Ep 5. Mobility in the public service – what’s in it for me?

Welcome back to IPAA Insiders!—your go-to guide for navigating and excelling in your public sector career. Each episode tackles your pressing questions, offering actionable insights from seasoned professionals within and beyond the sector.

Episode Highlight:

In this fifth episode, Jo Rose, CEO of IPAA NSW, explores the topic of mobility in the public service with three expert guests:

• Kath Hume – Workforce Planning Specialist
• Mark Webb – Senior Public Sector Leader and President of IPAA NSW
• Alison Morgan – Executive Director, NSW Premier’s Department

Together, they share valuable perspectives on how career mobility can benefit both individuals and organisations. Whether it’s taking on new challenges, expanding your skill set, or positioning yourself for leadership opportunities, this episode uncovers the advantages of embracing movement within the sector.

Key Takeaways:

• Understanding Mobility: Learn what mobility means in the public service and how it can enhance career growth.
• Workforce Planning’s Role: Kath Hume explains how strategic workforce planning ensures the right people are in the right roles at the right time.
• Two Career Pathways: Mark Webb breaks down the difference between "deep" and "broad" career trajectories in the public sector and how mobility benefits both.
• The Value of Sideways Moves: Alison Morgan shares her experience of building a diverse skill set through strategic lateral career moves.
• Practical Strategies: Get tips on identifying opportunities, building a strong case for mobility, and making career transitions smoother.

Whether you’re considering a move within your department, across agencies, or into a different role entirely, this episode equips you with the knowledge to make informed career decisions.

Tune in now to explore how career mobility can open doors to new possibilities and accelerate your professional growth in the public service!

SHOW CREDITS
Host: Jo Rose
Writers: Alessia Campagna, Nicola Hardy and Jo Rose
Producer and Editor: Alessia Campagna
Technical Producer: Anthony Watson
Executive Producers: Jo Rose and Nicola Hardy

Music Credits:
Let The Good Times Roll: Music from #Uppbeat
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Enchanted Puzzle: Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/andrey-rossi/enchanted-puzzle
License code: YTN0OYX8RBDDUQ73

Easy Flow: Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/hybridas/easy-flow
License code: R2FTWOYRCB7YOW21

Not That Easy: Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/not-that-easy
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On Tiptoes: Music from #Uppbeat
https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/on-tiptoes

We would like to acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the podcast is taking place today. We pay our deep respects to all Elders past, present and emerging. We would also like to extend that respect to any Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples listening today.

Transcript

IPAA NSW acknowledges the traditional owners of the lands and waters this podcast is recorded on and pay our respects to elders past and present.  Through sharing stories on IPAA Insiders, we pay homage to the rich story telling history of the world’s oldest living culture, the traditional custodians of the lands on which we live, work and play. We extend our respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People listening today.

Welcome to IPAA Insiders, the podcast that takes the topics that are top of mind and shares unique perspectives and actionable advice from senior leaders, blue sky thinkers, and IPAA members across the sector.

Jo Rose 

Well, here we are at Episode 5 of IPAA Insiders. 

If this is the first episode you’ve tuned in to, you might not know that the voice behind the microphone is me, Jo Rose, CEO of IPAA NSW.  

As the professional association for the public sector, we represent the more than 430,000 people who work for the NSW Government. 

Our events, networking opportunities, and courses are designed to help everyone in the NSW public service build a career they’re proud of. 

And we created this show as another way to help you build a thriving public sector career.

Over the course of the show, we’ve spoken to experts both in and outside the sector to answer the burning questions from our IPAA community. 

Questions like – What kind of mindset do I need to thrive in Public service? 

What transferable skills will it take? 

Do I really need to network? 

And our last episode looked at all the different types of support you can tap in to as you grow your career. 

If you’ve enjoyed the episodes so far, we want to know. You can leave a review wherever you listen or send me an email at info@nsw.ipaa.org.au. 

If you’ve got a burning question of your own you want answered you can drop me a line too. 

Now on to today’s show, where we will be taking a look at an often misunderstood concept - mobility – what it means in the public sector, what it looks like in action and why it’s important.  

Episode 5 - Mobility in the public service – what’s in it for me?

Jo Rose

So, what does mobility in the public sector actually mean? 

Essentially, it’s the ability for you to move across roles, teams, and even different agencies. This could be a short-term secondment, a sideways move to a different department, or even a step up into leadership.

Why exactly does this matter? 

Well, leaning into mobility  can help you develop new skills, gain fresh perspectives, and grow your professional network.

And as we heard in episode two in a world that’s constantly changing, having a flexible, skilled workforce is an absolute necessity.

So, what does this look like in action? 

For a policy officer, mobility might mean stepping into a different agency to work on a new initiative. 

For an IT specialist, it could mean leading a digital transformation project across multiple teams. 

And for a frontline manager, it might be the transition to a back-office leadership role. 

PAUSE

So, we know that mobility is shaping careers in the NSW public sector – but how does it actually work behind the scenes?

Well, that’s where workforce planning comes in. 

It’s all about making sure the right people are in the right roles at the right time. 

And when it comes to mobility, workforce planners play a key role in designing pathways that help employees move across departments, gain new skills, and build long-term careers in public service.

To help me get a better understanding of just how important workforce planning can be I spoke with Kath Hume. Kath is currently the workforce planner at the Australian Digital Health Agency, and also Director of Workforce Transformations Australia.  A boutique consulting firm that helps organisations understand their current and future, workforce requirements and develop plans to meet them.

Kathryn Hume 

So my background is learning and development. And a couple of years ago, I had the great privilege of working at the New South Wales Health Workforce Planning and Talent Development branch. 

And as a learning initiative, I was asked to develop the capabilities of people in health agencies who were looking at workforce planning. And initially, I did a70 -20 -10 framework around how we could do that. But in my gut, I knew that these people worked in isolation, they weren't in dedicated roles, they didn't do workforce planning all the time and I knew that the forgetting curve would be fighting against them and so I was applying to do a PhD at the time and I was doing a lot of research into human-centred design and learning that happened simultaneously and I thought this is the way that we are going to develop these capabilities. And so I brought together all of those people who were responsible for workforce planning across the districts and formed a community of practice where we supported each other through social and experiential learning and developed a capability framework where we also developed a workforce planning toolkit.

So other people who came in and out of workforce planning had the tools and resources to be able to hit the ground running. And we also had that network of people who they could reach out to and ask. And they were gorgeous group of people who were so giving and able to share their knowledge and wisdom and really supported each other. 

So it was a really positive outcome, but it did then drive me to understand how crucial workforce planning is for organisations but also the people in them and those that we serve so making sure that if we want people to live healthy happy lives that this workforce planning was a key element in driving that.

Kathryn Hume

It's funny because I was watching Oppenheimer the other day and he had to set up a whole facility in the desert on a mission that really most people probably didn't think was a great idea if they knew what it was. 

I was watching it and I can't not see workforce planning wherever I go and I was watching that thinking oh my gosh, how would he do that? How would you attract talent to get up and move their lives out into the middle of the desert to build a bomb it's not a new problem. I think that what we've seen today though is the rapid pace of change is what is driving an increased need for workforce planning.

Jo Rose

Workforce planning isn’t just about filling roles, and for Kath, a thriving workforce is one where people wake up energised because they feel like what they’re doing contributes to something that matters.  

Kathryn Hume

I think we spend so many hours of our lives at work that it is important that those hours are enjoyable and good for our wellbeing, that we feel like we're making a positive difference. And so I feel that in my role as a workforce planner, I am able to influence how organisations design roles, how they bring people into careers where they find meaning and purpose and how they can... help people to develop their skills and capabilities.

Jo Rose

At it’s core workforce planning is about anticipating future needs, developing talent, and creating opportunities for people to grow and move where they’re needed most.

As Kath explains, she believes that the current state of the workforce worldwide - with a tightening job market with more people applying for fewer job postings - is possibly due in some part to a lack of workforce planning. With more intent and foresight for industries, the swings might not need to be quite as dramatic. 

She suggests that in an economic downturn, when the demand isn’t there, we could utilise all those transferable skills in other areas for the mutual benefit of organisations and individuals. 

For me, I’m reminded of the timeless adage -  failing to plan is planning to fail. 

Kathryn Hume 

That's exactly what it is so I do think that those who don't have plans it's going to be even more damaging to them because the people who do have plans in place will be ready to put them into action and they will have the talent that they need or have the quality talent and then those who don't have the plans will be left with more short-term solutions to solving the problems that will inevitably arise.

Jo Rose

Sometimes, I hear from members that they feel at the mercy of external factors that can make it hard to be in the driver’s seat of their career. 

Kath recently published a book called Learn, Solve, Thrive - Making a Difference that Matters in a Fast and Complex world. 

So, I wanted to know what she thought we could do as individuals to prepare for all this change.

Kathryn Hume

it's interesting you just say this because as I mentioned, my background is L&D. I've got teaching qualifications and adult education qualifications and I've got four kids and I really have always felt very passionate that If you know how to learn, you are so empowered to drive your own career and your own future. 

And so I think that what drove me to write the book was to say, we never really get taught specifically how to learn. We get taught subjects and we don't get sat down and say, do you know that you've got neurons in your brain? And when you think about certain things that they will connect and the more you do that, more stronger bonds that forms and that's what learning is.

And do you know that to learn something you need to be in a relatively stressed state, but a positively stressed state where you're working just outside your comfort zone. But to do that and to maintain that, it needs to be something that you enjoy doing and that there's this forgetting curve that we know about and that the way you time your learning will determine how efficient you are at learning. I think we do know a lot of it, but to bring it out and make it really explicit for people so as they can say, okay, I learned something two weeks ago, I need to go back and refresh on that. And that's on me. I think a lot of people can tend to think...that the employer has a responsibility to educate and train them and absolutely there is a role for that. But I think if they're one off training programs, for example, what does the individual need to do to reinforce that to make sure that that stays current and that they continue to grow and build on that knowledge and skill by pushing themselves just a little bit outside of their comfort zone all the time in a safe way so as they can continually build that capability over time.

Jo Rose

You might remember that in episode two, we asked our experts about transferable skills and capabilities they thought necessary for a future workforce.

Given Kath’s experience and insight, I asked her the same question from a workforce planning perspective. 

Kathryn Hume 

I think transferable skills is so essential in a world that is changing so rapidly and that is complex. from a workforce planning point of view. It's really positive way that an employer can go and say, Ok, there’s skills within this role and say we’ve got a data analyst for example and a researcher, if you think of it like a Venn diagram, they’re going to sit in both role circles, where there’s lots of skill adjacencies that sit within that.

I think the transferable skills is where people are going to be able to protect their careers and also progress them.

Those human-centered skills, so the empathy, the listening, the compassion, the care, all those skills that aren't going to be replaceable by computers and machines is where humans can really come to the fore and give themselves a future that is aligned to their own values.

that where they can feel like they're contributing value and they can also engage with other people around them. So they feel they're contributing to something bigger than themselves and have that sense of belonging. 

So I think for an organisation, if you can be identifying what are those critical transferable skills that we need to build, that's where you can invest your money as an organisation. 

And also, think lifelong learning, I think that's one of those transferable skills that's really essential.

If we can empower people, then the responsibility for learning and growing and developing and continuing is shared between the employer and the employee. And then that alignment, if we're all on the same page and all working in the same direction, the scalability, the efficiency, the productivity that we get from that and the positive benefits for the people that the organisations serve are just going to be huge.

Jo Rose 

Kath also brings up the concept of what she calls T-shaped humans.

Where we have a depth of knowledge and expertise in our own domain (the vertical part of the T) but also a broad understanding of other people’s skills and expertise (the horizontal part). We need both of these to be able to collaborate effectively. 

It’s not about being an expert in everything - impossible in our complex world - but about knowing enough to have meaningful conversations, connect the dots, and work together to get the best results.

Kathryn Hume 

So I see myself as both a learning and development expert and a workforce planning expert now. 

So most of my attempts to learn that are quite intentional are based around those two fields. So I will look on LinkedIn and track changes that are happening in that space. 

I will not just scroll through LinkedIn, I will save them, I will go back to them, I set time in my diary where I will sit down, I will highlight them, I will write notes about them. 

But that then feeds my knowledge and awareness of, so where do I go to deepen that skill? And I will then find a book or find a course so say for example, I did a lot of research about human -centered design. I was really fortunate to have a mentor at a university who helped me write a PhD application. I ended up not doing that because COVID happened and it all got very busy. I wrote the book instead. But these opportunities to say, really have your finger on the pulse of what's happening in the economy, what's happening in the workplace, where's the demand for skills, what do I enjoy, what are my current skills?

I have this philosophy of momentum intention and action. So momentum is where am I going? What's what have I done to date? it's like you slipstream. It's the path of least resistance to just keep going with where we're going now. But that intention piece is really about but do I want to keep going in the direction I'm going or do I want to end up somewhere else? And if I want to end up somewhere else, I might need to deviate. 

When I went into workforce planning, for example, that's a really great example of that. It wasn't my trajectory if I'd continued on the L &D path, but looking around me, looking at the environment, looking at where the need was, L&D was becoming different and workforce planning was becoming critical. And I'd saw the two as a beautiful marriage, butin terms of technical skills, I did need to go and move a different path. And then the action piece is then that I sit down, I make a plan and I'm quite intentional about saying that's where I want to go and these are the steps that I'll take to get there and reflect on that, checking with myself, is this what I want to be doing? Get feedback from people around me. Yeah, and just keep going. to going with all those three.

Music Break 

Mark Webb 

So I think there are two broad shapes to a career that I've seen public servants have. Sometimes people have a subject matter that they are passionate about and they really engage in that subject matter for their entire career. 

So I've worked with park rangers and people in the environmental movement who would never consider moving outside of the environmental side of things. Or people that work in health for their entire career or education, et cetera. So that's a deep career from my point of view. Then you've got people that take what I think of as a broad career. So they see the value in moving to different portfolios and different policy areas. And how can you take the learnings and the findings from one policy area and apply it in a new policy area. And that's probably more my career. I am more your broad public servant than your deep public servant. There is real value in both and in the last eight years I've been the Chief Executive here at the Parliament and having people on your leadership team who have that depth is incredibly important and having also people on your leadership team that bring thatbreadth in as well and the combination of all that is what I think makes for the most powerful leadership teams. 

Jo Rose

That’s Mark Webb. He’s 20-years into his career in the Public Service having served both in NSW and Canberra. He is also the President of IPAA NSW. 

I really liked his thinking around the two types of public service careers, but I wanted to know more about how he sees mobility playing a role for each of them. 

Mark Webb 

So the benefit of mobility can come into either of those career paths if you are decided that you want to make the environment your cause for your career, you want to spend your entire time in the environment. Then moving around within that policy area, understanding the issues that face your policy area from different perspectives, whether it be delivery of services on the ground, whether it's dictating centrally what a whole of government policy might be, thinking about how the policies in the environment side fit in with say planning policies or transport policies or other kind of areas. 

So mobility is really about understanding your environment better and better so that you can have a bigger and bigger impact in that environment. If you are more like me and you take real joy in moving around to different types of roles and different policy areas and how you bring things together, mobility for me has been more about finding ideas that worked in one area and making them work in another area.

It's about understanding probably the system of the public service more broadly and understanding how all the bits fit together and therefore how I can be the most effective public servant I can be.

If you are a deep public servant in an area, it's incredibly important that you build that depth and build that expertise. If you lean more towards the kind of breadth that I've been talking about and certainly for me, if you've heard me talk about public service in any forum, you'll hear me mention intellectual curiosity. It becomes incredibly important when you're a broad public servant. I once worked for a secretary who talked about being a content-free leader, like I'm a leader, I have all these leadership skills, I can apply them to any area, and I agree with the... applicability of leadership skills more broadly than one area. 

But I think it has to be combined with intellectual curiosity. You have to be deeply curious and deeply care about whatever it is that you've been asked to look after for period of time.

So when I worked in the environment portfolio, I spent at least one day a month out in the field just doing stuff with people, whether it was tracking wild dogs outside of Armidale or working in one of the botanic gardens to see how they deal with rare species and preserving those rare species.

Spending the time to really understand the subject matter of the area as best you can. I would never be able to replicate the expertise of a 20-year park ranger, of course, and no one would expect me to. But that general leadership skills combined with deep intellectual curiosity is what I think makes mobility work. And the great people that I've worked with have had that broad career have always combined those two characteristics.

Alison Morgan 

Well I think I'd have to say I've had a couple of career paths but moving from portfolio to portfolio in the early part of my career I didn't really do that. I stayed at the Registry of Births, Deaths Marriages for about 15 years but I did do almost every job that was in that organisation over that time. It was a great place to work, fantastic culture, feel about it, it was lovely and I felt very much at home there. So I did stay in there quite a long time. But I did take sideways moves even within the registry just to broaden my experience. 

Jo Rose

That’s Alison Morgan, she is currently the Executive Director for the Grants Program Office in the NSW Premier's Department and has had an impressive 30 plus-year career within the public service.

Joining in 1991 as a training officer at Births, Deaths and Marriages, a lot of her career has been spent in direct client services as well as a stint in regional NSW.

Alison told me that she has never held the same job for more than two years, and she has gained incredible experience taking on various internal projects and making many sideways moves.  

Play Tape

I never ever thought I would take any kind of corporate services role. know my background is I did an arts degree at Sydney University, well an arts law degree, but I majored in archaeology. So you know I was never an accountant, goodness, but a role came up in the corporate services area and so I put my hand up for it and I got it and I moved sideways. And then it was my first real experience about managing subject matter experts where I actually wasn't the expert myself, but how to pull that kind of a team together and those kinds of management skills to try to maximise the value the organisation and people could get out of others' expertise. 

And I found that a really great challenge and I loved that.

I've had people who I've interviewed have said to me, Oh I'm not going to apply for that job or staff who said, wouldn't do that. It's not a step up. It's not a grade above where am now. And my advice to them has been, just go sideways where you're comfortable but where you know you're going to be stretched or you're going to learn some new things and so I have done that a number of times myself. 

So that's how I got into corporate services and worked there for a while and similarly I don't have a strong background in policy but that was how I moved across into a policy role was by taking some operational expertise and then moving into a policy role where I where I had enough depth to be able to hold my own but I wasn't really very strong in the policy process. But process you can learn so quickly. 

Jo Rose

Often times people think that to have a career, you’ve got to keep moving up – the next pay grade, the next job title but like Alison I often encourage our members to think about learning, growth and development. So even if you are in an officer role moving to a co-ordinator and back to an officer role, it’s the experience and the people that you work with, and the projects that you get to work on, that give you greater perspective and diversity of thought that you can apply to future roles. 

Alison Morgan 

It's also very important to give yourself permission to be in the right sort of jobs at the right stage of your life. again at Births, Deaths and Marriages I was given this amazing opportunity, well kind of pushed into it, but the registrar who was a senior executive role suddenly fell very ill and so was on 18 months of leave and so I was asked to step up. Now I'd never been in a senior executive position in SEB role, it was a huge step up for

It was quite terrifying.

But I had great support from colleagues around me and from others. And so I did that for about 18 months. And so when that came to an end, I then had to make a call. Well, what do I do now? And I opted to go back to my previous role. And I think a lot of people were surprised about that. But I had two small children. And for me, was the right thing to do, was to jump back to my 11, 12 role. And I stayed in that kind of level for a couple of years then in some different organisations. I did move out of BDM and across to another organisation into public housing actually. But for me that was the right thing to do at that stage of my life and it gave me the life balance that I needed and the move across to public housing at grade gave me a new role with some new challenges, and I learned a whole lot of new things and set myself up. But I it would never have worked for me to try to say, well I've got to find a permanent in an SEB role now, that just wasn't going to work. But you do have to give yourself permission to do that sometimes.

Jo Rose

This is such a powerful perspective. Often, we can find ourselves trying to climb that corporate ladder because we think that we “should”, whereas maybe, trying something different and stepping into a little bit of unknown, is the way to go.

Instead of thinking of your career as a straight path that’s pre-set, this can provide you with greater options. And it  gives you permission to do what works for you, at the time. 

But that raises an important question.  How do people leaders encourage their people to invest in their development when there aren’t as many opportunities for promotion? Some might think, why bother if there’s no job waiting for me at the next level?

But personal growth isn’t just about landing the next title or pay grade – it’s about becoming a better version of yourself, gaining skills, and building a future you’re excited about.

Here’s Mark with more on that.

Mark Webb

So In a constrained environment where maybe there aren't as many promotion opportunities that you might have, you like, or you really want to move up the ladder, but you can't see the opportunities there, sometimes I get asked questions about, what does that mean? What should I be doing then in that kind of circumstance? And one of the areas that I think is really valuable to investigate and think about is, are you building up a bank of experiences and skills that will prepare you for that future opportunity?

One thing I have learned in the public sector is that no matter what the circumstances are more broadly, you never know when a window of opportunity is going to open. A window of opportunity for personal growth, a window of opportunity for promotion, a window of opportunity to work on something really interesting. If you're a senior leader, a window of opportunity to get funding. An old boss of mine used to say, always have a bottom drawer filled with ideas that are almost fundable ready because you never know when that political window will open.

and a minister says, want to do something about X, and if you can say, well, actually, I've got something ready to go, what a wonderful opportunity.

But at a personal level, how do you build that capability? How do you build that skills? 

I invite you to think about a theoretical a thought experiment. You've got two versions of you, one version and you're both sitting in the job you're in at the moment. and there's no promotion opportunity. One version of you just keeps doing what they're doing today. They think an opportunity might come up one day so I'll just keep plugging away doing the work that I'm doing and then eventually my boss will retire and they will naturally pick me to be the best candidate for the job. So that's one version of you. Sliding doors style, the second version of you says actually you know what I'm gonna move around sideways a little bit I'm gonna chase experiences rather than chase promotions. I'm gonna think about where do I have experiences, where do I have skills, where would I like to build skills. and I'm going to try and move sideways or take on stretch goals or do all those kind of development things that will help build up a skill set that goes beyond what I do at the moment.

Now, a couple years time, your boss does retire, the job is advertised and the two versions of you apply for that job. Which version of you do you think is going to get the job, all other things being equal? And in this case, because both candidates are you, all other things are equal. Of course, it's going to be the person and that stretch themselves, that's thought about new skills, that's thought about how you might be doing something that's really subject matter specific, but are there general capabilities that have come out of that?

The more capabilities you can build in your career, the more likely it is that you're going to be ready for any opportunities that come up. 

If I tell you there are a lot of yellow cars on the road at the moment, there are statistically no more yellow cars on the road at the moment than there were 20 seconds ago. But for the next day or two, you're going to notice yellow cars on the road and you're going to think, Mark was right, there is a lot of yellow cars on the road. Of course, there are no more yellow cars. You're just noticing them because you've been primed to notice them. If you build transferable skills, if you look for experiences, beyond what you're currently doing and you think about your career in those terms, it's amazing how many opportunities you notice that might have whizzed by you if you weren't paying attention. And I really encourage people to think in that kind of way about how to build out their career when there's not the natural promotion opportunities that there might be at other stages.

Jo Rose  

So, that’s a wrap on our conversation about mobility in the NSW public sector.

We’ve explored how moving between roles, departments, and even agencies isn’t just about upward career progression—it’s about building skills, expanding perspectives, diversity of thought and hopefully making a bigger impact.

We’ve heard how workforce planning can play a crucial role in making mobility possible, creating opportunities for you to grow in a way that makes sense for you. 

We’ve also challenged the traditional idea of climbing the corporate ladder because a successful career isn’t always about moving up. Sometimes, it's also about moving sideways to build depth of experience and adaptability.

At the end of the day, mobility isn’t just good for individuals. It strengthens the entire public sector, ensuring the right people are in the right roles where they’re needed most.

Thanks for joining us for this episode. If you found it valuable, share it with a colleague. And don’t forget to subscribe for more conversations about building a thriving career in public service.

IPAA Insiders is a production of IPAA New South Wales. Our producer is Alessia Campagna with mixing and sound design by Anthony Watson. 

Our executive producers are me, Jo Rose and Nicola Hardy. If there is anyone you know who might get something out of this episode, please share it with them. If you want to ask our community a question, you can message me on LinkedIn.

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