The purpose of the ANAO is to support accountability and transparency in the Australian Government sector through independent reporting to the Parliament, and thereby contribute to improved public sector performance.

The ANAO has developed a strategic organisational plan — Towards 2025 — that captures the key investments we intend to make in our workforce to support audit now and into the future.

The ANAO Workforce Plan 2022-25 outlines how we will attract, develop and retain the capability of our workforce, to ensure we are suitably skilled to deliver on our purpose to the Parliament – now and into the future.

Our vision is to create a highly skilled and engaged workforce, agile and adaptable to meet both the changing and enduring capability requirements of the ANAO.

The ANAO recognises that by recruiting, developing, and retaining the right people with the right skills, we can deliver more effectively on our purpose.

Workforce risks

There are three key challenges currently being faced by the ANAO:

1. The need to grow the size of the audit function in a tight labour market
2. The need to develop a highly skilled, agile and adaptable workforce to meet both enduring and changing capability requirements.
3. A high rate of employee mobility in the market

Operating environment

There are several environmental factors that influenced our approach to the workforce plan:

• Demand for skilled workers outstrips supply
• Data and digital transformation is impacting the future of audit and public service work
• Availability and suitability of partnerships and contingent workforces
• Supporting a flexible approach to activity-based working

Our approach

The method used to develop our workforce plan drew on different public sector organisation models across Australia, including models from the Australian Public Service, Victorian Government, ACT Government and Queensland Government.

Given what we know about the profile of the audit workforce and our operating environment, we identified three key themes in our workforce planning approach:

1. Attract excellent candidates with broad skills and the ability to learn how to become great auditors.
2. Develop the audit workforce to meet the demand of rapidly evolving technologies.
3. Retain skilled employees.

While the audit profession will continue to require deep expertise across a range of technical capabilities, our workforce plan adopts an evidence-based approach to identifying and growing the critical roles and skills of the auditor of the future.

Auditor of the future

The auditor of the future should be technologically sound with excellent project management skills, the ability to adapt to change, adept at telling their audit narrative and aware of the technological development that can help them do their job.

Critical roles

• Data analyst
• Financial auditor
• Performance analyst
• Performance statements auditor
• IT auditor

Critical skills

• Curious professionals — prepared to apply critical and creative thinking
• Digitally proficient analysts — confident in the use of technology to collect and analyse data
• Strong communicators — able to analyse complex problems and clearly communicate findings
• Adaptable professionals — capable of working in different settings and across teams
• Life-long learners — seeking out opportunities to continuously learn and grow
• Leading public servants — demonstrating behaviours which exemplify the Australian Public Service (APS) values and Code of Conduct.

Implementation

The ANAO has a comprehensive implementation plan for this workforce plan to ensure we attract, develop and retain a high-performing audit and public service professional workforce, now and into the future.

Attract

• Improving opportunities in our graduate program
• Designing a contemporary candidate experience for job applicants
• Generating entry pathways for people with the right skills by supporting them to pursue audit qualifications

Develop

• Introducing our ANAO Academy to provide user-centred and technology-enabled learning in the flow of work
• Delivering leadership development programs and coaching
• Improving our digital learning environment

Retain

• Continuing to deliver wellbeing initiatives that support our people to flourish
• Developing and implementing initiatives to support our people in their career development pathways
• Maintain our position as an attractive employer for our key job families