Fifty-four years ago, best-selling American futurist Alvin Toffler wrote: “The illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

Today, his prediction seems remarkably prophetic. The skills landscape employers are facing in Australia and globally is dynamic, unpredictable and rife with opportunity.

According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), the average half-life of a skill is currently about five years. Skills that would have carried previous generations through a career of 40 years now require endless updates and expansions to keep pace with technological advancement. 

As a result, the importance of technical skills has been eclipsed by the importance of skills adaptability, says Ravin Jesuthasan, author, Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer.

“The only thing that will keep us relevant is the ability to keep reinventing ourselves,” he says. 

“The skills where the premium is going to go up exponentially will be things like learning agility, curiosity, the willingness to look around corners and anticipate, the ability to see connections across two or more disparate domains – those are the skills that are really going to stand us in good stead.”

Building skills security

While much has been made of the potential negative impact of new technologies on job security, the WEF’s Future of Jobs Report 2023 found the majority of technologies being implemented across organisations are anticipated to create more jobs than they will displace over the next three years.

Artificial intelligence, arguably the defining aspect of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, is expected to generate a net increase in jobs of 26 per cent by 2027. Meanwhile, big data analytics is set to create a net 58 per cent increase.

The only technologies forecast in the WEF’s data to have a net negative overall impact on employment data were robots; both humanoid (designed to mimic human behaviour) and non-humanoid (machines devised for specific tasks, such as drones and industrial automation).

In light of this, future-proofing the workforce will mean focusing less on job security and more on skills security.

“It’s much easier and more important to understand how work is changing, rather than looking at what new jobs are being created,” says Jesuthasan, who will be a keynote speaker at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition⁠ in August. 

“A job is a blunt instrument. It contains so many different things. But if you can understand how the work is changing, that gives you a precise view into the types of skills that are going to be in demand because it’s much easier to map skills to tasks than to understand the myriad of different skills that might underpin a job.”

“The only thing that will keep us relevant is the ability to keep reinventing ourselves.” – Ravin Jesuthasan, Author, Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer

Shifting towards skills-based hiring and mobility

When organisations are facing skills challenges, employers often assume that targeting candidates with qualifications from familiar institutions will be their safest bet, says Jesuthasan.

“In my industry, there’s an old adage, ‘No one ever got fired for hiring McKinsey,’” he says. “If you think about how talent is resourced today, it’s largely based on credentials and what you’ve done previously. Those two things reduce the risk to an employer that a person can’t do the job. 

“But if we move to a skills-based approach, it takes us from competing for the five per cent of people we might have traditionally looked at to looking at the 20, 30, 40 per cent of the population who could actually do the work.”

Rather than adhering to rigid roles, a skills-based approach breaks down the individual capabilities required to perform a given task and assigns them to employees with the appropriate skills and capacity, regardless of whether it’s part of their job description.

With skills shortages increasing in severity and complexity, this approach is likely to grow in popularity over the coming decade. We’re already seeing companies becoming more flexible in the qualifications they consider, says Jesuthasan. For example, in 2021, IBM announced it had stripped bachelor’s degree requirements for more than half of its US openings. At Google, job postings requiring a bachelor’s degree fell from 93 to 77 per cent between 2017-2021. 

At banking and financial services company ANZ, the benefits of a shift towards skills-focused hiring and mobility are already beginning to shine through. 

“I think that job roles will persist as a means to organise work, but now we’re getting a deeper skills-based view of what’s behind each role,” says Arun Pradhan, General Manager of Learning at ANZ, who will also be speaking at AHRI’s Convention.

“We’re developing the frameworks and investigating the technology that will allow us to look at a role and see that it’s 40 per cent adjacent to that role over there, even though it doesn’t look like it. And we’re trying to provide a faster way for people to match up those skills.”

Ravin Jesuthasen and Arun Pradhan will both be sharing their insights on future-ready HR practice at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Don’t miss the chance to hear from inspiring thought leaders and master practical strategies for now and the future. Secure your spot today.

Planning for the skills needs of the future

During the past decade, we have witnessed immense shifts in our ways of working, from mass digitisation to the proliferation of hybrid working. With the pace of change accelerating, it’s safe to assume future decades will bring even more transformative developments. 

For many employers, this begs the question: If we don’t know what tomorrow will look like, how can we equip our people to succeed when it arrives?

According to Adina Leu FCPHR, Director of Workforce Strategy and Planning at the Australian Public Service Commission (APS), the difficulty of answering this question deters many employers from investing enough strategic thinking into their skills development. 

“Across the economy, there is little incentive for employers and managers to look at longer-term skills planning and invest in their current workforce to build the skills they’ll need, or that the sector or Australia will need, in five to 10 years’ time. Because of the high levels of turnover, they think, ‘Why should I? They’re not going to be here anyway.’”

As a result, future-focused employers must find ways to convince leaders to plant trees under whose shade they might never sit.

“It’s about moving away from [the mindset of], ‘I’m going to look after my own interests,’ and towards being part of a bigger ecosystem – whether it’s at an industry level or in the Australian economy,” says Leu.

As a government organisation with a workforce of over 170,000, the APS recognises the strategic imperative of mapping future skills needs by conducting in-depth scenario planning based on a variety of potential workforce futures.

“Of course, there’s a need to prioritise, because you’ll be generating 10s of scenarios, but you can’t plan for all of them,” says Leu.

In order to identify and plan for the most likely outcomes, the APS refers to the ‘megatrends’ published by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) and the long-term insights briefs developed by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.  

From digitisation to the global push to reach net zero, these trends are predicted to be the main drivers of evolving labour markets and skills demand over the coming decades.

“We are building out the workforce implications of some of those scenarios,” says Leu. “For example, we’re looking at the green transition, and the skill sets we’ll need in government to progress that transition and the green economy agenda for the country and globally.”

The APS is also actively engaging with educational institutions and early career programs to address skills shortages from the ground up. 

Exposing young people to career pathways available to them is particularly important to ensure skills pipelines are as diverse as possible, says Leu. “For example, we know there are shortages in some occupations and roles which are highly male-dominated – [things like] construction, engineering, cybersecurity and so on,” she says. 

“We also know that the seed for some of those career decisions is planted with kids as early as five. So, we need to have more interventions to get girls passionate about occupations like these ones in early childhood.”

“Learning is most effective at the point of need. The opportunity to immediately and constantly apply learning provides a reality check, learning reinforcement and a feedback loop.” – Arun Pradhan, General Manager of Learning, ANZ

An upskilling strategy fit for the future of work

One challenge that often arises with big-picture upskilling and reskilling strategies is push-back from employees asked to take part in them. 

In recent years, the speed of transformation has left some employees experiencing varying levels of ‘change fatigue’. According to Gartner, employees’ willingness to embrace change has dipped sharply, from 74 per cent in 2016 to 38 per cent in 2022.

To avoid employees feeling overwhelmed by the magnitude of upskilling and reskilling required, getting the timing right is crucial, says Pradhan.

“Strategic workforce planning can mean developing three-year modeling, but we need to consider an overlay of how early we can initiate upskilling before those skills become relevant,” he says. 

“Learning is most effective at the point of need. The opportunity to immediately and constantly apply learning provides a reality check, learning reinforcement and a feedback loop to accelerate learning.”

To provide this opportunity, ANZ will be rolling out a new Academy for foundational skills around data, digital and human skills.

“The ANZ Academy has team-based learning at its core, so people can apply what they learn immediately in their work with their peers,” he says. “It’s getting away from having a learning bubble over here and a work bubble over there, which forces busy people to make their own connections.

“Instead, we’re using blended experiences, team activities and contextualised stories to reduce the friction of on-the-job learning.”

In order for HR to formulate and deliver upskilling and reskilling strategies effectively, it’s imperative that they lead by example. 

“Use every opportunity to build a new skill,” says Pradhan. “Be that curious person who collects skills from work, parenting, hobbies or anywhere else, and is creatively combining those skills to deliver your unique value proposition and greater adaptability.”

A longer version of this article first appeared in the June/July 2024 edition of HRM magazine. Sign up to become an AHRI member to receive a bi-monthly copy.

Hear more from Ravin Jesuthasan on the shift towards skills-based hiring in the latest episode of AHRI’s podcast, Let’s Take This Offline. Listen to the episode below.

The post Cultivating the skills Australia needs to become future-ready appeared first on HRM online.

Australia’s ongoing skills gaps are hampering productivity for over half of employers (57 per cent), according to a recent report from AHRI.

The report, based on insights from 607 senior business decision-makers across a range of sectors, also found that almost one in five workers (19 per cent) are considered “not proficient” in their role by their employer, a statistic which is consistent with AHRI’s most recent Quarterly Work Outlook report. 

This problem is more significant in the public sector, where 24 per cent of employees aren’t fully proficient, compared to 18 per cent in the private sector.

With the integration of AI and other complex technologies moving at a rapid pace, it’s unsurprising that employers are lacking essential capabilities within their workforces. 

Skills and qualifications that previously sustained a career spanning 40 years or more now demand continuous updates and to remain relevant, posing significant challenges for learning and development teams to keep up with the speed of change. According to the World Economic Forum, the half-life of a skill is currently about five years. 

With that said, AHRI’s findings demonstrate that employers are not resting on their laurels. More than three quarters (77 per cent) are taking active steps to strengthen their talent pipelines. 

Below, HRM unpacks AHRI’s key findings on the driving forces behind Australia’s capability gaps, and how employers are responding.

Common causes of skills gaps

Employers identified a range of driving forces behind current skills gaps, mostly related to the rapid evolution of skill and business needs.

Figure 1 shows that evolving business or strategic needs are cited by 44 per cent of employers, while 42 per cent point to the constantly evolving skills landscape as a significant factor.

The post 57 per cent of employers say skills gaps are impacting productivity, finds AHRI research appeared first on HRM online.

In a bid to relieve the financial pressures that Australian households and businesses have been experiencing of late, Treasurer Jim Chalmers forefronted cost-of-living relief in last night’s budget, which included a $3.5 billion energy relief bill, which would deliver $300 worth of energy rebates for all Australian households, and the return of stage 3 tax cuts from 1 July (see tax cuts by pay bracket here).

However, these cost-reduction measures have faced criticism from influential independent senator Jacqui Lambie, who criticised the government for not means testing the energy rebates, and from Greens Leader Adam Brandt, who says the measures don’t go far enough to support “people who are doing it tough”.

“This budget is framed in fraught and fragile global conditions,” said Chalmers in his Budget speech. “[Global] uncertainty, combined with cost-of-living pressures and higher interest rates will slow [down] our economy, with growth forecast to be just 1.75 per cent this financial year, and 2 per cent next [year]. Slower growth means a softer labour market, with unemployment expected to rise slightly to four and a half per cent next year.”

Despite this, he indicated that the Australian economy is well placed to tackle these challenges, and pledged that the “responsible relief” introduced by this year’s budget will help build a stronger and more resilient economy.

Beyond the cost-reduction measures, relevant Budget insights for businesses include a significant investment to deliver a skilled workforce for the future, further measures to end violence against women, a proposed wage boost for Australia’s aged care and childcare sector, and support for small businesses struggling to navigate Australia’s new industrial relations landscape.

Below, HRM takes a deeper dive into what else HR needs to know.

Skills, jobs and wages

Skills
Nearly $600 million has been set aside to bolster skills and training in Australia, with a focus on the construction, clean energy and manufacturing sectors.

This will include a $50 million injection into training people to work in clean energy across wind, solar, pumped hydro, grid battery storage, electricity networks and hydrogen, as well as relevant electrical and construction trades. It will add another $30 million to increase teacher, assessor and trainer roles in the clean energy sector.

There was also a strong focus on apprenticeships, with $1500 in reimbursements for small-to-medium sized businesses who engage clean energy, construction and manufacturing  apprentices through a group training organisation. The government will also fund 20,000 new fee-free TAFE, VET and ‘pre-apprentice’ courses for the housing and construction workforce, from January 2025.

Jobs

Vulnerable and marginalised Australians will benefit from the creation of two new paid work placement programs, designed to support job seekers who’ve previously faced barriers to enter the workforce by connecting them with new opportunities in businesses and social enterprises. 

Remote Australian communities are also set to receive a cash injection. Over the next five years, $2.4 billion will be used to create new opportunities for First Nations people in these regions, namely via jobs creation. The new ‘Remote Jobs and Economic Development Program‘ is set to create up to 3000 jobs in remote Australian regions in the second half of the year. Created in consultation with First Nation Australians, the program will focus on young people to help improve their employment opportunities once they’ve finished school.

The government is also looking to support women to enter traditionally male-dominated industries via the Building Women’s Careers program, which is backed by a $55.6 million government investment. This will focus on the construction, clean energy, advanced manufacturing and digital technology sectors.

Wages

Following the last budget’s historic interim 15 per cent wage increase for the Aged Care sector, the government has announced its intention to fund a further increase to award wages for this cohort, along with childcare workers. The exact amount is yet to be determined/announced.

The government also plans to attract more nurses and aged care workers to this critical sector via a $87.2 million workforce initiative.

Chief Executive Women (CEW) CEO, Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, says these measures will “go some way to improving economic security for women”.

“We know that working women are significantly overrepresented in the care sector, and we also know there are skills shortages in many areas like aged care and early childhood education.”

However, she says CEW was disappointed that the budget did not comprehensively address women living in poverty.

“JobSeeker payments sit below the poverty line at around just 43 per cent of minimum wage, trapping the most vulnerable Australians in poverty instead of enabling them into work.”

Superannuation payments paid on parental leave

To continue closing Australia’s gender pay gap, which currently sits at 12 per cent (ranking the country 26th in the world for gender equality), $1.1 billion will go towards paying superannuation on top of government-funded parental leave for parents of babies born or adopted after 1 July 2025.

This was a key recommendation from the Women’s Economic Equality Taskforce, headed up by soon-to-be Governor-General Sam Mostyn AO, and is expected to help 180,000 families each year.

This will be further enhanced by upcoming increases to employers’ compulsory superannuation payments, which will increase from 11 to 11.5 per cent in June and, by July 2025, will sit at 12 per cent. 

These changes build off previous enhancements to Australia’s paid parental leave scheme, which will add an extra two weeks’ paid leave from July this year, eventually taking the scheme from 20 to 26 weeks in total by July 2026.

Funding towards family and domestic violence prevention

Earlier this month, we saw nation-wide protests demanding more government action towards women’s safety, following the murder of 27 women in Australia this year.

Rather than establishing a royal commission into domestic violence, as many Australians called for, the government has announced a $925-million package to end violence against women and children, with the aim of contributing to women’s safety and economic security, and facilitating independence for victim-survivors of family and domestic violence.

Chalmers notes that more needs to be done to curb the worrying rates of violence and abuse towards women, a sentiment that many agree with.

“Women’s safety and ability to escape gendered violence is intertwined with their economic security, and we also know that more needs to be done to fund the services supporting women escaping violence,” says Lloyd-Hurwitz.

HECS debts wiped

More than three million Australian students are set to benefit from the government wiping $3 billion worth of student HECS debts. Chalmers announced that the government will cap indexation of student loans to either match the consumer price index or the wage price index, whichever is lower. This will be backdated to mid-2023 and is set to deliver $1200 to the average student.

Under a separate initiative, teaching, nursing, midwifery and social work students undertaking practical work placements as part of their studies will now be paid $319.50 per week, following a $1.6 billion commitment from the government.

Mental health

Recognising the prevalence of mental health concerns among Australians, the Budget has pledged $888.1 million to help people get the mental health care they need.

This investment will span eight years, and includes the introduction of a free, low-intensity digital service for people with mild mental health concerns. Through this service, every Australian will be able to access timely mental health support without a GP referral. Approximately 150,000 people are expected to make use of this service each year.

Significantly, $10.8 million has also been set aside to support the mental and financial wellbeing of small business owners, recognising the significant challenges faced by this cohort in recent years. This provision will give small business owners access to tailored, free and confidential support. 

Small business support with industrial relations reforms

As well as supporting SME owners’ mental health, the government has pledged to offer further support to businesses to understand and maintain compliance with the swathe of industrial relations (IR) reform that have recently been announced.

The government announced over $20 million to support small business owners to navigate the new IR landscape. The Fair Work Ombudsman is set to receive the funds over the next four years, with a large portion funding the Employment Advisory Service, which provides assistance to both employees and employers regarding workplace rights and obligations in the form of educational resources, dispute resolutions and information about maintaining compliance with workplace laws.

The funds will also be used to help small businesses navigate the recently passed Right to Disconnect legislation, which is set to come into effect in August 2025 for small businesses (all other businesses will need to comply from August this year).

Small businesses, who are perhaps feeling the brunt of Australia’s cost-of-living crisis, will also receive tax relief with the extension of the instant asset write-off scheme.

This means that organisations with less than $10 million annual turnover can claim an immediate tax deduction for any eligible business assets up to $20,000 – be that a new computer, operational machinery or office equipment. This measure is yet to be passed in law.

Future Made in Australia and our net zero goals

In a bid to position Australia as an “indispensable” part of the global net zero economy, Chalmers announced the 10-year $22.7 billion Future Made in Australia package to help facilitate the private sector investment required for Australia to move towards a net zero future. 

This includes $17.3 million to mobilise private sector investment in sustainable activities, and $399 million to establish the Net Zero Economy Authority and support the economy-wide net zero transformation.

The Net Zero Economy Authority will promote orderly and positive net zero economic transformation. Its functions will include catalysing investments in new industries and jobs, supporting workers impacted by the net zero transition, coordinating policy design and building community engagement.

The package also includes $8 billion over the decade to accelerate investment in renewable hydrogen.

“Australia’s biggest opportunity for growth and prosperity is the global shift to clean energy,” said Chalmers.  “By acting now, our resources, our researchers and our regions can help power the world.”

To learn more about how the budget might affect you, read the full budget papers here.

The post What HR needs to know about the 2024 Federal Budget appeared first on HRM online.

Labour force figures released in January revealed in seasonally adjusted terms the unemployment rate rising from 3.9 per cent to 4.1 per cent. At the same time, the workforce worked 2.5 per cent fewer hours.

These figures could be explained by the fact that numerous sectors are struggling to fill roles, says Charles Ferguson, APAC General Manager of global hiring solutions provider G-P.

Research by G-P finds that 75 per cent of Australian executives have faced difficulty in securing skilled talent and that 82 per cent of businesses are now actively engaged in global recruitment.

The figures point to an opportunity for HR professionals armed with the right skills to help executives and boards lead their businesses into the next stage of success, says Ferguson.

“In the Asia Pacific region, I would suggest we’re at a strategic inflection point in terms of the way we measure productivity, and the way the workforce functions within the economy,” he says.

When we come up with a better way of measuring productivity, he says, it will involve the various tools, such as automation and AI, that each worker can use to do their job more efficiently. That will also be a measure of the success of each organisation’s HR program.

Productivity is in the hands of business

Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist at The Australia Institute, agrees that the way we measure productivity – the simple measure of output per worker – requires a refresh.

“If you go back 40 years, goods production was the dominant part of the economy,” says Grudnoff. “Now, services are the dominant part. It used to be easy to measure productivity – the number of cars produced by the number of workers. But how can you measure the productivity of a librarian, or a journalist, or an aged care worker?”

Whatever the measure, increasing output per worker is going to be a central responsibility of the role of the HR professional, he says.

“The vast majority of people think productivity is about workers,” he says. “But workers have the least power in terms of improving productivity. All they can do is get educated, and Australian workers are doing that at higher rates than they ever have.”

The government also has some control over productivity, says Grudnoff, but not a great deal. It can introduce policies that encourage innovation, but it can’t enforce them.

The vast majority of power over productivity is held by businesses, he says. 

“Businesses decide how they are structured,” says Grudnoff. “They decide the type of capital and equipment available to workers to make them more efficient. They decide almost everything in terms of output per worker.”

“Overwhelmingly, productivity is about business, and HR people are the ones at the front line of organising a business in a more productive way.”

“It used to be easy to measure productivity – the number of cars produced by the number of workers. But how can you measure the productivity of a librarian, or a journalist, or an aged care worker?” – Matt Grudnoff, Senior Economist, The Australia Institute

A new future requires a new people strategy

There was likely concern for the future of fabric workers during the industrial revolution when their jobs were automated, says Ferguson. Eventually, those workers were retrained into roles required by future-ready businesses. 

That is exactly what is required right now. But in today’s work environment, there is rich reward for businesses that achieve a quick transition.

“This is a seminal moment for the HR function,” says Ferguson. “HR has this unique opportunity to assert themselves, to say, ‘The way we operated pre-pandemic is fundamentally different to how we’re going to operate post pandemic.’”

That includes how and where hires are made. Businesses that don’t utilise the global employment marketplace will naturally have a harder time filling roles, he says. 

It also includes how much flexibility can be offered around where and when people work, what training programs must be in place, where employment investment is made, what can be automated, and more.

“As the people responsible for being the nexus between technology, productivity, automation and human capital management, how do we strategically put those things together to elicit the most impact to the business, shareholders and stakeholders?” says Ferguson.

HR must also be skilled up

Just as workforce designers during the industrial revolution had to look to the future and learn new ways of work before they could reskill the fabric workers, today’s HR professionals also require new knowledge to guide businesses to future success.

“At the moment, I’m not hearing much conversation around what HR needs to be successful,” says Ferguson. “Organisations like the Australian HR Institute have been telling this story for a while, but now the rest of the business world needs that story to be heard. It needs to be brought into the boardroom.”

The HR function should be looking at strategic workforce planning, says Ferguson. It must define future jobs, skills associated with those jobs, which parts of jobs can be automated and how and where talent can be found. 

Do they need to be sourced from the business’s local community, or from across Australia? Or can the job be done by a person with the right skills who lives in Chile, says Ferguson.

“This is a seminal moment for the HR function.” –  Charles Ferguson, APAC General Manager, G-P

In terms of practical outcomes for HR from recent jobs data, Ferguson offers four insights.

1.  “Do the research required to have the conversation with your peer group within the business around how to strategically analyse the workforce planning aspect,” says Ferguson. 
2. “Decide on the methodology to assess the current state of the workforce, to identify the gap between where you are and where you need to be.” 
3.  “Collect relevant, credible data that is relatable to people outside HR. If it isn’t quantifiable, it doesn’t have correlation to the business audience. How does employee satisfaction relate to sales productivity, for example?” 
4.  “Identify which jobs really do need to be done on-site and which can be done anywhere in the world, to help solve the talent challenge.”
   

If we don’t get employment and productivity right, we all end up poorer, says Grudnoff.

“Only three things affect the economy in the long run – population, participation and productivity,” he says. “The first two give us the number of workers, and productivity gives us the output per worker.

“If your output is higher per worker, you’ve got more money per worker, and everybody benefits. The higher the productivity, the more wealthy the country will be.”

Develop the necessary skills to build and sustain a high-performing work team and tap into the full potential of team members with this short course from AHRI.

The post Businesses are the key to unlocking productivity in Australia appeared first on HRM online.

You’d be forgiven for feeling a little overwhelmed at the amount of legislative change coming from the Federal Government in recent months. 

Not only have workplaces already seen a flurry of industrial activity come out of the Fair Work Legislation Amendment Act 2022 (Secure Jobs, Better Pay Bill), but last October’s placeholder budget also saw plenty to digest, including changes to Australia’s parental leave scheme.

The May 2023 budget has revealed even more change for Australia’s business community – so let’s dive in.

Read HRM’s timeline of recent and upcoming changes to come out of the Secure Jobs Bill.

Historic wage increases

As part of what’s being called a “historic” boost to an award wage, those working in the aged care industry can expect an interim 15 per cent pay rise in recognition of the critical work they do supporting Australia’s most vulnerable citizens.

“The Prime Minister has said it many times – the heroes of the pandemic deserve more than our thanks; they deserve fair pay for their vital work,” said Chalmers. 

These workers – the majority (86 per cent) of whom are female – can expect an extra $7500-$10,000 per year as a result of this pay rise, and it will be delivered in one go as opposed to incrementally, as was initially planned.

Chalmers hinted at further wage reforms to come, such as federal approach to criminalising wage theft, standing up for casual workers and acting on the details shared in the Same Job, Same Pay proposal to give greater protection to gig workers.

Read HRM’s article on the Same Job, Same Pay proposal here.

Forecasts also predict a possible widespread increase to real wages across the board from early 2024 due to falling inflation rates. However, some experts suggest this could be short-lived.

Superannuation reforms

Chalmers announced two significant changes to the payment of superannuation. The first is one for the payroll professionals to pay close attention to. 

1. Super guarantee payments to be paid out on pay day, rather than in quarterly instalments, as of July 2026. This gives employees greater visibility over their super payments and a better opportunity to identify any instances of unpaid super or incorrect payments.

Industry Super Australia says this change could save Australians more than $50,000 at retirement due to higher compounding interest from more frequent payments, and “curb Australia’s unpaid super scourge which has cost workers $33 billion over seven years”.

“This budget delivers a big win for the three million mostly young and lower paid Australians unfairly deprived of the super they’ve earned and will give them a better shot at building a good nest egg for retirement,” says Industry Super Australia’s CEO, Bernie Dean.“Payday super gets many younger women what they are owed, but more needs to be done and bridging the gender super gap starts with paying super on parental leave.”

2. A new 30 per cent tax rate was announced for superannuation balances over $3 million, as of 2025.

The Australian Tax Office will also receive support to crack down on unpaid superannuation with a $13.2 million investment into a new compliance system.

Support for women and families

Childcare

The government’s ‘cheaper childcare’ plan was already passed in November 2022, but was also included as part of the budget. As of July this year, parents with a combined income of $80,000 or less will receive a 90 per cent subsidy on childcare.

For families earning over $80,000 (combined), the subsidy will decrease by one per cent per every additional $5,000, capping off at $530,000. 

According to the ABC, this means a “typical family earning about $120,000 with a child in care for three days per week will save about $1700 a year.”

A further $72.4 million has been allocated to bolster the early childhood education sector, which includes financial assistance to complete a Bachelor or Masters degree in early childcare.

Paid Parental Leave Scheme

As first announced in the October 2022 budget, the labour government is enhancing Australia’s paid parental leave scheme from 20 to 26 weeks by 2026. The new policy won’t restrict which parent can use the leave or the duration they can take within the 26 weeks.

From 1 July 2023, Parental Leave Pay and Dad and Partner Pay will combine into a single 20‑week payment, and a new family income test of $350,000 per annum will see nearly 3,000 additional parents become eligible for this entitlement each year.

Single-parent families

As of September this year, the cut-off age for the single parenting payment will be increased to 14 years old. Previously, single parents were required to apply for JobSeeker payments (currently $745.20 per fortnight) once their child turned eight.

This change means single parents – 90 per cent of whom are women – will now be eligible to maintain their single parenting payments ($922.10 per fortnight) for another six years.

“It’s an investment in these families. I know firsthand what it’s like to grow up with a single mum doing it tough, and we want to make sure that the children of single-parent families [have] the best opportunities in life, to go on and … aspire to a good life with good jobs with security,” said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the time of the announcement.

Single parents will also benefit from changes to earning arrangements under the Parenting Payment (single) scheme – those with one child can earn $569.10 per fortnight, plus an additional $24.60 per additional child, before welfare payments will be withheld.

This announcement is expected to support 57,000 single parents in Australia.

Chalmers also announced the abolishment of the ParentsNext program from 1 July 2023 – which has been described as a “punitive” program that suspends welfare payments to parents who do not undertake activities required under the program, such as attending employment appointments.

A new voluntary program will be developed in its place to help prepare parents for employment opportunities.

Women’s safety

The government is setting aside $590 million for the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children, and $194 million will go towards a range of Indigenous women’s safety programs.

Funds to boost Australia’s skills and capabilities

The government has already started to move forward on addressing Australia’s skills shortage. In December 2022, it announced the $402 million Jobs and Skills Councils to help address skills shortages.

Last night’s budget also reiterated the previously announced $3.7 billion five-year national skills agreement. In conjunction with the states and territories, this agreement aims to enhance the quality of vocational education to “boost productivity and support Australians to obtain the skills they need to participate and prosper in the modern economy”. 

Boosted income support payments

The government has also pledged to support people looking to enter the workforce.

“Even with unemployment at historic lows, we know there are still people struggling to find work and struggling to get by,” said Chalmers. “The pressures on the budget are acute, but as a Labor Government we will always strive to help those who need it the most.”

Its help in this space comes in the form of a $40 per week increase to JobSeeker, Austudy and Youth Allowance payments.

The eligibility requirements for higher rates of JobSeeker payments for older workers (an additional $92.10 per fortnight) is also set to increase to over 55s. Previously, the benchmark was set at 60+.

“Payday super gets many younger women what they are owed, but more needs to be done and bridging the gender super gap starts with paying super on parental leave.” – Bernie Dean, Industry Super Australia, CEO

Investments into climate action

Anthony Albanese announced the creation of a $23 million dollar Net Zero Authority the week ahead of budget night, in a bid to help Australia to reach its goal to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

“We know it’s in the nation’s interest for Australian industries in the regions to be investing in decarbonising and therefore it is in the interests of the government to help,” Energy Minister Chris Bowen said during the announcement last week, according to ABC reports.

The Authority will address three areas:

• Creating new employment options and training opportunities for those working in high-emission industries (i.e. coal mining)
• Supporting communities in the uptake of near clean energy industries
• Helping investors and companies find opportunities to help Australia to reach its net zero goal.

The authority is expected to start operating as of 1 July 2023.

Investing in a quantum strategy

Ahead of the budget night, Minister for Industry and Science Ed Husic announced a first-of-its-kind quantum strategy that’s predicted to inject $6 billion into our economy and produce approximately 20,000 jobs by 2045.

Quantum technology applies the exploration of subatomic particles to tackle problems such as reducing the time and expenses involved in developing new medications, facilitating the shift to net-zero emissions by enhancing battery storage, and securing cyber infrastructure.

This billion-dollar strategy, part of the government’s National Reconstruction Fund, is expected to encompass:

• Investment into research and development, and commercialisation opportunities
• The resources and infrastructure required to grow in this sector
• Developing skilled employees to work in this industry.

“I can’t emphasise this enough, quantum technologies will be truly transformative. We are already seeing how quantum sensing equipment is making a huge difference for industry,” Husic said during his speech announcing the strategy.

“By pairing a National Quantum Strategy with the National Reconstruction Fund, we’re aiming to turn Australia into a global technology leader, building stronger industry and creating jobs for the future.”

Other notable announcements

Voice to Parliament referendum – $360 million will go into funding the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum to fund campaigns and mental health support for First Nations people during the referendum.

Cost-of-living relief – The government announced $14.6 billion dollars worth of cost-of-living assistance, including support to purchase critical medicines, boost wages and to pay soaring energy bills.

As first flagged in December’s Power Bill Relief package, the government has pledged a one-off $1.5 billion payment to address rising electricity bill costs. 

This is expected to cap out at $500 and higher rebates will be set for Australia’s most vulnerable, such as the elderly, veterans, small businesses and those on income support. 

Tax breaks for energy efficient technology – Chalmers announced a temporary tax relief for small businesses (those with less than $50 million in annual turnover). These businesses can claim back 20 per cent of what they invest into clean energy technology, such as energy-efficient air conditioning, LED lighting etc.  

Nearly four million small businesses are expected to benefit from this $314-million package, which will run over the next four years.

Expansion of instant asset write-offs – The government will extend the $20,000 instant asset write-off program for assets purchased, installed and ready for use between 1 July 2023 and 30 June 2024. This means small businesses (in this case, those with an annual turnover of less than $10 million) can deduct the full cost of business assets up to $20,000.

This is expected to support nearly four million Australian small businesses.

Budget surplus – The Government has confirmed that this was the first budget surplus in 15 years (only by $4 billion), due to strong employment rates (Australia’s current unemployment rate is 3.5 per cent, compared to its peak of 7.5 per cent in July 2020) and high prices for resource exports.

However, experts predict challenges could lay ahead in 2024, with commodity prices expected to drop, potentially plunging the government back into a deficit. So the real challenge will be seeing if the government can deliver long-term economic results. 

You can view the full budget papers here.

The post What HR needs to know about the 2023 Federal budget appeared first on HRM online.

The answer is by upskilling and reskilling. 

“We’ve started some reskilling programs in areas where we have high demand, such as data and analytics, risk and business banking. So far, we’ve had 200 of our employees go through that program and 100 of them got jobs in the area they reskilled for,” says Sian Lewis, Group Executive Human Resources at Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

With over 850 million members, LinkedIn has an unparalleled insight into this market.

In 2021 alone, 286 million skills were added to LinkedIn Learning profiles globally. Plus, nearly half of recruiters are using skills data to fill roles, a practice that is increasing year-on-year.

LinkedIn’s new Skills Evolution report unpacks how skills have changed since 2015 based on the skills that members are adding to their LinkedIn profiles. LinkedIn has learning courses to help with these skill sets, which you can access for free until 30 September 2022.

Here are the top skills in 2021 and the LinkedIn Learning courses that can help with upskilling and reskilling:

1. Customer Service – Serving Customers in a Continuously Changing World with David Brownlee
2. Time Management – Leadership Tips, Tactics, and Advice with Elizabeth Lotardo & Lisa Earle McLeod
3. Communication –  Unlocking Authentic Communication in a Culturally-Diverse Workplace with Jonathan Wilson
4. Sales – Asking Great Sales Questions with Jeff Bloomfield
5. Business Development – Business Development: Strategic Planning with Meridith Powell
6. Problem Solving – The Secret to Better Decisions: Stop Hoarding Chips with Seth Godin
7. Interpersonal Skills – Be the Manager People Won’t Leave with Laurie Ruettimann
8. Business Strategy –  Business Analysis for Busy Professionals with Christina Charenkova
9. Marketing – Marketing Foundations: The Marketing Funnel with Brad Batesole
10. Leadership – Time Management Fundamentals with Dave Crenshaw

What are the current skills that employers are seeking?

There will always be a demand for hard skills, but soft skills are on the rise due to their transferability across industries. Soft skills include, but are by no means limited to, leadership, problem-solving, communication, critical thinking and time management.

To further understand how skills across different industries are changing, LinkedIn examined specific industries worldwide and the top skills that employees in these industries are prioritising in order to future-proof their careers.

They include:

Marketing

With our ever-shortening attention spans, it is unsurprising that the top three skills the marketing sphere is crying out for are digital marketing, social media marketing and SEO (search engine optimisation).

Project Management

In these times of rapid change, an agile project manager could not be more crucial. Understandably, the top skills sought in project management are centred around pivoting, planning and coordination. This industry has seen a 70 per cent change in its requirements since 2015.

IT

No stranger to change, this industry is very agile. However, even the IT sphere has experienced massive disruption,and like project management, has seen a 70 per cent change in requirements since 2015. There is significant demand for cyber-security knowledge, network and system administration.

Engineering

New technologies dominate when it comes to in-demand skills for  engineers. The top three of these skills are AutoCAD, JavaScript and Java.

Finance and Accounting

This industry recorded the same three top skills as the engineering field. Bank reconciliation, journal entering, and financial planning are also recommended.

As we ride the waves of change, now is an opportune time to upskill and future-proof your career.

Click here to uncover more detail on the top 10 skills across industries globally and access the free LinkedIn Learning courses to get started on your skills journey.

Request a free demo to learn how LinkedIn Learning can keep your team learning and benefit your business.

The post The top skills Australian professionals are learning to future-proof their careers appeared first on HRM online.

Industry, union and business leaders spent two days hashing out details on the future of Australia’s workforce. Here’s what they landed on.

Over 140 heavy-hitters from business, union, industry and political circles gathered in Canberra this week to discuss critical and ambitious plans to reform the Australian economy by boosting workforce participation, increasing productivity and putting plans in place to boost real wages.

The lineup was impressive – attendees ranged from industry and union leaders, such as the Australian Council of Trade Unions Secretary Sally McManus and Australian Industry Group’s CEO Innes Willox, to business magnates including Fortescue Metals’s CEO Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forrest and Atlassian’s CEO Scott Farquhar. (See full list of attendees here).

These conversations on the future of Australia’s workforce are occurring at a critical juncture in time. Australians are facing soaring cost-of-living issues, employers are struggling to navigate the tightest labour market in recent history and the government is dealing with eye-wateringly high levels of national debt.

This means that every attendee had an agenda; each person felt their issue should be set as a priority, and not everyone will walk away happy.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers is not blind to this fact and, in his opening address, noted that bringing these disparate groups together would result in some challenging conversations, but said he felt cautiously optimistic about what the collective group could accomplish.

Here are some of the key issues and announcements to come out of the two-day summit.

1. Wages 

While discussions at the Jobs Summit were certainly varied – declining productivity, low female workforce participation rates, the introduction of multi-employer bargaining – they all ladder up to many people’s key concern: responding to the fall in real wages growth.

And it’s no wonder. Australia’s decline in wage growth has been a hot-button issue for years now. And despite recent ABS statistics showing that wage growth rose by 2.6 per cent this year, the accompanying inflation pressures mean this isn’t translating into a benefit for employees.

Public versus private wages from 2012-2022

State and territory breakdown of 2022 wage growth

This will no doubt continue to make headlines over the coming months, but the government hopes that many of the decisions made during the summit will help to ease pressures.

2. Productivity challenges and female workforce participation

To boost wages, you need to boost productivity, said the Grattan Institute’s CEO Danielle Wood.

Speaking to delegates, Wood stated:

“While productivity remains the secret sauce of higher incomes, it is worth noting that recent research finds some reduction in the share of productivity gains passed through to workers over the past 15 years.

“No matter how you cut it, the rate of productivity growth has slowed over the past decade. Over the past 60 years, our labour productivity improved at an average rate of 1.7 per cent a year. Over the decade to 2020, it was 1.1 per cent a year.

“This is not just an Australian phenomenon. The slowdown has been seen around the developed world, although our relative performance has also slid down the international rankings. Everyone is running slower, but Australia is also falling back in the field.”

Wood suggests these productivity concerns could be partly remedied by putting more resources into getting women back into the workforce.

“Women are often excluded from full-time work, and from the most prestigious high-paid roles, because these so-called ‘greedy jobs’ are incompatible with the load of unpaid care still disproportionately shouldered by women,” she said.

Read HRM’s article on ‘greedy work’ here.

According to Katy Gallagher, Minister for Finance, Women and the Public Service, if female participation in the workforce matched men’s, the economy could be 8.7 per cent larger by 2050.

As has been widely discussed and reported on, the pandemic has pushed back years of incremental wins for women in the workforce. As the graph below demonstrates, we’ve been making progress following a 19 per cent gender pay gap peak in 2014, but since the pandemic, that gap has started widening once again.

Read more about the current gender pay gap data.

Australia’s gender pay gap from 2012-2022

This drop in pay also coincides with a drop in female participation rates in the workforce, due to many women working in insecure jobs (hospitality, retail and tourism) and increasing the amount of unpaid labour they took on during the pandemic years.

“We can’t keep asking women to babysit the economy,” said Equality Rights Alliance’s Secretariat Helen Dalley-Fisher.

“We have to shift the distribution of unpaid work, and we have to change our workplaces to make this possible. We should expect everyone to work flexibly at some point in their careers as they meet their fair share of caring work.”

Australian workforce participation rates for men and women 2012-2022

Experts say the solution to this lies in better childcare support for working families.

In response to this, many have called on the government to bring forward its $5 billion childcare subsidy plan, which is currently set to be included in the October 2022 budget.

The plan would give families with a combined income of up to $80,000 a 90 per cent subsidy for childcare for their first child. Support would also be offered to families with a combined income of up to $530,000.

“We can’t keep asking women to babysit the economy.” – Helen Dalley-Fisher, Secretariat, Equality Rights Alliance.

KPMG’s National Chair, Alison Kitchen, was one of the voices in support of the subsidies.

“Policies to reform [subsidies] in the childcare sector are sound investments with tangible economic benefits. They’re not welfare. For every dollar invested in those policies, the nation’s GDP is boosted by almost $2.”

However, the government claims it cannot bring this subsidy forward due to the “massive debts” inherited from the previous government, and states that the $5 billion plan will still help thousands of working families when it’s introduced in the new financial year.

Speaking to HRM, Professor Ben Hamer CPHR, AHRI board member and Adjunct Professor at Edith Cowan University, says that while he understands the need to address childcare needs to support female participation at work, he is “perpetually frustrated” that this is framed as a women’s issue.

“It’s a family issue, and as far as employers are concerned when they’re looking to leverage untapped talent in a tight labour market, it’s absolutely an organisational issue,” says Hamer.

“We need to recognise that the nine-to-five, five-day-a-week model has been around for over 100 years. And yet women were only granted the full adult wage in Australia less than 50 years ago. 

“It was a system designed by men, for men. And so we need to fundamentally change the system.”

One way he suggests doing this is by embracing more flexible ways of working which, he acknowledges, most organisations are already doing but suggests that efforts should be more “radical” – such as scrapping the work-hours model completely and focussing on output alone. 

“We also can’t underestimate the importance of appropriate female representation at the most senior levels. And I’ll give you an example. When you look at the organisations mandating office attendance… you’ll find it’s rarely coming from female CEOs. Read into that as you will.”

3. Multi-employer bargaining and simplifying the Better Off Overall Test (BOOT) 

One of the more contentious items on the summit’s agenda was the introduction of multi-employer bargaining agreements. 

“Multi-employer bargaining gives unions the ability to strike agreements for workers across a number of organisations in the same industry,” says Hamer. 

Only a few hours into the summit, Workplace Relations Minister Tony Burke announced that the government was prepared to take “immediate action” to enable multi-employer agreements and to simplify the better off overall test (BOOT), which was introduced in 2009 by the Rudd government.

While the government concedes that the BOOT is in need of an overhaul – Treasurer Chalmers told ABC’s 7:30 it was “not sufficiently simple, fair or flexible enough for workers” – it’s standing steady in its plans to shake up enterprise bargaining.

“The changes that have been worked through right now will make a real difference to business being able to employ people, and people being able to make ends meet with decent pay rises into the future,” said Burke.

Those in low-income jobs are already able to enter into multi-employer agreements, but this process has been criticised and called “a failure”. Industry leaders are calling for more details to be released to give a better sense of what a wide-scale approach would look like, and how it would differ from current processes.

RMIT University professor, industrial relations expert and summit attendee Anthony Forsyth said that current individual enterprise bargaining “completely ignores how businesses have evolved”, noting that our new-found reliance on labour hire and outsourcing needs to be taken into account.

However, there’s plenty of opposition to this plan, notably from industry leaders and the political opposition.

Shadow Employment Minister Michaelia Cash, who was not present at the summit, said multi-employer bargaining would be “devastating” for the economy, as it could increase strike activity across sectors. And Innes Willox, CEO of the national employer association Ai Group, said such changes would be “seriously misguided”.

“We can, and must, make it much easier for small employers to engage in enterprise bargaining that enables agreements to be relevant to the genuine needs of the business and the employees,” Willox said in a statement. “We should definitely not subject them to a one-size-fits-all approach of sector bargaining and the prospect of damaging industrial action.”

Despite this opposition, Burke said consultations to legislate these changes are likely to begin next week and hopes the legislation will be introduced by the end of this calendar year. 

This move could very well be a defining feature of the Albanese government – for better or for worse.

3. Skilled migration and homegrown talent

One of the key ways to breathe life back into the Australian workforce from a skills perspective is to introduce more visas for highly skilled migrants.

On day two, Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil announced a temporary 35,000 increase to Australia’s migration intake cap, bringing it to 195,000. 

Regional migrant positions will also increase from 9000 to 34,000, as will state and territory sponsored visas (11,000 to 31,000).

“This is absolutely a step in the right direction to ensuring the right migration mix to support skill needs and labour market demands,” says Hamer. “But we can’t overlook the need to bring in more temporary workers, such as those on Working Holiday Maker (WHM) visas to bolster our hospitality, agriculture and tourism sectors, particularly as we head into the Christmas season. 

“And it’s not just about giving out visas, but creating the right conditions to entice and retain these workers. For example, there are over 70,00 backpackers with valid WHM visas currently outside of Australia who could travel and work here if they wanted, but have chosen to stay out of the country.”

“Now is the perfect time to take stock of where we’re at, identify current and emerging risks to the labour market, and come up with a plan for safeguarding our economy in the long run.” – Dr Ben Hamer CPHR, AHRI Board Director

O’Neil added that the government’s focus is firmly on Australian jobs first.

“That’s why so much of the summit has focused on training, and on the participation of women and other marginalised groups,” said O’Neil. “But the impact of COVID has been so severe that even if we exhaust every other possibility, we will still be many thousands of workers short, at least in the short term.”

Annie Butler, Federal Secretary of the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation, warned against using temporary overseas workers as disposable resources.

“To ensure we have the skilled workforce we need we must plan appropriately, train our local workforces, and then encourage overseas skills through permanent migration programs.”

Joanna Howe, University of Adelaide associate professor in law, is also in favour of permanent migration policies, as she believes the “poor quality” of temporary visa jobs, in terms of conditions and pay, make for a ‘revolving door’ situation.

Columnist and former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration, Abul Rizvi, added to this point, stating: “We are now barrelling towards becoming a fully fledged low-skilled guest worker society.”

This means we need to make plans to bolster homegrown talent in conjunction with an increase in migrant workers. To this point, the government announced an extra 180,000 fee-free TAFE places as of 2023, totalling $1.1 billion.

“We want to see more Australians gaining the skills they need to find good jobs, in areas of national priority,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said to summit delegates.

Notable mentions

That covers the big-ticket items discussed over the two days, but here are some other noteworthy announcements and discussion points that are worth mentioning.

• The government plans to offer better flexible working arrangements and access to unpaid parental leave to assist families in sharing the load for care work.
• Michelle O’Neil, President of the ACTU called for the paid parental leave scheme to be increased from 18 to 26 weeks immediately, and to be increased to a full year by 2030 in order to boost economic activity.
• More power will be given to the Fair Work Commission to get involved in unfair bargaining practices.
• A national construction industry forum will be created to manage safety, mental health, training, productivity, culture, gender and diversity in the industry.
• Albanese announced that his government would keep stage-three stage cuts, despite initial calls from the Labor government to scrap them.
• $36.1 million has been pledged to increase staff capacity in visa processing centres by 500 over the next nine months.
• Experts are pushing for more innovation to come out of Australia. We’re currently rated 25th in the world in terms of product innovation and 23rd for collaborative patents, said Queensland University of Technology Vice Chancellor Professor Margaret Sheil. Australia invests 1.8 per cent of its GDP into research and development compared to 2.3 per cent across the OECD.
•  Peter Dutton, who didn’t attend the summit, urged the government to consider letting older Australians back into the workforce without having to forgo their government benefits. Albanese responded by announcing a $4000 work bonus income bank credit for pensioners, allowing them to engage in more work. This will be available until June 30 2023.
• An increase in training and jobs for Indigenous Australians and culturally and linguistically diverse people. This will include 1000 digital apprenticeships in the Australian Public Service.
• Australian of the Year and tennis pro Dylan Alcott called for people living with disability to be able to pick up more hours of work without having to forgo any of their disability support payments.

You can view the government’s outcome document here.

Next steps

No matter what side of the fence you sit on regarding these issues, it seems clear that this government is committing to walking the talk with its proposed changes – and that proactivity is certainly going to make an impact in critical areas.

“The best time to develop strategic policy is not in reaction to when things are bad and reap the benefits years down the track,” says Hamer. “Now is the perfect time to take stock of where we’re at, identify current and emerging risks to the labour market, and come up with a plan for safeguarding our economy in the long run.”

Want to learn more about the changing state of the Industrial Relations landscape? AHRI members can sign up to a free webinar unpacking recent changes HR needs to know about.

The post What actually came out of the Jobs Summit? appeared first on HRM online.

Hundreds of HR professionals gathered in Sydney on Monday to kick-off the Australian HR Institute’s three-day National Convention. 

Day one focussed on equipping Australia’s public service with the critical skills needed to build resilient and thriving agencies that are prepared to weather future storms, and rebuild and re-think processes that have been disrupted by the pandemic.

Many impressive speakers were peppered throughout the program, including former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark and Shane Fitzsimmons AO AFSM, Commissioner of Resilience NSW, as well as a range of other experts.

Strong themes emerged in both the keynotes and panel sessions around building the leaders, skills and cultures needed to take Australia’s public service to new heights. Here’s a summary of what the speakers had to say.

The talent we need to cultivate

In a panel session moderated by Convention MC and journalist Mimi Kwa, Tiffany Blight CPHR, First Assistant Secretary, People and Culture, Department of Home Affairs; Suzi Woodrow-Read, Executive Director, Leadership and Capability, Queensland Public Service Commission; and Jo Talbot FCPHR, Chief People Officer, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, shared their thoughts on the future of skills development in the public service.

The pandemic put public servants front and centre of the public consciousness. 

“Before the pandemic people didn’t really think about nurses and teachers as being public servants,” says Woodrow-Read. “Now people have seen behind the curtain and know that [public servants] hold the levers that can shift our society.”

However, even though it’s a sector that offers secure employment in volatile times, it’s also much clearer now just how disparate public servants’ employment experience can be.

“We see people leaving the health and education sector in droves because they’re exhausted,” says Woodrow-Read. “Their value proposition for coming into the sector has been shifted by the pandemic.”

“The World Economic Forum has said that pre-pandemic it would have taken 100 years to reach full gender equality. They’re now saying 132 years.” – Helen Clark, former NZ Prime Minister

The private sector has also caught up with a lot of the offerings that differentiated public versus private jobs, such as flexible work arrangements, she says. This gives people professionals in the public service a clear call to action: now is the time to create new opportunities to attract talent.

This partly comes down to designing more enticing employment opportunities, but there’s also ample opportunity to tap into underrepresented talent.

In Woodrow-Read’s opinion, there’s no shortage of high-quality young candidates coming into the public sector. So she thinks HR should zero in on mid-to-senior career professionals.

Blight agrees, saying that she thinks HR sometimes overlooks existing talent.

“A lot of research points to the fact that there’s still a great deal of interest from that [older] cohort of wanting to continue to engage with learning, and the retirement age is getting older now,” says Blight.

“Nine out of 10 jobs of the future are going to require some form of qualification. In that particular cohort, about 40 per cent don’t have qualifications right now. That group is ripe for investment. The interest is there, the capability is there, they plan to stay in our workforces yet we’re overlooking them.”

The learning cultures we need to build

To make the most of under-represented groups, Talbot suggests thinking about how you create a learning culture in your organisation.

“That needs to be far more focused on bite-sized, just-in-time learning rather than thinking people have to spend years [learning] something. We’ve got to be quicker and to be able to adapt our learning styles.”

So what are the skills that we need to build in our workforces, particularly those working in government agencies?

Digital skills are the obvious answer, says Talbot.

“By 2025 we’re going to need an additional 6.5 million digital workers and we’re going to be competing across every sector for that.”

Woodrow-Read calls out integrity as a key attribute.

“As a public servant, you have power given to you that can change and impact people’s lives. We need people who understand that and use it wisely.”

She also says it’s important to hire people with the ability to work within complexity.

“We have to have leaders who can ‘boundary expand’. A lot of the work of the government is not done in silos. It’s done in-between boundaries. We have to have people who are skilled at doing that.

“We’re also looking for leaders who can set up governance and learning environments that have really quick feedback loops. The people on the ground innovate incredibly well, but that knowledge often gets lost when we get up to a team and organisational level. We need leaders who protect learning and support and advocate for experimentation.”

Want to catch up on another Convention panel? Read HRM’s wrap up of the conversation about how HR can prepare for the future of the public sector.

Talbot suggests that the future of the public service – and perhaps the workforce more broadly – could see less of a focus on people working in siloed teams and more ad-hoc utilization of people’s skills.

“We might not see people working with set teams but bringing people together with different skill sets to focus on solving workplace [challenges].”

Talbot adds that a big part of changing up the learning culture in the public sector is embedding psychological safety.

“Avoid putting punitive measures in place if something goes wrong. Allow for people to experiment with risks,” says Talbot. 

One way she’s seen this work well in the past is by gamifying the learning experience.

“You have challenges where you’re trying to encourage people to do things differently… that creates a culture where people are more willing to come to you with ideas.”

Blight turns the skill conversation back onto HR, saying it’s time the people profession learned the language required for the future of work.

“Years ago, we used to talk about HR speaking the language of finance. [Now] we need to speak the language of our IT colleagues. That’s what’s compelling right now. That’s how we become influential at that executive table.”

The leaders we need to build

The droughts, the bushfires, the pandemic, the mouse plague, the floods, the cost-of-living crisis, the global conflict – crises are coming at us thick and fast.

“I don’t think we can underestimate the extraordinary implications of such significant consecutive disasters affecting communities over and over and over again,” says Shane Fitzsimmons AO AFSM, Commissioner of Resilience NSW.

Former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark, summarises these challenges as the three Cs – COVID-19, climate change and conflict – and says these are among the most incredible years she’s witnessed in her lifetime.

To respond to this increasingly complex and volatile environment, we need capable, adaptable and practical leaders at the helm of both our government agencies and organisations.

“We certainly learned a great deal about leadership styles during the pandemic. There were some simply shocking examples of leadership, but there were also some stellar ones,” says Clark, who was also recently appointed Co-Chair of the independent panel for pandemic preparedness and response, undertaken by the World Health Organisation.

“I don’t think we can underestimate the extraordinary implications of such significant consecutive disasters affecting communities over and over and over again.” – Shane Fitzsimmons AO AFSM, Commissioner of Resilience NSW

What set apart the wheat from the chaff, according to Clark, were the world leaders who were quickly able to assemble a strategy and a plan, and then invite people to follow along.

“I also think transparency, empathy and openness are incredibly important.”

Clark also suggests that it’s important to leave your ego at the door when leading in any circumstance, but especially when leading through a crisis.

“You want leaders who say, ‘I want to be open to the best advice… and that was the case with Jacinda Ardern [regarding her response to COVID-19]. She was out there six days a week holding press conferences at the height of it all. What she was able to demonstrate was that if you stick to a plan, you could beat this thing.”

Fitzsimmons also focused his keynote on the leadership skills HR can help to cultivate at both a government and organisation level, focusing on six main traits:

1. Authenticity

“We need to have a good look at the person we see in the mirror and understand what our strengths are,” says Fitzsimmons. “What are our natural traits and behaviours? What are our limitations? What are our worries?

“[As leaders], we have to own and understand our limitations and our nuances because the people around us already see them; they value them and respect them. What people don’t want to see is the poser who pretends to be somebody they’re not,” he says.

The more authentic leaders can be about what they’re doing and, more importantly, why they’re doing it, the more likely employees are to buy into the leadership agenda.

2. Humility and empathy

The core of this is not taking yourself too seriously, but taking everything you do seriously, says Fitzsimmons.

“Remember that we are leaders amongst a group; we are part of a big team. And more and more we’re part of a multi-agency or organisational environment. 

“The more we can understand and connect and relate to our teams, colleagues and subordinates… the more we can understand what matters to them and what motivates them. That’s really important.”

3. Mutual respect 

One of the values that was instilled into Fitzsimmons as a kid was that “manners cost you nothing, but a lack of them can cost you everything”.

“As I transitioned into adult life and leadership life, I saw that manners comes down to mutual respect and genuinely encouraging and inviting in different perspectives, experiences, skills and attributes to what you’ve got and what your immediate team has got, particularly in times of crisis.”

The benefit of this diversity of thought is the many different solutions it can bring to the table. 

“Make sure people understand that challenging the status quo and challenging your initial thoughts is okay; it’s helpful. Indeed, it’s critical that we’re not just accepting the loudest or most common voice in the room.”

4. Act quickly

Indecision infuriates and frustrates people, says Fitzsimmons, but most people are happy when a decision is made and explained to them, rather than no decision at all.

People don’t expect leaders to get it right all the time. As Clark says, even the best and most capable leaders didn’t always get it right when navigating the pandemic. However, they do expect you to do something.

Fitzsimmons reinforces this. “In the workplace, in times of crisis, one of the biggest deflators of morale, optimism and hope is the procrastination of management… Doing nothing is invariably not an option. Doing something is critical. Let’s not let the pursuit of perfection stand in the way of meaningful progress. 

5. Hold people account for  poor behaviour

Calling out poor performance is probably one of the most critical things leaders can role model, says Fitzsimmons, referring to the oft-told saying, ‘The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.’

Inspired by this time spent as a mechanic in the early part of his career, he uses the analogy of a flat tyre to convey how to handle inappropriate behaviour or attitudes in the workplace.

“Sometimes it’s as simple as putting a tyre badge on, pushing the trigger and re-inflating the tyre because it’s just gone down over a period of time. Soft, subtle intervention gets that tire back up and running. 

“Sometimes, of course, when we try to reinflate that tyre, we might identify a puncture. So we’ve got to be a little more decisive and intrusive with our interventions. If we plug it effectively, we can inflate it again and away it goes. But sometimes there are too many plugs in the tyre and we’ve actually got to get rid of it and replace it with a new one,” he says.

“Now a flat tyre is one thing on a unicycle, but if it’s a flat tyre on the front wheel of your bus that’s driving your team around then the reality is that it’s holding up everyone until someone gets out and fixes it.”

6. Presence matters

Leaders need to know when to show up, says Fitzsimmons. 

“Leaders need to demonstrate care. I don’t think that’s talked about enough in leadership circles. Leaders need to be present particularly when things are going wrong or when there’s bad news or tragedy in the workplace. Presence matters.

“We’ve got to lead by example. These last few years have been unparalleled in our history. The amount of significant displacement, disruption and tragedy have created a backdrop of anxiety and uncertainty… and there’s a need for so much healing across different aspects of our community and workforces. 

“As leaders, we’ve got to stand up and normalise these conversations and reiterate that it’s okay to be challenged.”

Build back better for women

Considering the ways in which the pandemic has impacted women, Clark says they need to be considered as key stakeholders when redesigning policy and process.

“There’s no doubt that the pandemic has set back the battle for gender equality by years. The World Economic Forum has said that pre-pandemic it would have taken 100 years to reach full gender equality. They’re now saying 132 years. As an overarching figure, that’s quite disturbing,” says Clark.

“And there’s always a lag with the measurement [of data], so we won’t get the full story for some time.”

Women’s employment rates took a bigger hit than men’s during the pandemic, says Clark.

“Women’s employment declined by 4.2 per cent and men’s by 3 per cent,” she says. “Women lost somewhere between 54 and 56 million jobs.”

There are a few reasons for this. One is that women were more likely to be employed in industries prone to disruption due to the pandemic, such as tourism, hospitality and retail.

Secondly, Clark says women bore the brunt of having to take on more of the childcare responsibilities.

“About three quarters of the world’s unpaid work is done by women. You try to be a senior [female] banker working from home with toddlers screaming their heads off. It’s very difficult.”

Not only does Clark want to elevate women at work in general to help them bounce back from the pandemic, she also wants to see more holding leadership positions.

“Women leaders are a rare commodity, and to get there they have to be strong.”

Clark’s parting advice to HR professionals working in the public sector is to be honest with employees, leaders and the community about what the government is dealing with.

“Be clear about the scale of the challenges and go back to the basic leadership attributes: have a strategy, have a plan and say, ‘Here’s what we know and here’s what we don’t know’.

“We’ve got a lot more resources than other countries, so we have an opportunity to get it right,” she says. “And one would hope to see gender-responsive recovery strategies which can look at the loss of important opportunities and how to build back better for women.”

Stay tuned for our wrap-up or days two and three, and follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn to stay abreast of the key themes of AHRI’s Convention.

The post Building back better: the skills and leadership Australia’s public service needs to thrive appeared first on HRM online.

The last few years of celebrations for International HR Day have felt particularly important. In 2020, we acknowledged your ability to respond quickly in the face of significant challenges. Last year, we celebrated the initiatives that you spearheaded to support employees’ wellbeing and to develop leadership capabilities. This year, we’re finally able to remove our short-term glasses and gaze into the future.

To get a sense of how HR has changed over the last few years, and where the profession is heading, HRM spoke with Alvin Aloysius Goh, Executive Director at Singapore Human Resources Institute (SHRI); Peter Cheese, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) in the UK; and Sarah McCann Bartlett, CEO of the Australian HR Institute (AHRI).

International HR Day has come at a significant time as we move into the endemic phase of COVID-19, says Goh.

“It is definitely a milestone celebration… The need for HR professionals to step out of our comfort zone is pressing. The biggest concern for HR professionals to maintain our forward trajectory is to not slip back into the old ways of working.”

But as HR embraces new opportunities, they need to turn inwards, too.

“We have had a difficult few years and we need to be more conscious of our own personal wellbeing,” says Goh.

McCann-Bartlett acknowledges how tough the last few years have been for HR.

“You have looked after everyone else’s wellbeing, often at the expense of your own. International HR Day is a well-deserved day of putting yourself first and appreciating the vital work that you do.”

How has the pandemic changed HR?

HR professionals’ value within a business has never been more apparent than in the last few years, says McCann-Bartlett.

“The pandemic taught HR to both manage the here and now and to be one step ahead, offering leadership to help people through changes while still focussing on profit, productivity and employee wellbeing.”

Cheese doesn’t believe that HR’s role has changed so much as it has been reinforced.

“This pandemic has strengthened the role of our profession, and given us more confidence to know we can innovate and make change happen,” he says.

“Our role in understanding and supporting people, responding to and helping to enable change, shaping ways of working, enabling positive, inclusive and supportive cultures… have been at the heart of what we’ve had to do during the pandemic. 

“We have literally been on the front line; we have stepped up and found ourselves in the middle of almost every decision and discussion with management. That has been very challenging, but also exciting in what we have accomplished.

Cheese believes the pandemic has positioned HR at the centre of business strategy.

While Goh agrees that HR has gained “significant recognition” in recent years, he says being put under a spotlight can have its challenges.

“Being highlighted can be a double-edged sword as it has shown both the gaps and strengths of the role that we play in the ecosystem,” he says.

However, the lessons learned, he says, will position the function for success in the future.

“We have become much wiser in the political, technological space, and have recognised the importance of developing a sustainable workforce in the face of the various challenges.”

If it wasn’t already apparent to business leaders, the pandemic proved that HR professionals are much more than the guardians of administrative functions. McCann-Bartlett says they’ve proved themselves to be critical business partners, strategic advisors and experts at navigating uncharted waters. They became masters of being both reactive and proactive, and there isn’t a part of the business that the function doesn’t influence.

“We have seen, and will continue to see, an increase in that influence and the broadened scope of HR’s role, especially in the areas of technology and automation,” she says.

“We have literally been on the front line; we have stepped up and found ourselves in the middle of almost every decision and discussion with management.” – Peter Cheese, CEO, CIPD.

This increased influence and remit will be important as HR professionals navigate challenges of the future. The most pertinent, McCann-Bartlett suggests, will be keeping the digital and technological skills of the workforce, and themselves, up to date.

For example, the high influx of AI-enabled work and the digitisation of work mean that the HR portfolio might soon need to span both the real and the virtual world.

“So the questions HR needs to think about are: How do we humanise the work for our employees in the context of AI and work design? How do we manage and resolve task ambiguity between AI and the worker? 

“While all these digital technologies and advances are going to be essential and inevitable, it’s also essential that we continue to develop and nurture our people. This is incredibly important because the relationship between humans and robots will be mutually supportive.”

What does the future hold for HR?

The pandemic and the geopolitical and environmental crises will “shine a light on business to show how they are creating a sustainable future… and how they look after and develop their people, and support their customers and stakeholders,” says Cheese.

“This is the context that will shape the future of [the HR] profession. It defines a truly strategic agenda for HR and the need to grow our capabilities in areas such as organisational development and learning and development, to be able to upskill and reskill our people in a rapidly changing world.

“We will therefore be seen at the heart of business and the business agenda. We will also have to invest in ourselves – in building capabilities in stronger analytical insight and awareness.

We will need to be led more from principles, not just rules and policies, in order to be agile and innovative.”

In the near future, McCann-Bartlett predicts that HR will become more involved in finance, technology, and business strategies.

​​”Bringing an HR lens into these areas of business means we’ll see a culture shift in how we think about the bottom line; people matter as much as processes and procedures do.”  

In the next 10-15 years, Goh anticipates HR leaders will continue to create sustainable workforces that allow employees to thrive.

“I hope we treat our workforce not as a resource or capital but as people, and that we present equal opportunities for all,” he says.

“We need to implement workplace-friendly policies [and continue to] eliminate various forms of workpalce discrimination, such as those focused on someone’s age, nationality, gender, mental or physical disabilities.”

What skills does HR need to focus on?

In order to realise this future, some HR professionals may need to upskill themselves and those in their organisation.

“AHRI’s Skills for a Post Pandemic Future research tells us that rapid upskilling will be required for many organisations to move from the states of ‘reacting’ or ‘resolving’ to ‘recovering,'” says McCann-Barlett.

To do this, she says there are five skill categories that HR professionals need to focus on: adapting to change, resilience, workforce planning, communication, and compliance in an ever-changing industrial/employment relations environment.

“Leaders need upskilling as well – in areas such as resilience, agility and self-awareness – to better understand how fundamental an appropriately skilled workforce is to their organisation’s recovery journey.

“Overall, I see HR undergoing a renewed investment in training across the profession. The dependency on HR translates into a growing need for upskilling, reskilling, and cross skilling the HR community.”

“The need for HR professionals to step out of our comfort zone is pressing. The biggest concern for HR professionals to maintain our forward trajectory is to not slip back into the old ways of working.”– Alvin Aloysius Goh, Executive Director, SHRI.

Cheese says HR professionals need to ensure they’re always forefronting their projects, policies and practices with evidence and insights, meaning there may be a need to upskill in people analytics and data analysis.

“We must also bring in a deeper understanding of science and research – behavioural and neuroscience – to inform our practices and interventions. And we need to be more prepared to experiment and to try different things from which we can learn and adapt.

“There are also areas of specialism that are rapidly growing across the profession. Strategic workforce planning is a vital set of capabilities that must be driven by, and also influence, business strategy.”

The past few years have also presented opportunities for HR leaders to challenge their own thinking.

“We’ve had to reimagine how work can be carried out on virtual platforms and had to look at new ways of engaging our workforce,” says Goh.

“We have adapted and reimagined how the future of work and our workplaces [enable] HR professionals to play a key and strategic role, not just an operational role.”

Put your influence to good use and help your organisation to prepare for the future by attending AHRI’s online network forum titled ‘The Future of Work: How we can adapt and thrive’ on 24 May. Book your spot today. 

The post What does the future hold for HR? Three leaders share their thoughts appeared first on HRM online.

The end of the financial year and the next federal election are fast approaching, and that means another budget has been handed down. 

The Government has predicted a budget deficit of $78 billion, 3.4 per cent of GDP, which is forecasted to drop to 1.6 per cent over the next three years.

A focal point of this year’s announcement was the projection for the lowest unemployment rate in almost half a century. With the rate forecast to drop to 3.75 per cent by September 2022, the Australian Financial Review reports that 13.4 million Australians could be in work, representing an extra 611,000 workers who will be employed compared to pre-pandemic expectations.

The rate is also three percentage points lower than the Coalition predicted in the 2020-21 budget.

Although skills shortages and the war for talent still exert their impact, the Government is hoping the swathe of job boosting initiatives it’s proposing will turn this prediction into a reality.

“The forecast of record-low unemployment leading to real wages growth is a mixed bag for employers,” says AHRI’s CEO Sarah McCann Bartlett. 

Predictions suggest that wage growth will only slightly overtake inflation rates in the next few years. Noticeable changes to wages aren’t predicted until the middle of the decade.

“This means that initiatives to drive workforce participation – especially for under-represented groups – a significant skills uplift and strong productivity initiatives are vital,” she adds.

The budget touched on a number of measures aimed at reducing the cost of living (more on that towards the end of the article), but Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s fourth budget includes several key points of interest for HR. 

(You can read the full budget announcement here).

1. Changes to paid parental leave

A relevant election promise for HR is the allowance of 20 weeks’ paid parental leave, which would be split between working parents.

While this wouldn’t differ too much from the original scheme – which allows for 18 weeks’ leave for ‘primary carers’ and two weeks for ‘secondary’ carers – the proposed new scheme allows for the existing schemes to be combined and split between parents as they see fit. 

“It will assist to promote equality between mothers and fathers and empower families to make their own decisions without being restricted by policy settings defined by ‘primary’ or ‘secondary’ carers,” the budget outlines.

And, for the first time, single parents would be eligible to claim the full 20 weeks.

At a cost of $346 million over five years, the boost to parental leave is predicted to assist 180,000 new parents. This is in addition to the previously announced boost to the childcare subsidy scheme, which provides a greater subsidy for eligible families (those with a combined income less than $354,000) with more than one child aged five and under in care.

“Providing greater flexibility in how families choose to take paid parental leave should encourage greater take-up by both parents, and the increased threshold is welcomed,” says McCann-Bartlett.

“However, the payment of superannuation on parental leave remains an outstanding issue for women’s long-term financial security, and further initiatives to expand access to and availability of affordable childcare would have been welcomed by employers as well as families.”

2. Promises around training and education

The Commonwealth, state and territory governments will continue working towards a National Skills Agreement, which will be bolstered by a $3.7 billion cash injection which the government believes could deliver 800,000 training spots.

The government has also promised $2.8 billion, over a five year period, towards upskilling apprentices via the Australian Apprenticeship Incentive scheme, which replaces the existing Boosting Apprenticeship Commencements scheme.

As part of the scheme, apprentices who start their training could receive cash payments of up to $5000 across their first two years. And employers who take them on could receive up to $15,000 in wage subsidies.

“A focus on training for line managers in good people management practices, for instance, would unlock greater productivity for business, improve on-the-job training and make our workplaces even more adaptable and flexible.” – Sarah McCann-Barlett, CEO, AHRI

Promises of a multi-million dollar investment into aged care training, which were alluded to prior to budget night, could potentially ease pressures on this exhausted industry. Approximately 15,000 subsidised vocational education and training places in aged care have been promised, at a cost of $49.5 million.

The government is also offering an attractive tax incentive for small to medium-sized businesses (with annual turnover of less than $50 million) that are willing to invest in upgrading systems and upskilling staff. 

As of last night, businesses can access a 20 per cent tax deduction for the cost of external training for employees, and for digital technologies purchased for work (up to $100,000 in each FY).

“Every hundred dollars small businesses spend on digital technologies, like cloud computing, e-invoicing, cybersecurity and web design, will see them get a $120 tax deduction,” said Frydenberg in his announcement.

“While it is pleasing to see the government continuing to recognise the importance of investing in apprenticeships and training, especially in digital upskilling for small business, AHRI would have liked to have seen even more of a focus on skills in this budget, given their role in driving productivity improvements,” says McCann-Bartlett.

“A focus on training for line managers in good people management practices, for instance, would unlock greater productivity for business, improve on-the-job training and make our workplaces even more adaptable and flexible.”

McCann-Barlett adds that while the investment towards digital skills is welcomed, she had hoped to see more in this space.

“Digital skills will be amongst the most important in the future of work, with advancements in technology rapidly changing and many employees currently struggling to keep up. The Australian Digital Inclusion Index shows that less than 40 per cent of Australians feel they can keep up with the pace of change surrounding technology, and that 1 in 4 feel digitally excluded.”

3. What’s in the budget for women?

Frydenberg stated more than once that there are “more women in the workforce than ever before”, but admitted that there was more work to do.

The Government hopes its $2.1 billion package will help to bridge the gap between men and women at work, and society at large, and help women to “fulfil their potential”. This includes $18.5 million to support the Workplace Gender Equality Agency to progress gender equality in Australian workplaces.

Over $480 million has been carved out to help women advance in their careers, including a $56.2 million investment to encourage more women to join the tech and manufacturing sectors, the latter of which is historically male dominated.

It’s also hoping to set women up for future success via a $40.4 million cash injection into “a range of initiatives” to support women to take on more senior roles and leadership positions. This includes the expansion of the Women’s Jobs Academy – which provides mentoring and training for women looking to rise in the ranks.

It also includes $9.4 million to get more women into board positions, as well as a $31 million initiative to get more female leaders in the sports industry.

The government has also pledged $3.4 million to address workplace sexual harassment as part of the recommendations set out in Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkin’s Respect@Work report. At this stage, the majority of Jenkins’s suggestions for legislative and regulatory reforms had not been passed by the Government.

As part of this women’s package, $1.3 billion has been set aside to combat Australia’s troubling family and domestic violence statistics, which show that 1 in 6 women experience physical or sexual violence at the hands of their partner (men experience this at a rate of 1 in 16).

This money is said to fund the development of a National Plan to End Violence Against Women and Children 2022-23 and the establishment of a new Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence Commission ($22.4 million). Frydenberg also stated that this package would fund more frontline support services, emergency accommodation and legal services for women escaping family and domestic violence.

You can read HRM’s three-step guide to addressing domestic violence at work here.

4. Embracing diverse talent and regional workers

People living with a disability and their families are also set to benefit, with the budget allocating $6.1 million towards a national advertising program for job seekers living with a disability. Businesses who employ mature-age participants of the Disability Employment Services program via the Restart Wage Subsidy are also covered, with a promised injection of $44.6 million of government support across the next two years.

“It’s pleasing to see that the budget contains some measures to increase workforce participation, including the subsidy to hire employees with disabilities,” says McCann-Bartlett.

In a job market where skills shortages are aplenty, it doesn’t pay to discount anyone – especially workers with diverse life experiences.

“Only 53 per cent of people living with disability are employed in Australia. And employees living with disability are as productive as other employees and the research shows they take fewer sick days,” says McCann-Bartlett.

There’s also a promised extension to the Time to Work Employment Services program for one year, providing Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander prisoners with pre-employment services to the value of $3.2 million.

As for Australians living in rural and regional areas, a new Energy Security and Regional Development Plan promises to invest $7.1 billion into regional Australia over 11 years. This goes alongside $800,000 to improve mobile phone coverage in remote areas.

“As remote work arrangements continue, and broader talent pools open up as a result of this, it’s important for our regional and rural workers to be supported with quality, high-speed internet and digital infrastructure,” says McCann-Bartlett.

5. Cost-of-living package

Joining this raft of announcements relevant to HR are a number of other measures aimed at reducing the cost of living across the board.

As part of a multibillion-dollar ‘cost-of-living package’, the budget offers:

• • A temporary cut to the price of fuel. To address skyrocketing fuel prices, the budget confirms a cut to the government’s fuel excise, halving it from 44.2 cents per litre to 22.1 cents per litre. This will cost $3 billion.
    
  • One-off cash payments. Pensioners, veterans, job seekers, eligible self-funded retirees and concession card holders will receive a one-off payment of $250.
  • An extension to the income tax offset. Low and middle income earners (those earning up to $126,000 a year) will benefit from an additional one-off $420 tax offset. This means eligible Australians will receive between $675 and $1500 come tax time. However, the low and middle income tax threshold will end with this financial year.

Buoyed by Australia’s lowest unemployment rate in 50 years, the Coalition would be hoping this suite of ‘cost-of-living’ cuts will sway voters come election time in May.

However, as ABC political reporter Laura Tingle noted in the post-budget analysis, many of the announcements, such as temporary cuts to fuel prices, are only likely to provide short-term benefits over the next six months or so. So, it begs the question, will the other more targeted spends be enough to get the Coalition over the line come election time? Time will tell.

Let us know what you thought about the budget announcements in the comment section below. 

The post What HR needs to know about the 2022 Federal budget appeared first on HRM online.