Services Australia is recognised as a Best Practice Breastfeeding Friendly Workplace and has been accredited since 2019
Services Australia is an Australian Government agency working to make government services simple so people can get on with their lives. We’re responsible for the delivery of high quality, accessible, social, health and child support services and payments, including support for parents.
Our aim is to provide trusted services that are simple, helpful, respectful and transparent. We’re modernising our systems so our customers can more easily connect with us. We’ve changed the way we serve our customers at service centres. We’re putting the person before the process to give people choice, so they can choose what’s right for them.
As an agency that supports all Australians, we see it as important that our workforce reflects the community we serve. Cultivating a family friendly, inclusive and diverse workplace is integral to the way we work.
Consistent with this aim, we’ve been an accredited Breastfeeding Friendly Workplace since 2019 and we proudly achieved best practice standards in 2024. Our support for lactation and breastfeeding in the workplace is preserved in our Enterprise Agreement, which provides paid time during work hours and appropriate facilities.
Accreditation is just one aspect of a comprehensive set of policies that enable our staff to achieve a balance between their work and personal life. Other policies include:
- 18 weeks paid parental leave (including adoption, surrogacy, and long-term foster care)
- 8 weeks paid parental leave for partners, which will progressively increase to 18 weeks by 2027
- flexible work arrangements (including job share, part-time, flexible hours and working from home)
- up to 18 days of carer’s leave each year
- the ability to purchase additional leave
- access to counselling and related services
- school holiday care allowance
Recognition of our inclusive work practices includes:
- achieving the gender equality target of 50% female senior executive service (SES) representation
- winning the 2018 APS Diversity and Gender Equality Award
- achieving the ‘Gold Employer’ status in 2024 at the Australian LGBTQ+ Inclusion Awards
- winning the Australian HR Institute (AHRI) 2023 Best Attraction, Recruitment and Retention Strategy Award for the agency’s Aurora Neurodiversity program
- achieving 5% of Indigenous representation in our workforce
- achieving 8% of disability representation in our workforce
- being the 2017-18 leading organisation for the Australian Network on Disability’s Access and Inclusion Index