Training & Personal Development at Services Australia

More cyber specific training

More training needed to be given for starting up Graduate.

Training mostly consisted of online modules and training videos. There were periods of on-the-job training and observation before switching to learning on the job.

The training I have come across as a grad covers things such as; growth mindset, problem solving skills, emotional intelligence, and leadership skills, and professional development. - I have found majority of the content to be engaging, although a little repetitive in some sections. Overall, I found the training to be beneficial to my understanding of my role in my job, but also my role in the wider organisation.

Some training programs such as Multicultural Training, CX Design, and PDMS training are sufficient. The Agency's Empowering Excellence program is a terrible program which does not effectively deliver on the outcomes it claims to. It's basis on disputed research and theory is also troubling as this program is the Agency's 'high level' training program.

Its a bit boring. Fine for the graduate jobs I was doing, but when I was redeployed to service delivery, I did not feel prepared to pick up the phone and talk to a customer when the time came.

Training and work was heavily disrupted by mandatory 8 week 'service delivery experience' about 6 weeks into the graduate program for which we had 2 days notice. Upon return to BAU we had to re-establish our case load. We lost 2 months out of our first rotation.

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.

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.

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.

Online learning. I have not picked up any skills

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.

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.

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.

Training very much on the job.

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.

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

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.

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.