Training & Personal Development at Services Australia

Lots or skills from basic HR knowledge to data analysis and programming

Online learning. I have not picked up any skills

My first rotation placement was in a data role that I was unfamiliar with. There was no formal training involved. I learned everything on the job off of my colleagues and Team Leaders. It was a harrowing and draining experience. I utilised LinkedIn Learning to an extent to supplement my learning, as well as Google and You Tube.

The training does a good job with the fundamentals but fails to really provide detailed or skilled training.

Empowering Excellence was completely useless. It should not be given to graduates. I would have preferred the diploma of government which would have given me something useful at the end. If there has to be an educational requirement to the graduate program, then make it stream specific that gives something relevant. If there is going to be surveys at the end of programs such as Empowering Excellence, make it relevant to the program, do not ask questions related to a person's everyday job. LMS training for social workers needs to be social work specific. I learnt a lot about a Service Officer's role, nothing about mine. The only aspect of training that I have found helpful was Crisis Payment Consolidation. That was an excellent pilot program and every aspect of a social worker's role should have a similar program to help new social workers starting at Services Australia. Crisis Payment Consolidation, however, was not part of the graduate program. Nothing offered as part of the graduate program had any relevance or usefulness to the social work role within the Agency.

It's honestly a mixed bag. For service delivery training - we were given very little practical scenarios to apply what we had learnt. SAP courses have been great and anything that is facilitated by somewhere that works within a respective business area on a day-to-day basis has been great. There are a number of resources such as specifications on projects that have been worked on, however if there is no initial support and points of reference to comprehend these things - these resources aren't of much significance to entry level staff.

There are many opportunities provided, we have regular training. I have picked up skills in communication, organisation, responding to complex customers. Also, knowledge specific to my area - eg. family and domestic violence, risk of suicide etc.

The training I had when I arrived was minimal. Others who went through the same program as me had mountains of it though, and they hated that. It seems to highly depend on your team.

The required training for the first two weeks was very boring and very bad. Some of the elective training I have undertaken related to my role was much more interesting and engaging.

Formal training is terrible: the graduate team has definitely gotten better, but they really didn't have anywhere to go except up. Hiring more people in 2023 hopefully will make it a bit better next year. Empowering Excellence is a combination of things you'll already know from university, things you'll pick up from informal training very quickly, and motivational speaking. Informal training was good for me, but there was a lot to learn. So much depends on where you're placed that I can't realistically rate it, because it will depend on who you're placed with, how long they have to train you, what you're learning, if your degree was relevant and so forth.

Upon applying and accepting my role the Diploma of Government was included as part of the graduate program but was taken away as a learning opportunity with little to no explanation. I would have liked more transparency over this decision and feel it was unfair to remove it from our graduate experience. This was replaced by Empowering excellence which, while I understand the sentiment and believe the program to be beneficial for some leaders within the agency, was not well suited to being a graduate. We spent most of each session being told to imagine what we would do in hypothetical leadership situations in favour of situations applicable to our current working experiences. While I learnt some things, they were more general about the agency less so about skills to use in my current day to day work. In my first rotation I was offered very little role-specific training (both formal or on-the-job) and often had to figure things out by myself or seek support independently from my manager. While I understand the importance of self-directed learning, when in a technical area with no experience and no formalised avenues of support it was quite disappointing and distressing to have to constantly seek guidance upon task assignment. In my current role I have received significantly better support and guidance from not just my manager and director but my whole team in general. I am encouraged to use my L&D time and to cross skill with team members. While on deployment I had engaging facilitators who made the outdated, dry and occasionally irrelevant training material much easier to digest. I enjoyed the deployment overall and learned a lot of valuable skills and information about our agency. Training in service delivery was clunky and not tailored well to what phone lines we were to be working on but we made it work with strong support that some grads in other locations did not receive.

The training is all online which is convenient, the content however could be reviewed more often for relevancy.

Training very much on the job.

There's some mandatory stuff that seems very disconnected fron the work. The Data Engineering division is trying to put some stuff together but it's all very on the job learn as you go. Support from colleages is most useful. They seem tos ign up up for optional training delviered from online providers and it barely seems relevent.

Most of the formal training has been excellent and well supported. The training for Service Delivery deployments was unnecessarily long and a waste of time.

IT training is good but Cyber specific training is a little lacking. Otherwise, training provided is very good.

What training and development programs?

The agency scrapped a diploma of government that was offered to previous graduate years, in exchange we did training focused on customer service roles...which basically none of the graduates were in. The training was also not applicable to roles that we may do in other government organisations.

Most training was targeted at people with no professional training and therefore was repetitive of things covered in my degree. Learning and development opportunities are not very accessible as most relevant courses offered through the suggested platform are 2+ hours in duration whereas scheduled allocations are no longer than 90 minutes. I have not had the opportunity to be nominated for more work specific training as allocations are few.

Training is mostly self-paced online modules, with screens/videos and simple multiple choice questions for assessment.