Recommendation No 1:
Introduction of demand forecasting aligned to job families

The ANAO agrees with this recommendation. The ANAO’s new Workforce Plan identifies five audit job families. The ANAO has commenced demand forecasting on the basis of these to enable more focus on critical roles. Actions in the Workforce Plan will iteratively progress demand forecasting maturity, including introducing workforce metrics and embedding workforce intelligence into strategic talent management practices

Completed.

On 14 February 2023, ANAO’s Executive Board of Management (EBOM) approved the ANAOs approach to reporting, monitoring and evaluation of the Workforce Plan. This approach encompasses regular reporting and monitoring of workforce metrics through the dashboards, launched to EBOM members in November 2022, and through comprehensive biannual workforce plan progress and evaluation reports. These reports include environment scanning and demand forecasting.

Recommendation No 2: Consideration of Person Organisation Fit

The ANAO agrees with this recommendation. The ANAO has articulated the significance of cultural alignment in its new Workforce Plan and has committed to developing targeted candidate marketing approaches for critical job roles to encourage optimal person-organisation fit.

In-progress.

Funds have been allocated as part of the FY2023-24 budget to progress work in the development of the ANAO’s employee value proposition (EVP). This will develop agency wide value proposition to attract the right talent aligned to the organisations values/fit.

Expansion of the candidate marketing approach to other job families has not yet occurred due to resourcing constraints in the people team.

Recommendation No 3: Enhancement of local culture across the organisation

The ANAO agrees with this recommendation. The ANAO is taking local and enterprise initiatives to enable a supportive, sustainable, and inclusive culture. Senior Executive (SES) and Executive Level (EL) leaders have identified the need for further effort now that the ANAO’s premises have returned to being the principal place of work and opportunities to bring people together have increased. The ANAO will develop and deliver a leadership capability program for SES and EL leaders – workplace culture will feature in this program. This will be supported by organisational actions in the new Workforce Plan, such as refreshing the employee wellbeing program in response to APS Employee Census feedback, building opportunities to celebrate success within work groups and the events program managed by the Diversity Contact Officers.

Completed.

The Auditor-General hosted 12 executive dialogue sessions in response to the 2022 APS Employee Census results, with over 120 staff attending to share their views on organisational culture.

At the ANAO Town Hall meeting on 6 February 2023, the Auditor-General shared the key themes from these sessions and the subsequent actions being taken to enhance organisational culture. These include the delivery of an ANAO Wellbeing Program refresh in March 2023 and change to delegation for short term interstate work requests, lowered to Group Head, to support workplace flexibility.

The ANAO is on track to deliver its SES 360 and Leadership Development program by June 2023.

ANAO LearnFest was held over five days from 28 November 2022, comprising 29 sessions with cultural development themes of wellbeing, leadership and ethics. There were 1,350 attendances across these sessions with largely positive participant feedback.

The ANAO is continuously investing resourcing into the ongoing enhancement of its workplace culture. EBOM is regularly monitoring and evaluating the impact of local culture enhancement initiatives through the Workforce Plan reporting approach outlined under Recommendation 1.

Recommendation No 4: Continuation of maturity of the HR/Leadership relationship

The ANAO agrees with this recommendation. From 1 June 2022, the ANAO implemented an optimised Human Resources operating model that will enable the delivery of this recommendation, comprising dedicated functions for People Services, People Capability and People Business Partnering. The new model will strengthen the alignment of Human Resources and the ANAO leadership team in the delivery of organisational strategies and workforce management frameworks. The model will also be supported by a commitment to deliver workforce metrics and insights to evaluate strategic impact and inform workforce capability decisions.

Completed.

The ANAO has implemented the new Human Resources operating model with effect from 1 June 2022. The new model has enabled the Human Resources function to progress deliverables of the ANAO Workforce Plan 2022-25 on schedule.