Australian Prudential Regulation Authority Reviews

Pros

Great place to hone technical skills in financial analysis, statistics, banking, superannuation, financial sector law etc. For a while at least... Somehow it manages to do what it has to do and we should be grateful for that and grateful that people are prepared to dedicate their careers to it.

Cons

Accountability of managers: the Judge Dredd syndrome is evident (‘I am the law’). So APRA is not always a predictable, rules-based environment. Some of the managers are moody and lack self control, and have very idiosyncratic approaches. Not a good place for independent-minded people. A lot of them left around 2016 -2018. APRA tends to go with whatever is fashionable in the HR space and you never know what the expectations will be when the next consultant-driven brainwave blows through. APRA struggles outside its core supervision and statistical collection tasks.

Pros

Great mandate serving the Australian community, reasonable salary and benefits

Cons

Senior leaders do not operate as one common unit, priorities are variable between leaders which can lead to a silo mentality and staff not speaking up

Pros

- Great work/life balance and flexible hours embedded in culture - Efforts made to have regular social events across the organisation - Meeting executive managers from regulated institutions as part of the job is always a highlight

Cons

- Rewards, recognition or promotions are often not given to the right people, so a lot of high performing employees leave - Politics amongst management is a problem. There are a small group of “influential” people and everyone else just nods to them. - Too much emphasis on “soft skills” and lack of support for development of technical skills. The benchmark for “good analytical skills” is quite low. - Culture (in some divisions) of complaining about “too much work” when no one really does overtime. This means many good projects almost always get “reprioritised”.

Pros

1. Job security. You can be very chilled & lazy without worrying about getting fired. 2. Attendance is the only valid KPI. You need to attend work, meetings & any other formal events, but that’s your only KPI. Others so called KPIs are only for show (but you need to at least pretend you are working/reading some documents at work) 3. Career Progression- although it’s super slow, as long as you stay in the organization you will eventually become at least a Principle Analyst, or a Manager or even a Senior Manager. No matter how incompetent you are. 4. No criticisms - external parties would only say good things in front of you. No formal peer reviews. Auditing is nearly nonexistent (have worked there for years, never got audited for any of my work, same to nearly all of my ex colleagues there).

Cons

1. Not a suitable work environment for skill & knowledge improvement. 2. Too much workplace politics. 3. Too many incompetent senior managers there (still have few competent ones though) They used to joke about an old lady (a senior manager) there that had neither analytical skills nor technical knowledge, but very picky about grammar & wordings. Since she has only worked in public sector, that’s why this was the only thing she good at and got promoted because of that. I heard her team members have all left the team but I am not surprised. 4. System is old, management style is old feels like a dying regulator. 5. Senior managers and above are on contract but hardly get fired. 6. Putting the wrong senior managers at the wrong places. Senior managers with no knowledge/experience with SQL, Python etc have been placed into data analytics team. Senior managers with no knowledge/experience with super or insurance have been placed into DID (super or insurance team) and many more. 7. Some principal analysts & senior managers have no/very limited practical industry work experience.

Pros

- It is a government regulator.

Cons

- Some senior managers have absolutely no/outdated technical knowledge, the only reason they could become senior managers was solely because they have been working at APRA for many years (many of them have only worked in government regulators with no practical industry work experience). - As these senior managers have no/outdated technical knowledge (many of them can’t even use computer properly), all they can do is to sign off documents almost blindly. They completely rely on their senior analysts and/or principal analysts, sometimes even graduate analysts. - You can always see many people have worked or currently working here complain about the slow career progression. This is because of its culture which only awards those who have lengthy employee tenures. -As many other public sector agencies, the job itself is not challenging with very limited development in technical skills and knowledge. As a person who has been working here for a long time, I really wouldn't recommend anybody come unless they want to stay here until near retirement.

Pros

Generous workplace benefits, including unlimited personal leave and flexible working arrangements. Organisation puts resources into regular social functions for employees.

Cons

Lack of upward progression due to long tenure of employees and unbalanced ratio of analysts to management. Serious issues with the work culture. Management is uninterested and ill-equipped to aid employee career development. The organisation has acknowledged persistent issues with gender and racially based harassment, and is struggling to deal with these issues in a satisfactory way.