Governing the City State - Chief Minister and Treasury Directorate ...

employee (estimated at between 30 and 200 percent of salary) learning and developmentcosts are low. Since implementation of the Attraction and Retention Framework separationrates have halved representing a conservative saving of $19.5 million in direct recruitmentand indirect productivity costs. It is difficult to ascertain what impact the Global FinancialCrisis has had on separation rates, but the Commonwealth’s APS rate didn’t shiftsignificantly during the same period.Of great concern are the indirect costs associated with loss of skills, expertise and corporateknowledge. If the ACTPS fails to continue to attract and retain sufficient appropriatelyskilled staff, its capacity to deliver Government outcomes will be severely compromised.Losing experienced staff has a deep and direct impact in a jurisdiction the size of the ACTPS.The ACTPS like other public services faces the challenge of an ageing workforce. While theaverage age of ACTPS employees has remained relatively stable in recent years around 43%of the workforce are Baby Boomers (i.e. born between 1946 and 1964) and are approachingretirement. While focusing on both recruitment and retention of younger employees, work isalso underway on a Mature Aged Employment Strategy which will consider conditions ofemployment that may assist in both the attraction and retention of older workers.Figure 19 – ACTPS by Generation and Gender as a Percentage at June 2010In its Submission to the Review, UnionsACT suggested:This is not to say that there are not excellent officers working in the ACT PublicSector but merely that there are often too few of them. Good officers with cleverideas are not seriously encouraged enough to create excellence and often lack thesupport and resources to succeed. This causes burnout and means that some of thesepeople leave the service. 343343 Submission No. 3.Capability, Capacity and Effectiveness: 265