A recent review of hierarchies and work classification structures contains too many risks to the efficiency, effectiveness and integrity in the Australian Public Service (APS) to be taken seriously.
The review was conducted by two former departmental secretaries, Heather Smith and Finn Pratt and Kathryn Fagg, the chair of the CSIRO. They asked for public submissions, consulted widely and, of course, used focus groups – where would we be without them? While their report contains interesting information about changes in public service demographics, habits in other public services and the private sector and opinions they’ve gathered, its analysis is based largely on phobias, rhetoric and an impressive array of modern management mumbo-jumbo. The reviewers see hierarchy and believe it causes behaviour that “dampens employee motivation and engagement”. They want “a more agile and future fit APS” able “to manage crises and disruption as the new norm.” Well, why not?
As they yearn for “more flexible, dynamic and matrixed ways of working”, Smith, Pratt and Fagg discount the fundamental value and essentiality of hierarchy in most organisations, especially larger ones. It allows work to be divided vertically and horizontally, for tasks, objectives and methods to be defined and communicated, for staff to be properly supervised and assisted and not irresponsibly left to their own devices and for there to be proper accountability for results and behaviour. And it forces supervisors to take responsibility when things go wrong rather than delegating blame to “team members”. Far from being inimicable to team work and flexible methods, good hierarchies promote them as they have done in the thousands of years since the invention of formal organisations.
The question is, what is the best hierarchy for given situations, including aspects defined by work classifications. Here Smith, Pratt and Fagg veer off course. Their enthusiasm for flexibility, “self-managing Agile [yes, that’s Agile with a capital A] principles” and “flatter structures”, leads them to propose reducing the number of classification levels from 13 to 8 and adopting spans of control of between 8 to 10, sometimes slightly fewer but sometimes or up to 15.
It’s possible, although unlikely, bits of their plot might be on the money; it’s hard to know because the review didn’t bother to do the analytical hard work on which sensible decisions about classification must be based. That requires a close examination of the nature of the work at hand to determine how it should be divided by levels in the best interests of efficiency, effectiveness and, dare it be said, be consistency with flexibility and “Agility principles”.
Having by-passed the proper methodology, the review neglects the critical roles of parts of existing structures and relevant recent history. Thus, its recommendation for the amalgamation of the bottom two levels of the Senior Executive Service (SES 1 and 2), would effectively abolish an organisation arrangement whereby for at least the last 60 years or so “divisions” headed by SES 2 staff have been used as the lynch pin in the dividing up of work within departments – that’s why they’ve been called “divisions” and they offer no alternative. Moreover, Smith, Pratt and Fagg ignore relatively recent experiments in removing divisions in some departments which failed and were abandoned.
Equally seriously, the amalgamation of the SES 1 and 2 levels would vastly increase the spans of control of their supervisors leading to irresistible pressures for more positions at the SES 3 or Deputy Secretary level. This is the opposite of what should be done because more Deputy Secretaries would divide up work into smaller parcels, advance the cause of “siloed” administration, coagulate the despatch of business because of the need to consult with more colleagues before anything can be done and imperil sound relations with Ministers and government. That is to say, instead of making for more flexible and “Agile” departments, the Smith, Pratt and Fagg recommendations contain the grave risk of making them less so.
In 1975, when the APS had about 125000 more staff than now and when it contained a much greater complexity of work, it had a handful of Deputy Secretaries on the basis that officers at that level would only be provided if the spans of control of heads of departments required them. There are now more than 120 Deputies, so many indeed that in some departments their numbers create for Secretaries spans of control problems they were intended to avoid.
The APS would more flexible, agile, less “siloed” and work would be pushed more down the hierarchy if there were 100 fewer Deputy Secretaries and work continued to be split up on the basis of divisions headed by SES 2 officers. Smith, Pratt and Fagg would take the APS in the opposite direction, contrary to their avowed objectives.
Further, the APS classification structure ideally should be more based on occupational categories rather than being based on a monolithic form in which one size more or less fits all favoured by the reviewers. Using occupational categories allows classification to be more precisely adapted to the work to be performed and for remuneration to be more attune to outside labour markets for comparable work so maximising the ability of departments to recruit, retain and motivate staff. Again, Smith, Pratt and Fagg take things in the opposite direction.
But even when the three amigos get things right, as with their recommendation to strengthen the role of the Public Service Commissioner so as to provide more capacity to advance public service wide improvements, they fail to indicate adequate means whereby that can be achieved. They think the Commissioner can be more influential by that officer “providing quality guidance”, “monitoring progress” and “strengthening strategic people management”; how quaint and how naive. The Commissioner’s role will only be strengthened if that position is given real power, say by being made the Prime Minister’s principal adviser on Secretary appointments, having a role in determining departmental top management structures and being responsible for either negotiating pay and conditions on a Service-wide basis or approving proposals from departments.
Following release of the review report, Dr Smith has taken to the airwaves in an attempt to promote it. It’s hard to see her advocacy as being any more convincing than her efforts with her two comrades. Thus, she is reported as saying that “COVID demonstrated how you can come together in that team-based environment without hierarchy.” That is to say, “team based environment” flourished under the classification structure which the report claims is inhibited by that hierarchy. Still, it’s worth remembering that when it came to vaccine acquisition and distribution a couple of senior military chaps were brought in to take over – it doesn’t get much more hierarchical than that.
Finally, it is disappointing that the three amigos omit to provide a costing of their recommendations. Yet the significant broadbanding of classifications they envisage could be fabulously expensive. At a time when the Government must be scratching around to find every penny of savings it can, the failure of the reviewers to address the cost of their proposals must be disappointing for the Finance and Public Service Minister.
The Hierarchy and Classification Review, to give it its full name, is another in a long line of inadequate reviews of the bits and pieces of public service. It doesn’t do what it should have done and does a poor job of what it does do. So little confidence can be placed in its recommendations and the critical ones about senior classifications should be binned. The good news is that the Public Service Commissioner has had the sense to say he will not be acting on its recommendations about classifications “at this stage”. He’s put them on the shelf where they should forever remain. The problems with the current classification structures need a fair dinkum examination using a proper methodology that doesn’t end up leaving all and sundry short-changed.
Patrick Gourley
Paddy Gourley is a former Commonwealth public servant who has spent the last 20 years working in the private sector.