Australian Disability Enterprises (ADEs) have played a distinct role in supporting people with disability into work. However, the findings of the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability put a significant spotlight on the limitations of their current model.
While ADEs have provided valuable entry points into employment, the Commission made it clear with its 222 recommendations that the sector must radically transform, calling for a shift toward open employment that prioritises choice, autonomy, and equal pay.
To fast-track change, White Box Enterprises is running an early innovation pilot program called Evolve with three ADEs – genU, Waverley Social Enterprises, and Intelife – to help them transition, and are documenting the process to provide a playbook for others to follow.
We sat down with Neil Gonsalvez, the Head of Disability Transformation to uncover the key learnings six months into Evolve.
“At a big-picture level, I’d say we’ve been struck by two main things.
“First, it’s a really complex space, we're breaking new ground each day. Every goal we’ve set has led us to ask more questions: what do we actually mean by this, what does good practice look like, and what will it take to get there?
“The second is that genuine transformation isn’t one project or program – it’s a whole ecosystem of work happening at once.
“The ADEs have led and been heavily invested in their own transformations, which is critical for this work.” Neil said. “As we have worked together with the participating ADEs we have developed five key learnings,”.
1. Meaningful social outcomes look different for different employees in ADEs
The supported employees at ADEs represent, perhaps, the most diverse workforce in Australia and just as at any workplace they have different needs based on everything from skills, to circumstances, to career stage.
Working together with the Evolve ADEs, we have identified four segments of supported employees, those who are:
- Working towards transition to open employment
- Working toward a job-level increase or wage increase
- Engaged in continuous development
- Purposefully settled in their role
The Evolve program targets increasing transitions, wages, and workforce integration. Some of the vision for change is defined by the WISE-Ability model, developed by the Centre for Social Impact, Swinburne University of Technology. This model sets goals for ADEs to become more inclusive places of employment that provide greater training opportunities for supported employees. Other elements are being shaped by the ADEs based on their deep expertise with supported employees. The work being undertaken through Evolve is shaping the practical map, connecting the dots between where ADEs are now, to those aspirational goals.
2. There is opportunity to significantly strengthen pathways to open employment and employee development supports
Evolve has identified that developing and embedding a structured approach to assisting supported employees in all four key segments is one of the best things ADEs can do to reach beyond their current capacity and improve outcomes.
“When you say it out loud, it can sound simple: let’s set up a transition program.
“In practice, there is a lot of complexity, driven by factors like diversity among the supported employees, funding availability, personal contexts, different ADE industries and business models .
“You need to take all of that into consideration when working out how you ensure all the right supports are in place.
“That’s a big reason why this is all so exciting – no-one has connected it all together in this way in this sector before,” Neil said.
“Pathway and development supports is a really big opportunity. Many in the sector have done great work with supported employees over many years. What we’re doing now is creating transformational change to help ADEs continue providing quality service and care and also make new opportunities available to individuals who have the potential for more.
“We’re really focused on supports for helping people transition between different types of work and finding the best ways to assist with upskilling and development,” Neil said.
3. A mix of social, commercial, and organisational levers is needed for change
“The Royal Commission’s strongest recommendations were that ADEs need to strengthen transition pathways for supported employees to find work outside of ADEs, in blended settings where they work alongside people without disability.
“And that wages paid to supported employees need to be improved.
“This requires money, resources, and effort and in order to be in a position to supply better opportunities and higher pay, ADEs need to grow their businesses.
“We’re working across social, commercial, and organisational levers to try and drive a whole of organisation transformation,” Neil said.
In total, Evolve is forecast to provide 700 consulting days, engage more than 30 industry experts, and provide access to $1.1 million in grant funding.
The result is targeted improvements to the ADEs’ impact model and business model.
“We have been working with these three organisations to try and put a clearer definition around when we say transition, when we say wage uplift, when we say blended workforce, what does good look like and how might we get there?” Neil said.
4. More improvements can be made with better financial and operational data
“We’ve been providing the ADEs with significant support when it comes to structuring and analysing financial and management data so they are best able to monitor their own progress” Neil said.
Through White Box, philanthropy is stepping in to enable ADEs to be more than places where supported employees work and become sustainable, jobs-focused social enterprises.
Having the right data at hand is necessary to both scope and shape the transformation activities of each participating ADE.
“Being able to understand a clear financial picture is a big enabler of change and it’s been a focus of ours in helping these organisations” Neil said.
“Additionally, collection and examination of better operational data has enabled us to understand how we are performing on an ongoing basis.
5. The collaborative approach has been a powerful change tool
The three ADEs involved are very diverse in terms of everything from industry to scale to location. genU is situated in Geelong, Waverley Social Enterprises in south-east Melbourne, and Intelife in Perth.
All three are heavily invested in their own transformation and have been excellent partners.
“While they're different organisations, starting in different places, and heading in different directions, they have many shared challenges such as: how do you support transitions? How do you create the upskilling that then drives your wage uplift? How do you look at different workforce mixes?
“And what's been really useful is that different organisations within the mix have led or helped break the ground on different topics and then been able to share those early learnings to help shortcut the process for the others,” Neil said.
For example, genU has a strong pathways to open employment program, just as Waverley has provided inspiration with its work on strengthening profitability, and Intelife is doing great work on retro-fitting commercial businesses to include roles for supported employees.
“There have been countless lessons shared across the organisations, lots of shared problems, lots of shared solutions. It has been a very rich forum for learning and innovating together,” Neil said.
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