More public service agencies hitting pause on recruitment

Thursday, 16 November 2023

Many public agencies are hitting pause on new hires, as the public service waits for its fate as the country’s incoming leaders thrash out the plan for New Zealand for the next three years.

Both National and ACT have made commitments to change the make-up of the public service. The parties and NZ First are still deep in negotiations to form a government.

The public service was already clawing back costs after Labour’s August public service cut of 1% or 2% to baselines.

National promised that would stay, with an additional average 6.5% cut across the public service.

The Ministry of Education (MoE), which has more than 4000 employees, has paused the majority of recruitment, halting almost 160 jobs that were in the process of being recruited.

MoE’s leader (Hautū) corporate Zoe Griffiths said the ministry had work under way to respond to Labour’s saving requirements.

“This includes a savings requirement of $69.7 million for the Ministry of Education.“

Griffith said the exception for the recruitment pause was for specified roles that directly support children, teachers and principals, with other high priority appointments “considered on a case-by-case basis by senior leadership”.

The Ministry for the Environment, which is working through a review that will result in a 25% reduction in senior leadership, has adopted a “policy of primarily recruiting for any new roles on a fixed term basis”, its chief operating officer Laura Dixon said.

“The Ministry is taking a prudent approach to recruitment decisions, and we are purposefully not recruiting for all vacancies at the moment,” Dixon said.

An email leaked to Stuff that was sent to Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) staff from boss Carolyn Tremain showed cuts and changes were being made, including a 15% reduction of all discretionary spending, exploring a voluntary redundancy process and getting rid of the $27 per person funding for end of year functions.

MBIE chief people officer said Jennifer Nathan said there was no current programme to reduce staff, however, “we are being mindful of some recruitment, looking at where some vacancies could be closed and pausing filling some roles“.

Nathan added that MBIE already recommended that external recruitment did not start from early November due to the showdown over the holiday season. .

The recruitment pause at the Department of Conservation has just begun, with Deputy Director-General organisation support Mike Tully saying they had “advertised all vacant roles up to now, as our pause on recruitment is only beginning”.

While the public service heads into an uncertain time ahead of Christmas, October saw a five-year peak in job applications with an 88% increased compared with October 2022, while uncertainty was “rippling through the job market” ahead of the election with job listings down 7.9% in the third quarter, according to Trade Me data, meanwhile Seek had a 29% drop in job ads in October compared to the previous year.