Ageing Workforce Poses New Challenge For Public Service

By CPD

The Australian public service faces losing nearly a quarter of its staff to retirement in the next five years as a result of its increasingly aged workforce.

A Commonwealth Management Advisory Committee (MAC) report has stopped short of calling it a crisis. It offers the opportunity to reinvigorate government departments. Key issues include the implications of the ageing profile of the public service along with the retirement patterns of mature aged workers and the inherent superannuation implications.

The report also called for more active management of leave to encourage employees to use entitlements to recreation and long service leave as part of a broader management approach to maintain a healthy work/life balance.

(Thomson CPD Discrimination Alert. issue 181, 23 April 2003)