HRC continues on a long tradition

The second half of 2011 has been an eventful time for the Public Service and New Zealand as a whole, and this was no less true for the Human Resources Capability (HRC) team.  In the midst of the Rugby World Cup, the following heady period of celebration, and the lead up to the general election, the HRC team has been industriously beavering away as per usual for this time of year on answering the question:

"What exactly happened in the New Zealand Public Service workforce over the past year?"

The SSC has collected data to answer this seemingly simple question since 1913 in one form or another. This became the HRC survey with the introduction of unit record (employee level data) in 2000. 

In fact information about the Public Service workforce in New Zealand has been collected in some form or other dating back to 1840.  The blue books of the early colonial administration (1840-1855) were produced to provide Imperial officials with the necessary knowledge for good government.  These insights about a formative period in New Zealand's history have been made accessible online by Archives NZ.  They are in the form of digitised versions of many volumes of dusty tomes heavy enough to do substantial damage if dropped on one's foot.  This represents a great wealth of historical trend information without which we couldn't tell you the following interesting little facts.

Above is a small section of a page from the Blue Book of 1840 showing appointments and the annual salary of imperial officers. The first entry shows a Parliamentary Clerk who received an annual salary of 109 Pounds, 40 Shillings.  According to measuringworth.com by using an average earnings index (data available to 2009) this is equivalent to a 2009 purchasing power of £86,400 (NZD 200,448)

Looking at the Commission's own records, the number (headcount) of Public Servants in 1913 was 4,918 which relatively steadily climbed to a peak of 72,467 in 1987 notwithstanding a gap in the data coinciding with WWII.  More recently the 2011 HRC survey shows the number of FTE public servants at June 30 2011 was 43,595.

A couple of other quick factoids about this year's HRC findings:

• The total amount spent by Public Service departments on base salaries in 2011 was $2.84 billion. This didn't change from 2010.
• The average base salary in the Public Service was $65,179 which increased by 2.4% from last year. Analysis using the quarterly Labour Cost Index (Salary and Wage Rates) shows that public sector wages and salary increases were lower than in the private sector.

These few factual titbits of information and more summarising the year's findings are published in a handy A3 sheet (pdf, 263.6Kb) that makes up the tip of the iceberg.

While not condoning the use of a term that is ironically dehumanising, examining and understanding the trends implicit in "human capital" data is incredibly important in managing the government's most important asset; it's people.  We aren't the only ones that think so either. 

Our equivalent mob over the ditch at the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) do their own annual public service "State of the Service" survey and report.  It is a very thorough report and well worth checking out if only to be nosy at how they're going; all in the spirit of healthy competition of course.

In a recent staff talk at SSC, the Deputy Commissioner John Ombler very concisely described why we bother to do HRC every year to generate some of the above facts about the Public Service workforce,

"This data is the only way we really know this at a whole of government level.  Without it we wouldn't be able to talk about these sorts of figures."

You can read the full 2011 HRC public report here (pdf, 490.4Kb).  Also check out the 2011 Public Service Trend report (xls, 1.06Mb) which is a nifty report that gets updated every year and allows you to sniff out some trends for yourself.