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Sri Lanka has a history of successfully managing communicable diseases by utilising its extensive public healthcare network of community clinics and public hospitals. This article makes use of Job Demands-Resources theory (JD-R) to examine the impact of COVID-19 on nurses’ working conditions in public and private hospitals in Sri Lanka. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses’ job demands on public hospital wards included long working hours, limited workplace autonomy, minimal medical resources and high workloads caused by understaffing. Private hospital nurses experienced pressure from patients and their families to provide them with discounts on medical bills. Nurses allocated to work on COVID-19 wards experienced additional physical job demands from wearing personal protective equipment (PPE) for lengthy periods on hospital wards in a humid climate. Nurses on COVID-19 wards also experienced increased anxiety that they could transmit the disease to family members. While nurses experienced job resources such as social support from nursing supervisors and other nurses, they reported receiving minimal training in the provision of healthcare to COVID-19 patients. This combination of high job demands and low job resources increased the levels of exhaustion and mental distress experienced by many nurses working on COVID-19 hospital wards.

We introduce a themed collection of articles examining how the public sector has responded to, and been impacted by, the COVID-19 crisis. Although the pandemic has affected the roles, functions, economies, governance and structures of public sectors, this themed collection focuses on public sector employment relations. Authors examine significant areas which have been subject to accelerated change stemming from the pandemic. Building on decades of public sector reform, these changes impact public sector enterprise bargaining, terms and conditions of employment, working arrangements and practices, and the relationship between public servants and their employer. The articles in this collection provide important insights into the longer-term influences of the COVID-19 pandemic for public sector workforces. The collection also raises questions around whether the positive lessons from this crisis can be sustained to help manage serious crises in the future, or whether the public sector will slip back into a state of unpreparedness.

QC 20220927

This report provides benchmarks for gender equality in the Australian Defence Force (ADF) using comparable Australian and international data to early 2021. Previous reviews of women’s participation in the ADF give context to this analysis. These include the wide-ranging Broderick Review (2012) which identified numerous barriers to women’s progression. That review identified issues including the lack of a critical mass of women in the ADF, inflexible career structures, the concentration of women in particular occupations and at lower ranks, difficulties combining work and family, and a culture still marked at times by unacceptable behaviour including exclusion, sexual harassment and sexual abuse (Broderick 2012). In the years since – and despite the implementation of the Defence cultural reform program Pathway to Change – the data presented in this benchmarking report reveals that while some progress towards creating a gender-equitable workforce has been made, more work is needed. From an international perspective, the ADF compares favourably on attraction, recruitment and retention in relation to other Five Eyes nations, and with NATO and other western militaries, including the Nordic nations. Women are joining the ADF at higher rates than NATO countries, and Army and Air Force are set to achieve their 2023 participation targets of 15% and 25% respectively. The Navy is slightly behind in regard to meeting its targets. The available data indicates that there have been positive, but incremental, gains in Australia, as well as in other similar militaries. However, gendered job segregation, in terms of both roles and seniority of position are key issues to be resolved. Women dominate caring, support or logistical (administrative) roles, while men dominate the technical and combat roles. This has implications for women’s career progression, particularly as promotion to higher ranks favours combat roles and deployment experience. Examining barriers to promotion for women

This report provides a framework for the development of gender inclusion indicators for the ADF. The draft indicators were developed through an examination of academic and grey literature, and are underpinned by complementary reports written by the research team. While diversity in the workplace is about the presence or absence of people from a variety of backgrounds (especially historically marginalised groups), inclusion refers to individuals’ capacity to fully participate and to influence decisions. Much of the literature tends to agree that inclusion has two dimensions: belongingness and uniqueness (Mor Barak, 2015; Jansen et al., 2014). Fostering a sense of belonging is essential, but if this means that employees have to give up their unique characteristics, they are not experiencing true inclusion (Mor Barak, 2015). In the context of the ADF as a workplace, the aggressive socialisation and modification of identity for ADF members on joining represents a threat to inclusion. However, military training and socialisation is also an opportunity, as it provides an intervention point where the ADF can adjust training regimes to explicitly move towards the valuing of difference. The adoption of inclusive behaviours can then be furthered through taking up and promoting inclusive leadership. The authors have drawn on research conducted by the US Army to identify the elements of inclusive leadership, and how these can be measured. Generally, ‘gender inclusion’ is not a recognised concept in either grey or academic literature (see Appendix A for relevant terminology and definitions). However, researchers (Kossek et al., 2017) have identified elements of gender inclusion, which are: fairness and anti-discrimination for women in work access, process, and outcomes; leveraging women’s talents; and workplace support for women. As discussed below (p.8), antecedents are required for a gender inclusive workplace. Researchers and consultants have identified the elements of broade

This report synthesises the literature of the last decade, with a focus on literature emerging since the onset of the pandemic to identify issues that will affect working in the Australian Public Service. It focuses on teleworking, but also examines activity-based working, and remote working hubs. It examines a range of issues including staff experiences of working remotely, how managers manage in this new environment, productivity, emerging trends in accommodation and digital infrastructure, work health and safety, changes which may be necessary to industrial instruments in an evolving environment, and finally, workforce planning.

Experts are increasingly replacing elected representatives in the planning of Australian cities and regions. Following concerns about delays and corruption, expert decision-making has been promoted as an important mechanism to restore trust in the planning process. Others have expressed concerns about the loss of democracy entailed in this shift, but this is not the whole story. The nature of expertise is itself significant, and we examine the composition of these new decision-making bodies. We focus on Local Planning Panels, the latest suite of expert planning bodies introduced in NSW, the state that has led the shift from elected to expert decision makers. Our analysis reveals that expert panels are highly gendered, which may work against the legitimacy and effectiveness of these increasingly influential planning bodies.

Senior leaders are usually understood to be ideally positioned to drive the organisational changes needed to promote workplace gender equality. Yet seniority also influences leaders’ values and attitudes, and how they interpret evidence of inequalities, determine organisational priorities, and design and implement remedies. This article examines leaders’ perceptions of workplace gender equality, using system justification theory to explain survey data from Australia’s public sector (n=2292). Multivariate analysis indicates that male and female leaders more positively rate the gender equality climate in their agencies, compared with lower-level staff, and that male leaders show most propensity to defend the status quo. Findings call into question the effectiveness of change strategies that rely on leadership and buy-in of those whose privilege is embedded in existing arrangements, and problematise dominant organisational approaches casting senior leaders as effective change agents for gender equality. The article helps to explain gendered power dynamics which produce and sustain organisational inequalities and make workplace equality so hard to achieve, and points to ways to strengthen practical approaches to promote equality in organisations.

The COVID-19 pandemic drove significant changes affecting women, work and industrial relations in Australia in 2020. This annual review explores the economic and social impact of the pandemic on women workers, and examines the gendered impact of key policy responses, including: the introduction of an historic temporary wage subsidy programme; the early release of superannuation funds; multiple economic stimulus measures, targeted mostly at male-dominated industries; and the provision of paid pandemic leave. This review also analyses major developments in early childhood care and education and aged care, and the longer-term implications of the massive natural experiment in working from home that occurred in 2020. Developments in paid parental leave and sexual harassment are also briefly discussed. We find that, although women workers were disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, policy responses to date have largely failed to acknowledge or repair the gendered impacts of the crisis.

As public sector organisations around the world enact strategies to progress gender equality, managers are forced to navigate the apparent conflict between making employment decisions on individual-level ‘merit’ and considering the collective constraints and disadvantage that occur along gender lines. In this paper, we investigate how managers’ understandings of merit contribute to this tension. Analysing data collected in focus groups with 273 mid-level public sector managers in four Australian jurisdictions where efforts to promote gender equality were actively under way, we found that many managers adhered to a highly individualised understanding of merit which precluded them from considering gender or addressing gendered inequality in their employment decisions. Only a small proportion of managers who believed that creating a more representative bureaucracy was a legitimate public sector objective were able to justify considering a candidate's gender as a source of merit. We argue that public sector organisations seeking to promote gender equality should focus managers’ attention on the benefits of achieving a more representative bureaucracy and give managers greater normative and regulatory certainty about how to assess and apply merit in that context.

Gender inequality persists in the public services in many Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development countries, despite decades of policy and strategic initiatives designed to promote greater equality. Resistance to gender equality, characterized by opposition to change or support for the status quo, has emerged as one potential explanation for the disconnection between policies and outcomes. This article explores whether concepts of resistance assist to explain slow progress towards gender equality in our study of four Australian public sector jurisdictions, where we asked middle managers about their understanding of, and action towards, gender equality. We found that managers were committed to gender equality and held a general understanding of their jurisdiction's gender equality policies, but lacked a deeper understanding of how organizations and human resource practice are gendered, which impeded translating commitment into action. This resulted in various levels of resistance and an unwillingness or inability to operationalize policies and strategies. This indicates that public services have progressed from identifying the problem to not knowing how to operationalize solutions. Our research contributes to the resistance literature, showing the existence of the various forms of gender equality resistance, which can impede action. A further contribution is that our research did not find differences between the approaches of male and female managers in gender‐balanced organizations, with both equally aware of the policies but demonstrating similar levels and types of resistance.

The 2020 pandemic compelled people to work from home, transforming the world of work. We considered it essential to understand how this form of working was undertaken on a large scale. We aimed to identify the experiences of a key group of employees – those working in the Australian Public Service – during the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions. Around 6,000 APS employees responded to our survey, including nearly 1,400 managers. The key message was the overwhelmingly positive experience of managers and employees, realising the benefits of working from home and dispelling some long-held concerns.

The COVID‐19 pandemic compelled large sections of the workforce out of their workplaces and into their homes to work. Many commentators suggest this has forever changed how and where we work. This article analyses how Australia's biggest employers – state and federal governments – approached the transitions to working from home, and back into regular workplaces. It considers the timing of policy responses to the pandemic as one indicator of resistance to, or acceptance of, widespread working from home. The article also demonstrates previous resistance to working from home for public servants, and questions widespread conjecture that it will become the ‘new normal’.

Interest in women’s labour force participation, economic security and pay equity received substantial media and public policy attention throughout 2019, largely attributable to the federal election and the Australian Labor Party platform, which included a comprehensive suite of policies aimed at advancing workplace gender equality. Following the Australian Labor Party’s unexpected loss at the polls, however, workplace gender equality largely faded from the political agenda. In this annual review, we cover key gender equality indicators in Australia, examine key election promises made by both major parties, discuss the implications of the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety for the female-dominated aged care workforce, and provide a gendered analysis on recent debates and developments surrounding the ‘future of work’ in Australia.