Help support job focused social enterprises

As you may be aware, the Federal Government recently released a draft of its New Employment Services Model (NESM); the model that will replace jobactive. 

Why is this important?

• The NESM is the Government's key program and investment to address unemployment. About $1.5 billion of public money goes towards it each year.
• The Government needs job focused social enterprises and the outcomes they create. Jobactive is well understood to have limited and/or negative outcomes for the most disadvantaged job seekers, people job focused social enterprises serve well.
• At the same time, jobs focussed social enterprises need a sustainable funding mechanism to support disadvantaged job seekers and to sustain, scale and maximise their impact.
• The NESM should be a key instrument to do this. Job focused social enterprises should be able to access the NESM funds if and when they deliver the employment outcomes sought by the NESM. But to make this happen, changes to the NESM are needed.

So QSEC has supported ASENA, the alliance of all state and territory social enterprise networks in Australia, to respond to the draft NESM making recommendations for change. (See attachment)

What can you do?

Sometimes quantity of submissions, not just quality, counts. If you support the response and the recommendations in it, please contact Stuart Robert, Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business at stuart.robert.mp@aph.gov.au, and let him know. This could be as simple as:

To the Hon. Stuart Robert,

My organisation supports the ASENA response to the Exposure Draft for the New Employment Services Model 2022 Purchasing Arrangements, including the three recommendations in it:

1. That when disadvantaged job seekers are engaged by a WISE, the WISE receives the full funding available to licensed Providers and Employers if and when they deliver the support and employment outcomes sought by the NESM.
2. That this happens via ‘wage subsidy-plus’ agreements between WISEs and Providers, to pass on not only wage subsidies but any relevant Provider payments and Employment Fund payments when associated criteria are met. These should also have the following features:

• Have a standard form.

• Not be at a Provider’s discretion.

• Have the wage subsidy component linked to total hours of employment, within a three-year limit, with a requirement that the average hours of employment increase to an acceptable minimum over time.

3. That compliance relating to the Points Based Activity System not be required for WISE employees (or automatically logged as 100 points) given WISE employees work, and are engaged in wrap- around activities.

The NESM is a potential game-changing opportunity to fund the support job focused social enterprises provide, for the benefit of disadvantaged job seekers, government and communities.

Sometimes quantity of submissions, not just quality, counts. If you support the response and the recommendations in it, please contact Stuart Robert, Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business at stuart.robert.mp@aph.gov.au, and let him know. This could be as simple as:

More info on the NESM can be found  HERE