Back to Blog

Job crafting in the public sector - how I stayed 8 years in the same role

Before branching into coaching, I worked in the New Zealand public sector, for 20 years.For eight of those years, I worked in the same policy team, with the same manager and the same core group of colleagues. How did I manage to last eight years in one place? People have asked me this on more than one occasion. Usually, I’ve answered that good projects just kept coming along and that I had the best manager I’ve ever had.That’s not the whole truth though. I had several dips in motivation, a...

Why I designed a one-session Job Audit

If you’re a woman in her 30s or 40s, navigating on a daily basis the turbulence in the New Zealand public sector, but also wanting to keep her career moving and developing, it may not feel like the best of times work-wise.The usual ways to progress your public sector career have become less dependable. Promotion rounds don’t seem to be happening with the frequency they used to, if at all, more people are holding onto their roles for longer, and restructures are resulting in job cuts – and ...

Can your current public sector role be reshaped? How to tell

As we’ve learnt over the four posts of my mini-blog-post-series on job crafting, almost anyone in any job can do job crafting, including people in a public sector career in New Zealand. What’s job crafting? If you missed the earlier posts, job crafting is a process that you can use to reshape your role to better fit your work preferences and career goals.You might be sceptical though: ‘What about my specific job? I don’t think job crafting will work.’And you may be right.I’m going to...

Job crafting for what holds you back at work (#4 of 4)

Aaaargh. It was 3.15pm on a Monday. I was a Principal Advisor at a large Crown entity, and was standing over a photocopier to make sure it didn’t run out of paper while printing a 100-page document.Although the report was important, with a deadline set by legislation, and I’m not against ‘getting my hands dirty’, I was fuming. There was another deadline also looming and I wanted to be back at my desk doing the thinking for that.This situation – feeling frustrated by admin or other task...

How increasing your job demands is good for your career (mini-series #3 of 4)

Hi again. I’m back today with the third of four posts in my mini-series on job crafting. Glad you’re here!In the first post in the series, I outlined what job crafting is [link], why you might choose to job craft, how to do it and what it can bring you in your job and career. The second post went down into the detail of the ‘increasing resources’ dimension of job crafting, that is, the ‘structural’ and social resources you have at your disposal at work to help you meet the demands of...

Resources that fuel your career progression without changing jobs first (mini-series #2 of 4)

And we’re back! This week’s blog post is the second in a 4-part mini-series on the process of job crafting – what it is, what it can do for you in your work and career in the public sector, and how you actually do it.In last week’s post, I outlined the job crafting process as a whole. That’s how you can redesign your job yourself in smaller or more radical ways to make it fit better with your work goals and preferences, and to stretch you in ways that also develop your career without y...

Job crafting blog post mini-series #1 (of 4) Is job crafting right for you? What makes it come more easily

What is job crafting? Why might someone want to craft their job? Can you do job crafting?These are all good questions, and together, they provide the structure for my blog post this week. It’s a topic I’m really into, because it’s a way that you can take charge of your work and progress your career, without actually leaving your current job.You may not be as excited about your role as you were when you first started, but that doesn’t mean you’re willing or able to just change jobs, esp...

Why you don't need to hang your hopes on the promotion round to progress your public sector career

You’re not imagining it. It really is harder to move up and progress your career in the New Zealand public sector these days.The quantitative data from the 2025 Public Service Census shows that of the 46% of people who were thinking of leaving their jobs in the following 12 months, 42% said it was because of a lack of career progression in their current jobs. And in the open-ended comments, people shared that they didn’t think their organisations were doing enough to develop and retain their...

Three ideas for busting your public sector work stress

In one of my public sector jobs, I was involved in preparing important organisational reports. They were required by statute, had to be submitted to Parliament and needed to be approved by the Leadership Team and the Board. But at my organisation, both of those groups were under huge pressure and scrutiny, and getting them to engage so that my colleagues and I could finalise the documents was hard.This is one of the many situations in public sector work that cause tangible work pressure and stre...

Reflections: What I've learned working with women in the public sector

I’ve been doing some reflection recently on work and career progression in the public sector.When I first looked at the Public Service Census data last year, I was captured by the statistic that 44% of respondents said they were often or always stressed at work in the public service in the 12 months prior. I consider it quite an indictment on how work in the public sector is designed – even though I remain a loyal public sector supporter.But when I think through my conversations with women I...

How to get the most out of coaching: A guide for coaching success

When I had coaching several years ago, to deal – I hoped – with a lack of confidence in a new, more senior work role, I didn’t really know what to expect. I enjoyed the sessions, but by the end of the third one, I had the awful realisation that I was wasting the coach’s time. I was so busy that my attention wasn’t always fully focused on my coach and our conversation, and between sessions, I didn’t reflect on what we’d discussed enough to ensure each session built on the previous o...

Can't move up? How to progress your career anyway

It’s easy for women in their 30s and 40s to feel stuck in the public sector at the moment. You have years of relevant experience, a relevant tertiary education qualification or even qualifications plural, and the respect of those you work with. But if the more senior job you had your eye on was cut, and advertised jobs at the level you want to move to are few and far between, what’s the solution? How do you progress your career without promotion?The current environment in New Zealand public ...

Is coaching right for you? Answers to questions women ask before starting

You’ve been in your role a few months or even years. It’s going fine, and you like working in the public sector, but you want it to feel more than just “fine”. For your work to feel easier and less like pushing boulders uphill. To be able to adjust or change your work so it’s more meaningful, without changing job or organisation. To have more energy at work.Work in the New Zealand public sector can definitely be challenging. There are lots of options for gaining support and helping you...

The 5 hidden work stressors draining public sector professionals

Five months after I started, excited at what could be a great role for me with leaders I got on well with, my manager resigned and left. It was the first of multiple resignations in my team, due to uncertainty about what would happen in the restructure.It didn't end up sinking, as it happens, the team or the organisation, but staff had to sit with low-level, always-there uncertainty for about nine months as a result of the 'reshaping'.What I've come to realise is that this kind of job insecurity...

A simple weekly reset for work - for public sector professionals feeling snowed under

You know how there are times where you end up at the end of your day with only one thing achieved? Or, maybe worse, five different things, all started and none finished? Yip, me too. That's work.What about when you have a whole week like that? It can be pretty disheartening. And in the New Zealand public sector, particularly at the moment, needing to do vastly more with fewer people almost guarantees this. It's frustrating, some of your motivation for work will ebb, and you might feel like pulli...

Why burnout looks different for women in the public sector

Burnout has had a lot of air-time over the last couple of years. Whether that's in the press, on social media, in TED Talks. You may even know someone who's been through burnout, or been through it yourself.But much of what's out there about burnout treats it as an experience that's the same for everyone, with the same causes, and solutions that work the same for everyone. That's not accurate. As one immediate example, work by prominent burnout researchers Maslach and Leiter suggests that burnou...

From surviving to thriving: what career wellbeing looks like

"So how's work?", your friend asks. "Good", you say, "really good". But as you walk away from your coffee date, you're wondering if that was really accurate.It's Wednesday afternoon, and the day's been OK. You've attended a couple of meetings, you've checked and replied to lots of emails, you've got tasks in your calendar that you've been working on.  Which is fine, right? You've been productive, and you're productive like this most days. But you also have a nagging feeling that it's n...

Why public sector people are my people

Most coaches will work with any client. In this blog post, I'm going out on a limb! I've made a deliberate choice to specialise. As well as having a particular interest with solving work-related challenges, I specifically love helping people who work in the public sector, especially women.I’ve worked in different parts of the New Zealand public sector over 20 years – four Government departments, three universities, and two Crown entities… which means that working in the public sector is w...

Recalibrating work: the most helpful books I've read this year

Whether we like it or not, work keeps changing. Whether it's the tasks we have to complete in our role, or the different aspects of our work environment. Or it might even be us that's changed - maybe we had a child or got them off to school, or we decided to study again to enter a new profession, or our work now has to fit with caring for a mum or dad who's not doing so great.And as long as work, our work environment and we keep changing, we have to keep adjusting and reinventing ourselves, and ...

Self-confidence at work: quiet your chatter and push off from hard moments

Let me share with you, if I may, a blow-by-blow account of the highs and lows of my self-confidence at work last week. I could probably draw it as a graph. It would look like a rollercoaster.Monday, blessedly, went without a hitch. The rollercoaster started on Tuesday. I happily embarked on my usual start-of-the-day admin stack. (I was feeling good. I'd had a great sleep and the before-school routine was fight-free.) Email - fine. Calendar - all still do-able. Website inbox - no replies needed. ...

What does job satisfaction mean to you?

Job satisfaction is not something I've written about here on this blog yet. Which is kind of remiss of me - it's at the heart of why I started this little coaching business.Job satisfaction has a lot of different facets to it. Feeling you did well in the work tasks you filled your day with. That your work was for something or someone - a cause, perhaps - beyond yourself. That your job enables you to work in line with your identity. It could simply be that it enables you to earn enough to cover y...

Walking in nature to reduce your work stress and boost your thinking

I have always walked - as an adult, anyway. I live in Wellington, New Zealand, which may not seem an ideal walking location. It is as hilly as it is windy. But I walk almost every day, even multiple times some days. I do express walks at lunchtime to clear brain fog after hours of staring at a monitor. I walk to the school gate for the afternoon pick-up. I walk with friends on weekend mornings for exercise and a good, solid chat.I mostly walk through built environments, on asphalted footpaths, p...

The importance of making progress at work

I really hate behavioural event interviewing. That's when an interviewer asks, "Tell us about a time you encountered conflict at work…" or something like that. They can be so hard to answer well. At one interview a few years back, I was asked, "Tell us about a time a roadblock appeared in the way of your project. How did you get past it to get to project completion?" Ugh, what a question. And, ugh, roadblocks.I am someone who is strongly driven to finish things. In one work personality test I ...

Symptoms of burnout: What you need to know

A couple of weeks ago, a friend told me she was exhausted and completely burnt out. I wasn't surprised – between a busy job and everything else on top, she's juggling a huge amount. But I was a bit worried. Burnout in its most serious form can stop you in your tracks – and it feels as if lots of highly capable people are falling prey to burnout these days. So, I thought I'd devote this week's post to burnout, what it is, why it's a big deal, burnout symptoms to look for and how to respo...

Working with your wiring

Last week, a friend and I were exchanging WhatsApps about my recent long weekend holiday away. I had sent 10 or 11 shots of one of the most beautiful parts of the country: trails through virgin New Zealand bush, the jewel-like clarity and sparkle of the water in a natural spring, a vast expanse of dune and sea at a picturesque beach. And all of that was stunning.Then I sent a picture taken on the deck on a sunny morning, with my green tea on a table in front of me, and a view of the sea in the d...