All government agencies collect employee data, including disability status, in HR information systems for the APS Employment Database (APSED). Data shared in agencies’ HR information systems support the government to track deliverables and outcomes against its commitments, and informs the Australian Public Service Commission (APSC) and agencies’ workforce planning and strategies. Half as many people have shared they have a disability in HR systems (5.1%) than in the de-identified Australian Public Service Employee Census (10.9%; APSC 2023a).
BETA partnered with the APSC to design guidance materials for HR professionals to help improve the communications provided to APS staff about disability data collection and use
BETA also conducted a randomised controlled-trial in an APS agency to test different email reminders encouraging employees to keep their HR profile up to date. We found that an email highlighting the ease of updating information performed better than the control email.
ADDITIONAL TRIAL INFORMATION
Trial start and end dates: 28 June 2023 - 13 July 2023
Ethics approval: Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) Humanities and Social Sciences, Macquarie University. Reference: 15615
Research participants: 20,753 employees in a large APS agency
Design: This research consisted of 4-arm randomised controlled trial. Intervention was delivered via email.
Interventions:
1. Simple email (attention control)
This email provided a basic reminder and simple information about the need to update personal details in the HR System.
2. Easy email (treatment group 1)
This email highlighted the ease of updating demographic data. This draws on the EAST principle (The Behavioural Insights Team) of ‘Make it Easy’, where removing small frictions that make a task seem challenging or effortful, can increase uptake of a behaviour.
3. Attractive email (treatment group 2)
This email was designed to attract peoples’ attention and make updating details appear more rewarding (by highlighting the benefits of keeping HR system information up-to date). This draws on the EAST principle of ‘Make it Attractive’.
4. Social email (treatment group 3)
This email highlighted that employees are increasingly sharing diversity characteristics in agency HR systems. This draws the EAST principle of ‘Make it Social’, where the idea that for some, being able to ‘represent’ a group is a motivator for sharing diversity characteristics in HR systems. The email used dynamic norming, demonstrating that behaviour is changing over time. It contained a graph and corresponding text - ‘A third of the workforce identifies with at least one diversity characteristic, compared to a quarter in 2015’.
This messaged was intended to act as a call to action. The graph was visually stimulating, novel and demonstrates how the APS agency is using staff data, which could encourage more staff to identify in the HR system.
Outcome measures:
The primary outcomes we measured were:
- Outcome 1. Percentage of staff who mark disability status as ‘Yes’ in the HR system
- Outcome 2. Percentage of staff who mark any other diversity characteristic as ‘Yes’. These includes LGBTIQ+, neurodivergent, First Nations or Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD).
Secondary outcome measures were:
- Outcome 3. Proportion of diversity characteristics changed with responses changed from “Choose Not to Give” to either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. Each person had a change score created out of the five diversity indicators. They received a score of 0.2 for each change out of 5 diversity indicators. Individual level outcomes were averaged within each arm of the trial to obtain the average proportion of people who made this change by arm.
- Outcome 4. Proportion of people who changed their responses from ‘Choose Not to Give’ to either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ for all diversity variables. Individual proportions were created to determine proportion missing per person (out of 5 diversity indicators). Individual level outcomes were averaged within each arm of the trial to obtain the average proportion of missing data by arm. This provided a measure of engagement as a result of receiving the reminder emails.
As per our pre-analysis plan, we interpreted the intervention email to be more effective than the attention control email if any of the primary outcome measures were statistically significant in the expected direction (i.e. higher % in intervention email group compared to % in attention control group)
The trial was pre-registered on the American Economic Association registry: https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/11854
