The agency has released its 2020 Australian Public Service survey – things are improving

Big majorities of staff of the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Agency are satisfied with their jobs (67 per cent) and committed to its goals (82 per cent) with an overall engagement score of 69 per cent, bang on the APS overall and just 7 per cent down on similar-sized agencies.

But staff are not happy with senior management, satisfaction on a range of factors is below other agencies from 8 per cent to 15 per cent.

It appears some SES officers need to get better at pretending to listen – only 44 per cent of staff say their senior executive service leader, “gives their time to identify and develop and talented people.” And management needs to at least look like they work as a team – only 36 per cent of responses thought they did, 29 per cent lower than the figure for all Commonwealth small agencies.

The figures for staff assessing their immediate supervisors are way better and the overall score for people’s sense of wellbeing is 70 per cent, in-line with the overall APS and 18 per cent up on 2019.

There’s one stat that will not surprise TEQSA clients – the survey was conducted October – November last year. TEQSA released it last week.