Australian Public Service Commissioner John Lloyd has offered his own staff pay rises of 1.5 per cent per year – the best pay deal in the Commonwealth bureaucracy.

The offer to the commissioner's public servants is three times that of their counterparts at some other agencies, and comes with no loss of entitlements or conditions.

Many expect the commission's 250 staff to accept the offer, in a move that shows the agency is willing to enforce the Abbott government's tough bargaining rules on other departments, but not itself.

The commission claims to have bee cutting costs and reducing staff for over a year, so its pay proposal can be made in full compliance with the Public Sector Bargaining Framework.

Meanwhile, stalled talks across the 160,000-strong APS have led to industrial action as workers reject below-inflation pay offers coupled with cuts to entitlements and conditions.

Just four other pay agreements have even made it to a workplace ballot, and all four were strongly rejected.

Despite Mr Lloyd’s reputation as a hardliner, the Public Service Commission’s pay rise will not require any extra hours to be worked, no loss of Christmas shutdown, no loss of leave, incremental pay advances, flexible working arrangements, health and wellbeing benefits or redundancy provisions.

In a bulletin sent to APSC staffers this week, Mr Lloyd said the agency could avoid the productivity pain being felt in other areas of government.

“We have paid for our salary increase over the life of the agreement,” the commissioner wrote.

“Our efforts to manage more efficiently over the last 12 months, including through reducing our EL [executive level] cohort, has effectively provided enough productivity and cash savings to fund the majority of the 4.5 per cent pay rise.

“We won't be looking to fund productivity by reducing or changing any of your existing entitlements.

“We won't be asking you to work additional hours to fund the increase."

The bulletin called for just one concession from the workforce; the removal of unspecified “restrictive work practices” from the existing enterprise agreement.

“We will be looking to remove restrictive work practices from the agreement, consistent with government policy, and will explain this in detail at group meeting over the next few weeks,” Mr Lloyd wrote.

The Australian Services Union says there would be a lot more agreements being reached if the APSC's deal could be offered across the public sector.