Training & Personal Development at Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS)

LinkedIn training is available which allowed me to sharpen my Git skills. There are some mandatory modules about government which are interesting, and can help shape how you view Australia.

It's great having access to LinkedIn Learning, it's just hard to find time within our work schedule to engage with the training

The ABS has internal training system called Capability plus which has a wide range of courses from technical skills to sensitivity training. There are also a number of seminars recorded and available to view. My section also has some of our budget assigned to professional development opportunities such as courses and conferences. Some skills I have learnt are; how to assess social media landscape and algorithms, basis SAS and R skills and more direct communications skills through the Bullshift course

I've learnt a new programming language. On the job training is great and there is always a mentor or supervisor available to answer questions.

Informal training is pretty light on, particularly because I work remotely to my team. I am encouraged to find my own answers. There is a website with training, that covers essentials like privacy, but beyond that, in our development and performance reviews I have been asking for development and training and nothing is offered. We have free access to LinkedIn Learning which has some useful training.

Varies from team to team

The grad ones were a bit rubbish

LOL my training was following people around and watching them work then asking those same people hundreds of questions over several months. there was no formal onboarding process. one role I was in for 3 months and still have no idea what I was supposed to do

They are supportive on independent learning - people with more initiative will get more opportunities.

As a grad, fantastic - lots of time to learn and develop. As a post-grad, I don't really have any time.

There is plenty of online training available for almost anything you can image using here. Then there are lots of courses outside of the ABS structure that you can do, and the company will pay for things if there is a business need. I have probably had less direct training on things from my managers, but I also attribute that to the fact I've been in the workforce a decade before coming here and know how to manage myself and work things out on my own.

Great opportunities to learn from different branches and expert, there are internal group dedicated to certain interest which run workshop to help teach you new skills.

Informal/on the job training: Extremely satisfied, largely thanks to my supervisor/team strongly supporting learning opportunities, even when they take time In particular, I've picked up technical/digital skills (mainly Excel, some R - this is what most of my team uses day-to-day) on the job which help me do my job more effectively

Survey Methodology, basic other training. Statistical seminars.

After more than three years at the ABS, I cannot easily say I've picked up many transferrable technical skills. The SAS programs used by my section have been in place for a long time, and seldom require changes. R and PowerBI aren't used by my team for anything, though I know other teams will use them. I have attended some SAS and R workshops where I can, but haven't had any opportunities to use my knowledge so it's quickly forgotten. During the grad program I was taught about Agile and JIRA, but only in abstract (this is how you plan a project, but nothing about managing it in JIRA). We didn't actually use these for any project planning, and now I wish that had been taught in a more hands-on way.

We had compulsory units we needed to complete at the very start. I was given time to learn the systems I needed to understand for my job. I had the opportunity to complete lots of additional Stats units which were great revision. When I moved into another team I was given time to learn SAS and completed quite a few additional courses in Linked In Learning. Also got to do some AWS training.

There has been extensive formal and on the job training, but it is all specific to my role

The ABS lacks some formal data training programs. Informally I have picked up a lot of skills and recently my section has gotten access to DataCamp which provides great structured and formalised training. I have picked up a plethora of skills informally, through various coding languages used in the section (PowerShell, VBA, Python) and formally I have picked up SAS through training packages that do exist in the ABS for this language in particular.

Very poor. The graduate program is functionally useless.

CapabilityPlus is a great website that allows you to complete compulsory modules at your own pace. They also provide elective courses that you can take to further your knowledge in specific areas. We are also provided access to linkedin learning, which often covers things our internal training doesn't. Im not sure if I have picked up many skills, but I would say I have developed my communication and writing skills, as well as increased my corporate confidence.