The ACTPS recognises the need to provide sufficient support and flexibility at the workplace to assist employees in achieving work and life balance and to meet their caring responsibilities. While family friendly initiatives are important aspects of work and life balance, it is also important that all employees at all stages in their working lives are supported.
To assist employees in balancing work and personal commitments, flexible working arrangements are available. Examples of these flexible working and leave arrangements include:
- flexible starting and finishing times;
- ability to take a few hours off work, and make it up later;
- home based work on a short or long-term basis;
- part-time work;
- job sharing;
- purchased leave;
- annual leave;
- long service leave;
- leave without pay; and
- other leave, such as to attend an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander ceremony or meeting, accompany a partner on a posting, or attend a sporting event as an accredited competitor or official.
In the ACTPS, employees who work part time make up almost one quarter of the workforce. The high proportion of permanent part time employees in the ACTPS demonstrates that this commitment is being supported through part time arrangements. Part time work allows employees to combine employment with other activities such as education or raising or caring for family and allows both female and male employees to maintain a healthy work life balance while progressing their careers.
Displayed below in Graph 6 is the ACTPS workforce by employment category. At June 2019, 24.8 per cent of the workforce worked part time (5,763 employees), which is slightly lower than both the percentage of part time employees in the ACT labour force (28.2 per cent) [1] and the Australian labour force (31.9 per cent) [2] at June 2019. Since June 2018 the number of employees working part time has risen by 267 employees, which is consistent with the growth since over the past five years.
Graph 6 – ACTPS Workforce by Employment Category (June 2019)
As can be seen in Table 2, at June 2019 there were 960 part time Culturally and Linguistically Diverse employees, representing 16.6 per cent of the total number of part time employees. People with Disability made up 2.4 per cent, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples made up 1.5 per cent.
Consistent with previous years, the majority of ACTPS part time employees are female (82.7 per cent). At 30 June 2019, 31.4 per cent of females worked part time in comparison to 12.4 per cent of males. The percentage of males who work part time has increased by 0.6 per cent within the last 12 months.
The proportion of ACTPS part time employees who are female is approximately 15 per cent higher than the percentage of female part time employees in both the ACT labour force [3] (65.9 per cent) and Australian labour force [4] (69.1 per cent) at June 2019.
In the ACT labour force, 38.3 per cent of all females work part time compared to 18.6 per cent of all males [5] , and in the Australian labour force 46.2 per cent of females work part time compared to
19.2 per cent of all males [6] .
ACTPS | Females | Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples | People with Disability | Culturally and Linguistically Diverse | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Permanent part time | 4,610 | 3,855 | 63 | 119 | 773 |
Temporary part time | 1,151 | 916 | 24 | 22 | 187 |
Total part time | 5,768 | 4,771 | 87 | 141 | 960 |
As shown in Table 2, part time employees within the ACTPS are predominantly employed on a permanent part time basis, with these employees making up 79.9 per cent of all part time employees. Trends within the part time workforce have remained consistent with previous years, and the proportion of part time employees who identified with a diversity group has also remained largely unchanged.
[1] Australian Bureau of Statistics, Labour Force Australia 6202.0
[2] Ibid
[3] Ibid
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid