to show up, says Fitzsimmons. 

“Leaders need to demonstrate care. I don’t think that’s talked about enough in leadership circles. Leaders need to be present particularly when things are going wrong or when there’s bad news or tragedy in the workplace. Presence matters.

“We’ve got to lead by example. These last few years have been unparalleled in our history. The amount of significant displacement, disruption and tragedy have created a backdrop of anxiety and uncertainty… and there’s a need for so much healing across different aspects of our community and workforces. 

“As leaders, we’ve got to stand up and normalise these conversations and reiterate that it’s okay to be challenged.”

Build back better for women

Considering the ways in which the pandemic has impacted women, Clark says they need to be considered as key stakeholders when redesigning policy and process.

“There’s no doubt that the pandemic has set back the battle for gender equality by years. The World Economic Forum has said that pre-pandemic it would have taken 100 years to reach full gender equality. They’re now saying 132 years. As an overarching figure, that’s quite disturbing,” says Clark.

“And there’s always a lag with the measurement [of data], so we won’t get the full story for some time.”

Women’s employment rates took a bigger hit than men’s during the pandemic, says Clark.

“Women’s employment declined by 4.2 per cent and men’s by 3 per cent,” she says. “Women lost somewhere between 54 and 56 million jobs.”

There are a few reasons for this. One is that women were more likely to be employed in industries prone to disruption due to the pandemic, such as tourism, hospitality and retail.

Secondly, Clark says women bore the brunt of having to take on more of the childcare responsibilities.

“About three quarters of the world’s unpaid work is done by women. You try to be a senior [female] banker working from home with toddlers screaming their heads off. It’s very difficult.”

Not only does Clark want to elevate women at work in general to help them bounce back from the pandemic, she also wants to see more holding leadership positions.

“Women leaders are a rare commodity, and to get there they have to be strong.”

Clark’s parting advice to HR professionals working in the public sector is to be honest with employees, leaders and the community about what the government is dealing with.

“Be clear about the scale of the challenges and go back to the basic leadership attributes: have a strategy, have a plan and say, ‘Here’s what we know and here’s what we don’t know’.

“We’ve got a lot more resources than other countries, so we have an opportunity to get it right,” she says. “And one would hope to see gender-responsive recovery strategies which can look at the loss of important opportunities and how to build back better for women.”

Stay tuned for our wrap-up or days two and three, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay abreast of the key themes of AHRI’s Convention.