Most people have heard a version of the saying ‘good leaders ask good questions’. It’s less common, however, to think about asking a good mix of different types of questions.

“When you read about this in management literature, you get insights like, ‘Good questions are follow-up questions or open-questions, but [leaders need] a little more guidance than that,”  says Arnaud Chevallier, strategy professor at IMD Business School in Switzerland.

Particularly for first-time leaders, the tendency to jump into solution mode before letting curiosity play out can put many organisational elements at risk, such as innovation (if we don’t ask questions to surface everyone’s ideas), psychological safety (if people don’t feel they can push back on an idea) and wasting time or resources (if we put all our energy into solving the wrong challenge).

That’s why Chevallier has spent years determining five types of questions that he and his co-researchers believe will help leaders and organisations to operate on a deeper, more strategic level.

“I think all executives and professionals should develop a mindful set of questions that they’re constantly updating to serve them better in the decisions they’re making,” says Chevallier.

5 types of questions

Over three years, Chevallier and his co-authors Frédéric Dalsace and Jean-Louis Barsoux, also professors at IMD, conducted interviews with hundreds of top-performing executives to learn about their favourite types of questions.

“Then we refined them using the Delphi method and organised the questions into general buckets.”

They also conducted a robust literature review.

“Management executives aren’t trained to ask questions, but other professions are – physicians, psychologists, journalists, lawyers. We wanted to learn as much as we could from those other fields [whose workforces] have thought long and hard about the meaning of questions.”

From this research, they first determined four types of question, which are as follows:

1. Investigative questions

These types of questions follow a similar line of thinking to Toyota’s ‘five whys’, says Chevallier.

“This is epitomised by the ‘what’s known?’ type of question. Investigative questions help you probe the root causes of the problem, and help you to go deeper into the decision you need to make.”

Examples:

• What is and isn’t working?
• What are the causes of the problem?
• How feasible and desirable is each option?
• What evidence supports our proposed plan?

2. Speculative questions

Going deep with investigative questions is important, but not sufficient, says Chevallier. 

It’s also useful to go broader with your line of questioning. This is where speculative questioning comes into play.

“We epitomised speculative questions within ‘what if?’ For example, ‘What if we didn’t care about costs?’ or ‘What if we could relax these other constraints?’

“[These questions] foster innovation by challenging the implicit or the explicit assumptions we come to in our decisions.

“For HR professionals, who are addressing the human component of [work], you really need to develop your subjective question mix so you’re always asking yourself ‘what’s the actual meaning that’s going on behind the words?’”

Examples:

• What other scenarios might exist?
• Could we approach this differently?
• What else might we propose?
• What can we simplify, modify, combine or eliminate?
• What potential solutions have we not considered?

“All executives and professionals should develop a mindful set of questions that they’re constantly updating to serve them better in the decisions they’re making.” – Arnaud Chevallier, strategy professor, IMD Business School

3. Productive questions

It’s also important to have a set of questions that are designed to move processes along, says Chevallier. He refers to these as the ‘Now what?’ questions.

“They’re here to help us adjust the pace of the decision making – sometimes accelerating it because the deadline is coming, or sometimes slowing down because we’ve come to a decision with a preconceived mindset or there might be cognitive biases that are crowding our judgement.”

Examples:

• What do we need to achieve before we advance to the next stage?
• Do we know enough to move forward?
• Do we have the resources to move forward?
• Are we ready to make a decision?
  

4. Interpretative questions

Interpretative, or sense-making, questions help us take what we’ve learned from our investigative, speculative and productive questions and turn them into insights.

“[These questions] are epitomised by the ‘So what?’ Okay, we’ve figured out this one thing, what is that telling us about our overarching goal?'”

Examples:

• What did we learn from this new information?
• What could this mean for our present and future actions?
• How does this fit in with our overarching goal?
• What are we trying to achieve?

Chevallier and his colleagues were originally happy with these four types of questions, but after analysing the insights gleaned from their discovery sessions with the executives, they realised something was missing. 

They needed a question type that surfaced the many things that are often left unsaid, which led to the addition of a fifth type of question.

5. Subjective questions

“We’re not dealing with robots. We’re dealing with people. In every conversation, there are hidden emotional or possibly political sets of insights. [In these cases], it’s [important] to figure out the meaning behind the words,” says Chevallier.

For people managers, this is where you might uncover people’s frustrations, tensions or hidden agendas. People’s answers to these types of questions can often lead you down a completely unexpected (and often critical) pathway.

From an organisational perspective, subjective questions can protect a business from risks such as wasted budgets, reputational damage and causing dissent or disengagement to brew in teams.

Examples:

• How do you feel about this decision?
• What aspect of this most concerns you?
• Are there any differences between what was said, what was heard and what was meant?
• Are all stakeholders genuinely aligned?
• Have we consulted all the right people?

Learn how to hone your leadership and management skills with this short course from AHRI.

Curious cultures

While Chevallier and his colleague’s research didn’t go into detail about the cultural environments that are required to allow for these types of questions, his opinion is that trust and psychological safety are key to making these types of questions effective.

In an article for Harvard Business Review, they wrote: “Team members may be reluctant to explore emotional issues unless the leader provides encouragement and a safe space for discussion. 

“They may fail to share misgivings simply because no one else is doing so – a social dynamic known as pluralistic ignorance. Leaders must invite dissenting views and encourage doubters to share their concerns.”

You also need to choose your timing wisely when asking certain questions, says Chevallier.

“If you come into a new position and start asking a bunch of speculative questions, it might be too early. You might first need to establish those relationships with people.”

Read HRM’s article about how to build social capital in the workplace.

Auditing your question default

Chevallier and his colleagues have created an interactive tool – which will launch later this year – to help leaders assess which type of questions they default to. For example, you might complete the assessment and discover you have very few points allocated to speculative questions.

“[In that case], you could make a list of 10 speculative questions and, ahead of a meeting, highlight a couple that you’d like to ask,” he says.

There’s no specific mix of questions to ask, he adds. The research isn’t suggesting every situation calls for one of each type of question.

“You might ask five different investigative questions. It depends on the specific situation. 

“The five types of questions, hopefully, help people realise that there are various ways to look at a problem or a decision. Before we follow our muscle memory into one direction or another, we should periodically step back and ask, ‘Are we still going in a productive direction?’

“The world of today is not like the world of yesterday. We absolutely need to update the way we make sense of it or we’re at risk of not being able to decipher it.”

Example questions listed in this article sourced from Dalsace, Barsoux and Chevallier’s article on their research in Harvard Business Review print edition (May-June 2024). You can read the online version here.

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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.

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To excel as the architects of workplace culture and the designers of the employee experience, HR practitioners need to design HR strategies that resonate with their workforce. This often requires a creative approach, such as applying design thinking to their initiatives, says Lisa Burquest, Chief People Officer at Virgin Australia.

“In a world where you’ve got finite resources, you’ve got to be able to work yourself through a process of prioritising your focus areas very quickly,” she says. 

“The design thinking model approach allows you to get quick cut-through. It creates relevance because it’s built in the context of who you are, what you’re doing and where you need to go.”

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a creative approach to problem-solving which originated in product development as a way to understand and meet the needs of consumers. IDEO, a global design and consulting firm, is credited with popularising the application of design thinking to a broad range of industries. 

“Design thinking has its origins in the training and the professional practice of designers, but these are principles that can be practiced by everyone and extended to every field of activity,” said IDEO’s CEO Tim Brown in 2009. 

Employers are increasingly recognising the value of human-centred design thinking to inform the development of HR initiatives. Global leaders such as AirBnB, Apple, Bank of America, Google, IBM, Nike, and Uber have all adopted design thinking to address a range of workforce challenges, including workplace culture change, skills building and organisational transformation.

At Virgin Australia, following the disruptions to the airline industry brought by the pandemic, the HR team used a design thinking mindset to help navigate a period of significant transformation. 

“Our strategy post-administration was repositioning Virgin Australia as a value carrier in the market. Our strategy specifically puts our people at the centre. We call it Virgin Flair,” says Burquest, who is speaking at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August.

“It’s all about how we work with our people to rebuild the business in a way that delivers for our customer, [leads to] financial and operational outcomes and makes us a better, more focused business as we move forward.

“Some people thought, ‘How can you possibly get that business back on track?’, but we had a methodical and aspirational strategy that we were chasing [to rebuild the business].”

“Human-centred design thinking forces you to think back on what the business is here to do. It’s not creating a plan that’s HR for HR’s sake.” – Lisa Burquest, Chief People Officer at Virgin Australia

The five stages of design thinking

There are a number of frameworks employers can use to guide them in the design thinking process, including the British Design Council’s Double Diamond framework and American Institution of Graphic Arts’s Head, Heart and Hand model. 

Among the most popular frameworks is the five-step design thinking model developed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, which offers a formula for effective human-centred design thinking.

“Human-centred design thinking forces you to think back on what the business is here to do. It’s not creating a plan that’s HR for HR’s sake, it’s creating focus areas and priorities that are directly linked to what the business needs to achieve,” says Burquest.

The Hasso-Plattner Institute’s framework breaks down human-centred design into five distinct stages: 

1. Empathise

Human-centred design must begin with empathy in order to ensure solutions align with the needs of people who will be impacted by them, which are employees in this instance.

By forefronting the voices of employees, employers can get their buy-in and ensure they feel like the changes are happening for them, rather than to them.

In recognition of the diverse needs of different cohorts of employees, Virgin Australia first broke down its workforce into employee personas, from new starters through to long-standing employees close to retirement. Segmenting the workforce in this way helped the team empathise with each group and ensure everyone felt heard and understood.

“During this early stage of transformation, we thought about the moments that matter for our people,” says Burquest. “As we designed our programs, we were taking into account all of these groups and how they might play into the initiative, and making sure it was something that would be engaging for them.”

Download a template to create employee personas here.

2. Define

During the define stage, HR practitioners will converge to determine specific workforce challenges to address, and/or gaps in current HR practices. Framing the challenge in this way can provide structure to the next phase, ideation, and ensure objectives remain consistent, even when methodology changes.

For Virgin Australia, a data-driven approach was key to defining the specific challenges faced by the different employee personas they had formulated. 

“[Data] allows you to dissect your workforce and look at it from different angles, whether its turnover or diversity, [et cetera],” says Burquest. “It’s really important because it helps you build a real case for change. I can’t encourage people enough to look at the data and use the insights to drive how you build out your strategies.” 

3. Ideate

The ideation stage of the design thinking process tends to involve brainstorming sessions and collaborative workshops to generate practical solutions to the defined issues, with input from both employees and leaders.

“[At Virgin Australia], we went through a collaborative process with all of our people around resetting our values, resetting our identity and resetting our expected levels of behaviour,” says Burquest. 

Guided by the objectives set in the Define stage, brainstorm participants should be encouraged to pitch out-of-the-box strategies and build on one another’s ideas. Creativity is a cornerstone of design thinking, and it should be made clear from the outset that innovation and lateral thinking are welcome in these sessions.

4. Prototype

Creating and piloting prototypes of HR programs on smaller employee groups is crucial, since it allows adjustments to be made before the full-scale rollout.

Virgin Australia uses its employee personas to guide the prototype stage of design thinking, which helps them tailor equitable and effective strategies for each cohort, says Burquest.

“We have half a dozen different personas that make up our workforce. We test each of the initiatives against those personas to see if this is going to drive the right outcomes for those team members,” she says.

5. Test

By gathering data and continuous feedback to refine initiatives, HR will continually adjust and test to ensure strategies evolve based on real-world, real-time experiences.

While HR should not be afraid to make changes to their strategies when tests demonstrate deficiencies, Burquest says practitioners should ensure the defined challenges and objectives should always be kept consistent and front-of-mind to ensure the process does not become erratic.

“Sometimes, you might have to make a radical adjustment in some part of your strategy. But you don’t want to be doing that around all of your strategy. You don’t want to be chopping and changing, you want to be evolving,” she says.

“It’s about creating processes that allow you to focus on the business context that matters. In a finite world of resources, what are the priorities that matter most? That helps you control your environment in a sensible way as you move through the process.”

Lisa Burquest will be speaking on navigating todayʼs capability challenges while building for tomorrow at AHRI’s National Convention and Exhibition in August. Sign up today to hear from Lisa and other experts, including Seth Godin, Ravin Jesuthasen and more.

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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.

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