Australia has a real opportunity to redesign its employment services system. The Government has announced reform. There is political will. And for those of us who have been working in this space for years, that matters.
In her address to the National Press Club, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, Amanda Rishworth described these as “once in a generation reforms [that] will create a more responsive, effective and dignified system”, as opposed to the current system which is “ill-equipped to respond to the diverse needs of the over one million Australians who access it each year.”
It raises an important question: do we know what a better system looks like? Not in theory — in practice, on the ground, inside real services with real people?
“Person-centred” practice appears regularly in policy documents, but translating that aspiration into what actually happens when a job seeker walks into a job centre has proved much harder. Around 40 per cent of Workforce Australia participants have been in the system for more than two years. Many of them are living with complex, interlocking barriers to work.
The system has too often been designed around compliance rather than capability. Or as the Minister put it, “I hear from jobseekers and employment service providers that many mutual obligation requirements are a meaningless grab bag of busy activities that simply do not lead to a job.”
It asks people to prove they are looking for work, rather than helping them overcome the barriers that are preventing them from finding it. And in doing so it erodes people's trust and agency instead of strengthening it.
That gap between intention and practice is what the Building Agency and Trust (BAT) pilot set out to close. The findings are important, and they offer a different way of thinking about the important reform process in front of us.
Creating space to test a different approach
One of philanthropy’s greatest strengths is its ability to create space for innovation. We can back ideas, support collaboration across sectors and generate independent evidence that helps governments make better decisions.
That's why the Paul Ramsay Foundation supported the BAT pilot, delivered by System 2 and the Behavioural Insights Team over two years, across four Workforce Australia job centres in greater Sydney.
The pilot asked a focused question: what happens when employment services are deliberately designed around trust, agency and genuine human relationships? And, harder still: what does “person-centred” practice actually look like when it leaves the policy document and enters the room?
Turning good intentions into evidence
The BAT pilot showed that person-centred practice can be defined, taught and measured.
Over six months, the pilot ran a cluster randomised controlled trial across the four Workforce Australia job centres, involving around 2,200 job seekers and two employment service providers. The intervention — the ASPIRE framework — translated broad person-centred principles into six practical, observable behaviours that employment consultants could apply in everyday appointments.
The ASPIRE behaviours include things like: explaining the purpose behind a request. Asking what matters to the person. Offering genuine choices. Listening before moving to solutions. Understanding someone's circumstances as a whole person, not just their employment status.
None of this is radical. Yet the research found that for many job seekers, these basics were not the norm. They described being processed rather than supported. They withheld information — about homelessness, mental health, caring responsibilities — because they did not trust the system with it. We heard that when they finally found a consultant who listened, it changed everything.
Job seekers in the trial reported improved satisfaction that their psychological needs were being met, which is a leading indicator of intrinsic motivation. Employment consultants grew more confident in delivering person-centred practice. Trust, empathy and feeling genuinely understood emerged as the foundation of any support that worked.
It felt really nice to know that [my employment consultant] actually cared about me more than ticking boxes.” — Job seeker, Building Agency and Trust pilot
Treating people like humans should not be radical
The research also highlighted something equally important: frontline staff often want to work this way. What prevents them isn’t capability. It’s the broader system they operate within.
Performance frameworks, reporting requirements and compliance settings can unintentionally shift attention away from the person sitting across the desk and towards the process that needs to be completed.
Employment consultants faced high caseloads, short appointment times and administrative burdens that made consistent delivery near-impossible. Some ended up applying person-centred behaviours only with job seekers they perceived as most ready for work — the kind of selective engagement that risks leaving those with the most complex needs behind.
This is not a criticism of the people delivering employment services. It is a reminder that systems shape behaviour. If we want different outcomes, we need to design systems that make those outcomes possible.
That’s why we’re excited that the Government is looking at all aspects of the system – the incentives and payment, who receives what kinds of services and how to ensure people get the tailored supports they need to find high quality jobs.
“Everyone knows that it should be person-centred. But implementation requires more than good intentions. It requires the right workforce capabilities, organisational support and system conditions.” — Dr Alex Gyani, Managing Director (APAC), Behavioural Insights Team & Director, System 2
Reform should be something we learn into
The BAT pilot also points to a broader lesson: Complex systems are rarely transformed through a single reform or policy announcement alone. The Government knows this too, and the Minister flagged that the new system has to have the capacity for continuous improvement.
Complex systems improve through testing, learning and adapting over time. And the evidence we need to do that well must be generated inside real systems, with real people, under conditions that reflect the complex reality of frontline service delivery.
That’s why we also think the next phase of employment services would benefit from creating a space for ongoing innovation, directly in the system. As a permanent feature, rather than an occasional project.
Imagine a network of “innovation hubs”: structured environments where government, service providers, researchers and philanthropy work together to trial new approaches in real-world settings. Where ideas can be tested, evaluated and refined before being scaled. Where evidence is generated continuously, rather than at the beginning or end of a reform cycle.
This kind of "test and learn" infrastructure is common in many other fields. It could become part of how we approach employment services too.
The original design of for the BAT pilot included testing changes to mutual obligations alongside changes in frontline practices but we were unable to proceed with that element because it required complex changes and approvals to the rules in the existing system. The trial still produced valuable evidence. But it underscores how much more we could learn if there were a formal, agreed pathway for government and its partners to regularly test new approaches with small groups of job seekers or in a few locations so those lessons can then be applied to the wider system. That way we can speed up the process of continuous improvement. Sharing data and evidence between government, philanthropy, providers and community will also help.
Government has a unique responsibility to deliver services at scale, consistently and accountably. Philanthropy has a different role: to invest in experimentation, to back partnerships across sectors, and to generate independent evidence about what works and what doesn’t. Neither can achieve lasting change alone.
A partnership for better outcomes
The reforms of Employment Services outlined by the Minister seek to replace the one-size-fits-all model with three tailored service streams, a new triage approach, and Employment Goal Plans.
The Minister has also created an advisory board on which PRF is represented, and through this process and the wider consultations, we hope to contribute to a new partnership where philanthropy and research are embedded alongside government in the ongoing work of building a better system. There is a genuine opportunity to do this better.
About the Building Agency and Trust pilot
The Building Agency and Trust pilot was delivered by System 2 in partnership with the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) between 2024 and 2026, with funding from the Paul Ramsay Foundation. It tested an operationalised person-centred approach — the ASPIRE framework — with two employment service providers, four Workforce Australia job centres in greater Sydney, and approximately 2,200 job seekers. The full report, Building Agency and Trust: Unlocking Person-Centred Case Management in Employment Services, is available online.
