Meaningful work
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A range of work environment elements contribute to the creation of an engaged workforce.
Having meaningful work as well as access to the physical, emotional and psychological resources necessary for the completion of work are vital in employee engagement.
Meaningful work occurs when the employee perceives the importance of their work, understands the impact of work in the achievement of organisational objectives and, in the case of public servants, understands their contribution to the community.
Impact of work
Queensland public sector employees, regardless of their occupation or organisation, share a commitment to serving the people of Queensland and making a difference to our communities.
How employees see the impact of their work is an important determinant of perceived meaningfulness and therefore, engagement.
- 78% of WfQ survey respondents agree or strongly agree that their work has had a positive impact on the lives of Queenslanders.
- Employees in frontline and frontline support roles feel this more strongly, with 80% saying their work has a positive impact on the lives of Queenslanders.
- 81% of all respondents say their organisation has had a positive impact on the lives of the people of Queensland.
Source: WfQ 2024.
Further analysis of the WfQ survey data shows when employees believe their work has a higher impact on the community, they also feel more connected with their work and more engaged.
When 2024 WfQ data is filtered to include only the responses of employees who feel their work has a high impact on the community reported perceptions of feeling energised, inspired and proud of the work are between nine and ten percentage points higher than the scores for the total sector.
Similarly, where levels of perceived impact on the community are high, so too is engagement.
Meaningful work not only speaks to the individual’s need to contribute significantly to their work, their team and their organisation but also to the importance of receiving feedback about their performance, their value and their contribution.
Case study: Impact in action
Supporting the Queensland community through disaster
Between January and March 2025, there were three major adverse weather events that impacted Queensland communities—flooding in North and Far North Queensland, Tropical Cyclone Alfred and flooding in Western Queensland.
The Queensland public sector mobilised to help communities respond and recover.
Community recovery
Across the three major events, Community Recovery, with their partners, have:
- activated 28 Local Government Areas for the Personal Hardship Assistance Scheme
- received 541,409 applications with over 375,281 applications processed to date (April 2025)
- paid $122M+ grants supporting over 614,932 Queenslanders
- established over 157 Community Recovery Hubs, Support Services and other services delivering in person support to 46,738 visitors
- responded to 87,967 calls to the Community Recovery Hotline
- taken 2,759 calls to the Lifeline Disaster Counselling Hotline with:
- 2,285 instances of psychological aid delivered
- 5,152 referrals made to support services
- 36,564 instances of psychological first aid have been provided by recovery partners including Lifeline Disaster Counselling Hotline, Australian Red Cross, Queensland Disaster Chaplaincy Network, UnitingCare Lifeline QLD and Lifeline Darling Downs.
- provided access to additional tailored emotional support to impacted Queensland farmers through partnerships with Farmer to Farmer, RuralAid, Farm Angels and other local service providers.
This impact is delivered through the commitment of the core team within the Community Recovery Branch, and more than 1900 additional resources including Queensland Government Ready Reserves who come from organisations across the Queensland public sector.
In the first three months of 2025 the level of demand was greater than the last four disaster seasons combined (and last year’s disaster season was greater than double the previous three seasons combined—the Community Recovery response has been exponentially bigger and faster).
Townsville Sports Precinct
In its day-to-day operations, the Townsville Sports Precinct provides multi-purpose indoor courts, a gym, and track and fields for various sports. It also has a fully tenanted sports house offering office accommodation for several of the regions sporting organisations.
During the week commencing 27 January 2025 the Townsville Sports Precinct was in the process of preparing to advise the public of its closure due to the predicted weather forecast.
Within days the decision was made by the Townsville City Council and Local Disaster Management Group that the Townsville Sports Precinct Leisure Centre would be required to operate as an Emergency Evacuation Centre for the public, with the expectation that it be open for residents on the evening on 1 February 2025.
On Saturday 1 February, an inspection/handover was completed in conjunction with the Townsville City Council with pallets of water, supplies and other essentials (bedding, key items for the arrival of pets to the venue such as food, crates, bowls etc) delivered.
The Townsville Sports Precinct was open to the public from 8pm that evening.
Staff of the Townsville Sports Precinct showed agility, innovation and commitment meeting the needs of the community at very short notice and in extremely challenging times.
Almost 200 members of the North Queensland Community, 50 cats, 37 dogs and a bird sought refuge Townsville Sports Precinct after being evacuated from their homes.
The volunteers and staff from the Red Cross, Salvation Army, St John Ambulance, St Vincent de Paul, State Emergency Services, Townsville City Council and the Queensland Police Service successfully came together and provided their services through the Townsville Sports Precinct.
In the lead-up to Tropical Cyclone Alfred, Queensland Health’s Queensland Virtual Hospital (QVH) and its Virtual Emergency Care Service identified that extreme weather conditions would significantly impact Queenslanders’ ability to access timely and safe emergency healthcare, with the potential for some healthcare facilities to become inoperable.
The team recognised an urgent need to maintain continuity of care and avoid unnecessary emergency department presentations through virtual alternatives.
In collaboration with Queensland Health partners, a decision was made to rapidly scale Virtual Emergency Care Service into a 24-hour service to support the community throughout the cyclone and its aftermath.
This required detailed planning for surge staffing, as well as significant Information & Communication Technology (ICT) coordination to ensure the platform could operate reliably around the clock. Support from eHealth Queensland, Digital Metro North and Health Direct Australia enabled full virtual service availability, while Queensland Health’s Strategic Communications Branch ensured the public knew how and when to access the Virtual Emergency Care Service during the emergency.
During the Cyclone response, the Virtual Emergency Care Service Team worked extended hours, double shifts and worked from other hospitals in SEQ (as far away as Toowoomba). Some Virtual Emergency Care Service team members relocated from their homes to ensure service provision and continuity was maintained.
The Virtual Emergency Care Service Team saw 951 patients during TC Alfred. Typically, Virtual Emergency Care Service Team would see around half the volume of patients during that period.
88% of all patients seen by Virtual Emergency Care Service Team were discharged without the need for a physical Emergency Department presentation. Only 7% of all patients who accessed the Virtual Emergency Care Service Team service during this period were assessed as requiring ongoing face-to-face care in a physical Emergency Department.
QBuild and Housing teams were mobilised and redeployed from around the state, working alongside partner agencies to deliver comprehensive support and to help communities recover and rebuild.
During the North Queensland flood event, the Housing and Homelessness team helped to secure temporary housing for 236 adults and 133 children across several communities.
QBuild worked to overcome complex on-the-ground challenges, including accommodation and transport logistics, road closures, local availability of skilled labour, building materials, personal protective equipment, fit-for-purpose disaster response vehicles and equipment, including generators for power reliability.
QBuild’s incident control centres and maintenance response centres worked at strengthening and sustaining supply chains, receiving damage reports, and urgent maintenance requests to ensure on-the-ground efforts could be concentrated where and when they were needed most.
Emergency accommodation and housing support were another significant focus, with QBuild working to ensure social housing tenants could continue to be accommodated in structurally safe and functional homes that meet high standards. Housing and Homelessness teams worked to deliver safe, secure housing solutions to those displaced by the disasters.
Support was provided in such a way that households, families, and individuals were always aware of their active role in the journey to recovery, and the approach emphasised ongoing, informed involvement for those affected, ultimately facilitating a smoother progression to normality.
As of 6 May 2025, across the three declared disaster events:
- 588 people assisted by Housing staff
- 587 Emergency Housing Assistance Requests
- 3,015 government-owned assets were impacted, including 819 schools and 1,641 social and First Nations homes, including individual units
- 15,495 recovery tasks were identified, 12,657 were completed
- 308 QBuild staff mobilised, including 289 QBuild field staff
- 203 business as usual and disaster response QFleet vehicles were used in the response
- 529 contractor businesses were engaged, supporting local jobs and businesses.
Positive performance management
Employee performance in the Queensland public sector is managed using a positive performance management approach. As outlined in section 85 of the Queensland Public Sector Act 2022 and directive 02/24, this approach has a clear focus on understanding and building on the strengths and successes of our employees.
The foundations of positive performance management relate to the employee’s understanding of what good performance looks like and having the basic tools and information to contribute to strategic objectives in addition to regular, constructive and specific two-way feedback.
From these foundations employees are better able to identify their development needs and achieve their performance goals. It establishes role expectations, provides goal clarity, gives purpose and meaning and aligns employee efforts to organisational requirements.
The foundations for successful positive performance management are strong across the sector:
- 88% believe they understand what is expected of them to do well in their jobs
- 73% agreed they get the information to do their job well
- 82% understand how their job contributes to their organisation’s strategic objectives.
Source: WfQ 2024.
The quality of communication between employees and their manager or supervisor is the basis for positive performance management and the creation of meaningful work.
Meaningful work is as much about the feedback managers and supervisors provide as it is about the employee’s independent perception of their contribution.
Again, these are critical performance foundations and positivity is strong.
- 78% say their managers/supervisors encourage discussion on ways to improve workgroup performance.
- 74% agree that performance expectations are communicated clearly by managers/supervisors.
- 78% say their managers/supervisors show appreciation for their contribution to work objectives.
Source: WfQ 2024.
Another aspect of positive performance management is how employees are assisted with their professional and personal development.
Discussions of professional development give employees a sense of meaning through the establishment of professional goals.
These items are asked on a frequency scale with the % positive being the proportion of people that respond often and always:
- 27% discuss their professional development with their manager or supervisor often and always
- 41% of employees feel their manager or supervisor supports their professional develop by connecting them with learning and development opportunities often and always
- 34% feel their manager or supervisor takes the time to provide informal feedback on their performance often and always
- 37% agree their manager or supervisor provides them with constructive feedback to help improve their performance often and always
- 49% agree their manager or supervisor often and always acknowledges when they do something well.
While the positive response figures have increased, these results tell us that there is an ongoing need to strengthen how feedback is given to employees.
Previous sections of this report refer to the challenges of delivering world-class services and building a highly capable and effective public sector in an extremely challenging fiscal environment.
Positive performance management is a clear opportunity to deliver on this challenge. Positive performance management mechanisms including the provision of informal feedback, the provision of constructive feedback to improve performance and the acknowledgement of good performance.
The impact of positive performance management:
When an employee states that their manager never or rarely provides informal or constructive feedback or acknowledges good performance, employee engagement drops to 24%, while disengagement increases to 49%.
When an employee states that their manager once in a while, sometimes or fairly often provides informal or constructive feedback or acknowledges good performance, employee engagement increases to 54%, the proportion of disengaged employees decreases to 13% while neutral levels of engagement increased to 32%.
When an employee states that their manager often and always provides informal or constructive feedback or acknowledges good performance, employee engagement increases to 81%, the proportion of disengaged employees decreases to 5% while neutral levels of engagement dropped to 14%.
Source: Working for Queensland 2024.