workforce
is that, at this stage, somebody in Stream C
can probably only apply for a Level 5 job.
They’re not going to be able to apply
necessarily for jobs that require degrees or
more experience. However, anyone with
a degree can apply for a Level 5 position.
It might be that people are finishing uni and
they want to get into work quickly. It might
be that there’s someone around who wants
some extra hours.
Still, this is a very conservative way of
looking at what that experience is going
to be like for those 4.25 disadvantaged job
seekers for every entry‑level job.
I’d like to just flick through some areas
where those figures differ. Australia is a
big country, we’ve got lots of different
economies, and they’re all moving up and
down. Even within each state, things are
different. But in places like WA, where we’re
coming off the mining boom, there are
nearly six disadvantaged job seekers per
job. In South Australia, where we’ve seen
large‑scale industry reform and restructure,
it’s 8.5. In Tasmania, it’s 12 entry‑level job
seekers per job. So, it’s a difficult situation.
The reason we want to look at this is
that we’ve got to stop blaming people for
not having jobs. We’ve got to look at what
different things we need to do to the policy
in this area, rather than just saying people
should get a job.
So, that’s a brief tour of the snapshot and
why we did it.
What does this mean for people trying to
find jobs in aged care and nursing?
Well, one of the things we’ve found is
that often jobs are advertised with greater
qualifications than they need.
For example, occasionally an employer
will think, “Gee, we never need that person
to drive, but it might be nice if they had a
driving licence, just in case.”
Well, by writing that in there, immediately
they’ve wiped out a number of people.
We’ve seen that occasionally in areas like
aged care or disability care.
One of our agencies, Anglicare Tasmania,
given that their stats are some of the highest
for this, have been thinking, “Well, if we want
to employ local people to work with people
with disabilities or in our aged care, and if we
can’t find people with full-on qualifications,
let’s have a look at which roles people can
do without full-on qualifications.”
So they’ve been looking at getting local
people into entry‑level jobs. Not jobs
involving nursing roles or complex aged
care tasks, but jobs where someone who’s
elderly might want some house cleaning
to help them stay in their own home, for
example. What we’ve done there is make it
easier for people without qualifications to
enter those jobs with us. We’ve looked at
restructuring how we interview, so we’re
actually interviewing for aptitude, empathy,
warmth and personality, and people don’t
have to have all the sort of fancy words and
things in those interviews.
Once people are on board, we’ve also
looked at making induction materials
available in lots of different ways to cope
with different levels of literacy and learning
styles. What we’ve then done is worked
with new people to get a Certificate II in
domestic cleaning or in some of the entry
into aged care units, and we reward people
if they move through with a pay rise.
So, we’ve taken out some of the
complexity of tasks, looked then for people
to fulfil entry‑level positions in our own
agency, looked for people with the right
aptitude and personality – someone who’s
going to be suited to working with, caring
for and being with elderly people – and
then we’re training up after that.
As for Jobactive, we need to do a lot
more work there. Jobactive is a system
funded by the federal government, where
we’ve got employment services that work
with people to help them find work.
Unfortunately, one of the ways the
system works is it rewards Jobactive
providers for things that don’t necessarily
get people into work or keep them in
work. For example, it rewards providers for
getting people into training. Not necessarily
training that is appropriate for that person
or for the job they want, but something
that can be filled, that they can go to
today. So it rewards a bit of activity and
a bit of churn, and we see people being
put into training that doesn’t get them
anywhere, that might be inappropriate.
It might be that someone who can’t stand
for long periods is put into training as, for
example, a hairdresser, and obviously that’s
not going to work out. So we need to be
working with the government to reset how
Jobactive does that.
We also need to be working with
Jobactive to help them understand what
aged care jobs look like, what nursing
jobs look like, and what disability support
jobs look like. That’s because there’s a
burgeoning of need with the NDIS and
consumer‑directed care in the aged care
area for lots more people in that type
of work, and we need to be helping the
Jobactive people to understand that and
to link in.
Another issue is that people aged 55 or
older are finding it difficult in the job
seeking network.
One of the things we found in our snapshot
this year is that people in Stream C – who,
by the government’s assessment, have
a few more difficulties in accessing the
workforce – spend an average of five years
looking for work. Now, we don’t know the
breakdown. We are going to make sure we
do some work on this before our snapshot
next year, but we have an intuition that it
might be longer for older people.
We certainly hear from older job seekers
that it is harder for them, that there is a
mindset that they should just wait out their
time until they come off Newstart and go
onto the age pension.
We see quite blatant discrimination
against older people. People assume that
they’re not going to be au fait with some
of the technology; they assume that they
might not be as quick to learn.
Of course, what they don’t take into
account is that actually there are lots of
jobs that can be done without technology,
that in fact older people are often some
of the quickest adopters of some of the
We’ve looked at
restructuring how we
interview, so we’re actually
interviewing for aptitude,
empathy, warmth and
personality...
technology as well. So not only is this
discrimination factually incorrect, it’s also
unfounded in that there are so many jobs
in aged care, nursing and disability support
that don’t need some of these things. They
actually need somebody who has some
life experience, who is able to empathise
and enjoy someone’s company. So I think
we are looking at trying to make sure that
people understand what those aged 55 or
older bring to the workforce.
There’s also another side to that
question, and that is the fact that if you are
55 and on Newstart, the very poor amount
of money you get is really going to impact.
It’s low for everybody, but once you get to
55, coming up to retirement age, if you’re
not topping up your super, that’s going to
make for a different outcome for you and
a different quality of life in retirement. So
that’s something else we’re very concerned
about at Anglicare. ■
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