Parts of Services Australia needed convincing before accepting outside help in responding to a surge in demand caused by COVID-19 restrictions, the agency's chief executive Rebecca Skinner has said.
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The pandemic had required the agency to think differently about its business, including how to rapidly train bureaucrats redeployed to its ranks, Ms Skinner said in an interview with the Institute of Public Administration Australia's Work with Purpose podcast on Monday.
Thousands of additional staff were needed to help the agency respond to the extraordinary growth in JobSeeker claims after the government announced social distancing rules that led to a spike in unemployment.
The rapid growth in demand for its services led to the redeployment of 2000 staff from across the Australian Public Service, a mobilisation of the bureaucracy's workforce credited with helping Services Australia process 1.3 million JobSeeker claims in 55 days.
However Ms Skinner said some areas of the agency were initially reluctant to receive help.
"I think we weren't quick enough to accept help in some areas. I was keen to get the help in. Other areas in our delivery system were delightfully confident they could deliver in the emergency like they've always delivered. And it took us a little bit of leadership effort to convince them though they had to take some help," she said.
"We needed other thousands of staff to come in. Other people needed to help do the recruitment, do the training and things like that.
"So they were some of the areas where we got there, but they could have been smoother at the beginning if we'd had probably a bit more of an open approach to getting help and doing things a bit more differently."
Ms Skinner also said the agency took some time to adapt to new working from home arrangements.
"We took a bit of time to really get an understanding of how to get the workforce working from home," she said.
"It was a bit tricky to work out exactly what to do with staff."
Ms Skinner said the pandemic had required the agency to approach training differently, and focus on preparing staff quickly for specific tasks, as thousands of bureaucrats arrived to help it process claims.
"A real challenge for the organisation was doing business a bit differently," she said.
"It did have more historic models of, 'Come in the door, be well trained, go onto the next thing'. And I was pushing, and others were pushing models of, 'No, just in time training. Just train for this claim type, just train to do this type of phone call. And we'll channel just those tasks at people and we will not try to train everyone to do everything'."
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Ms Skinner said the agency stumbled into ways of working that helped during the pandemic, including a collective approach at senior leadership levels.
"It worked well for us because people got to share the challenges, but also people got to share solutions and help each other, particularly when we had to move workforce around Services Australia," she said.
Regular communication with staff, including redeployed public servants, had also helped the agency's response to COVID-19.
"It seemed to be able to keep people clear about what the agenda was. And it helped us celebrate a lot of our success, and keep people motivated," she said.
Ms Skinner said the agency directed its attention to its digital and phone services in response to long queues of job seekers outside Centrelink offices in March.
"The first thing that happened was we had to relieve the valve somehow on all of the people who were wanting to queue up outside," she said.
"People felt they had to do something. So, they went to a Centrelink office and they queued up. That was one of the least safe things to do in an environment where we wanted people to stay at home. We pushed our digital offerings.
"So, we really did a couple of things. Focused on how to keep people at home, how to keep people on a digital channel, how to get more staff in to help with telephones so that you could get people out of coming to the centre and getting people to feel that they could help themselves."
Ms Skinner also said the agency had been slow in adopting some technology but that it was trying to make its services more consistent.
"Our quality of service probably depends on particular products," she said.
"I think we have done well on JobSeeker. I think there are other things where we need to do much, much better.
"We can manage capacity, but we can't show a citizen where their claim is up to, so that's bad. So, we can help you fill it in easy, but we can't tell you where it's up to."
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