Social enterprises recognised as tool to enhance access to equitable employment opportunities

9 minute read  26.06.2024 Keith Rovers, Charlotte Wylie

The Government's Employment White Paper recognised social enterprises as a key means of creating supported employment opportunities for vulnerable cohorts.


Key takeouts


  • In Treasury's 2023 Employment White Paper, 'Working Future: The Australian Government's White Paper on Jobs and Opportunities', the Government committed to supporting social enterprises to help target entrenched community disadvantage creating barriers to meaningful employment.
  • The Employment White Paper (Paper) outlines the Government's vision for an inclusive labour market with equal opportunities for stable and fairly paid work. Social enterprise is recognised as a key means of achieving the objectives in the Paper, and increasing the labour market's inclusiveness.
  • In the Paper, the Government committed to continuing to support the social enterprise sector to progress labour market objectives, reflecting a broader trend of increased Government engagement with the sector including through impact investment and outcomes-based contracting.

Overview of the Employment White Paper and implications for social enterprises

In September 2023, Treasury published an Employment White Paper, 'Working Future: The Australian Government's White Paper on Jobs and Opportunities'. The Paper outlines the Government's vision for a secure and inclusive labour market with equal opportunity for stable and fairly paid work. It is underpinned by five objectives (Objectives):

1. Delivering sustained and inclusive full employment

2. Promoting job security and strong, sustainable wage growth

3. Reigniting productivity growth

4. Filling skills needs and building the future workforce

5. Overcoming barriers to employment and broadening opportunity

The Paper provides a roadmap for achieving these Objectives and positioning the Australian labour market for the future, which builds on the outcomes of the 2022 Jobs and Skills Summit. The roadmap includes 10 specific policy areas for achieving the Objectives.

Work-integration social enterprises are recognised throughout the Paper as central to increasing security of work and developing a fairer and more inclusive economy. Social enterprise is emphasised as a key means of supporting achievement of the Objectives, in particular Objective 5: Overcoming barriers to employment and broadening opportunity. As a result, in the Paper the Government committed to continuing to support the social enterprise sector and exploring partnership opportunities to leverage sector expertise around breaking down barriers to employment.

The Government's emphasis on social enterprise as a means of achieving the Objectives is reflective of a Government trend towards partnering with social enterprises to progress labour market objectives. This was highlighted by the $54 million Paid Employment Pathways Package announced in the 2024-25 Federal Budget, which includes $21.9 million in funding for the WorkFoundations Program that will support social enterprises assisting job-seekers facing complex barriers to employment. The Federal Budget also allocated funding for the establishment of the $100 million Outcomes Fund. See our Federal Budget analysis for more on the social impact initiatives included in the 2024-25 Budget.

Key Employment White Paper takeaways

The Paper set out practical actions for achieving each of the five Objectives, which informed the following 10 policy areas underpinning the Government's roadmap to achieving the Objectives:

1. Strengthening economic foundations by placing full employment at the heart of institutions and policy frameworks and strengthening the foundations for secure, fairly paid jobs.

2. Modernising industry and regional policy so people, communities and businesses are positioned to withstand the challenges and reap the benefits as Australia strives to become a renewable energy superpower, realise the opportunities of technological change and broaden and deepen Australia’s industrial base.

3. Planning for the future workforce by coordinating skill priorities and policies, and meeting workforce needs in the context of the net zero transformation and technological change.

4. Broadening access to foundation skills by improving access to quality early childhood education and care, improving school outcomes and expanding access to adult learning opportunities that help people find and keep a secure, fairly paid job.

5. Investing in skills, tertiary education and lifelong learning by increasing the share of Australians studying in areas of high skills need, improving collaboration between the vocational and higher education sectors, and removing barriers to learning across the course of people’s lives.

6. Reforming the migration system through better targeting skilled migration, improving the employment outcomes of international students and realising the employment potential of migrants.

7. Building capabilities through employment services by setting out clear principles for future reform and implementing changes in an evidence-based way.

8. Reducing barriers to work by addressing disincentives to participate, improving the quality of support for people with disability, and promoting gender equality.

9. Partnering with communities to achieve genuine place-based change informed by community needs, deepening ties with social enterprise and partnering with First Nations people to support economic development.

10. Promoting inclusive, dynamic workplace by working with employers to foster workplace diversity, collaborating with businesses through the employment services system and improving the quality and transparency of data to measure workplace performance.

These policy areas will influence future reform, policy priorities, development and design, along with Government funding (which can be seen in the 2024-25 Federal Budget).

What are social enterprises?

Social enterprises are businesses that trade to create (measured) impact. There is no legal definition of a social enterprise in Australia, however the certification body, Social Traders, defines social enterprises as businesses that:

1. have a defined primary social, cultural or environmental purpose consistent with a public or community benefit;

2. derive a substantial portion of their income from trade; and

3. invest efforts and resources into their purpose such that public/community benefit outweighs private benefit.

Social enterprises can be structured as not-for-profit or for-profit businesses, provided they meet the certification criteria above. There are a number of different social enterprise models (from 'donation model' social enterprises that donate a portion of profits to create social impact, such as the Thank You group and Who Gives a Crap, to direct benefit model social enterprises, that create impact directly through the business). For example, 'work integrated social enterprises' (WISEs) create direct impact through providing supported employment and training opportunities within the business to vulnerable job-seekers, helping to break down barriers to employment. WISEs generally provide more flexible employment options and wrap-around supports, such as mentoring, to assist workers in developing job-readiness skills and sustaining employment, and enabling them to move into the open labour-market.

The impact of social enterprises was illustrated in a report commissioned by Social Enterprise Australia (the Business for Good Report), which found that the social enterprise sector makes a significant economic contribution to Australia. Findings include that:

  • there are over 12,000 social enterprises in Australia;
  • over 206,000 Australians are employed by a social enterprise. This is 1 in every 60 jobs; and
  • social enterprises have made a contribution of $21.3 billion per year to the Australian economy. This is over 1% of the GDP. For comparison, Arts and Recreation Services contribute $15 billion.

Social enterprise as a tool to achieving Employment White Paper Objectives

In the Paper, the Government recognised the opportunity of taking a new approach to addressing the complex barriers some communities face to accessing employment, including through collaboration with social enterprises.

Outcomes of the Paper relevant to the social enterprise sector include:

  • A recognition of social enterprises as 'critical' to improving employment outcomes for vulnerable cohorts. The Paper recognised some of the statistics on the size and economic contribution of social enterprises in the Business for Good report, including that over 58% of certified social enterprises are employment-focused.
  • The Government stating its intention to 'back' the continued growth of the social enterprise sector, in order to generate employment and training opportunities for vulnerable cohorts.
  • A commitment by the Government to: explore partnership opportunities to leverage existing expertise and understanding of barriers to employment, including knowledge in the social enterprise sector; investigate opportunities to increase collaboration with social enterprises, including to understand the role social enterprises could play in creating jobs and career pathways; and continue existing initiatives supporting capacity building of social enterprises and place-based approaches. These include:

The Social Enterprise Development Initiative – The Government committed $11.6 million over 3 years to the Initiative in the 2023-24 Federal Budget, to provide grants, online education and mentoring focused on capacity-building across the social enterprise sector.

Outcomes Fund – The $100 million Outcomes Fund will enter into outcome-based contracts with social enterprises and not-for-profits, and will make contractual payments on achievement of agreed, measurable outcomes. The Government reinforced its commitment to outcomes based contracting in the 2024-25 Federal Budget, committing $4.7 million over three years from 2024–25 to establish the Outcomes Fund.

Stronger Places, Stronger People Initiative – This Initiative, which received $64 million in funding over 6 years in the 2023-24 Federal Budget, supports the delivery of place-based projects to empower local communities to drive outcomes for disadvantaged children and their families in the community.

What does this mean for the social enterprise sector?

The Paper's emphasis on social enterprise as a tool for achieving the Government's labour market Objectives reflects a broader Government trend towards investing in the growing social enterprise sector.

In particular, the Paper acknowledges a range of initiatives already underway through which the Government is seeking to support social enterprise capacity building. These include the Social Enterprise Development Initiative, Outcomes Fund and Stronger Places Stronger People Initiative – each announced in the 2023-24 Federal Budget. You can read more about the social impact initiatives in the 2023-24 Federal Budget, which received a total of $199.8 million in committed funding, in our 2023/2024 social impact Federal Budget update.

This trend was illustrated in the recent 2024-25 Federal Budget in which the Government committed $54 million over five years to trial two new employment pathways programs, the WorkFoundations program and the Real Jobs, Real Wages program. The WorkFoundations program received $21.9 million in funding for social enterprises to work directly with people facing complex barriers to employment.

As social enterprise is increasingly recognised as a tool to achieving the Objectives and policy focus areas in the Paper, the sector is likely to be positively impacted by future Government policy, development and design related to the labour-market.

How MinterEllison can assist social enterprises

With deep experience in the social enterprise sector, MinterEllison can assist by providing capacity-building support to social enterprises, enabling them to set up, scale and operate sustainably in order to leverage the opportunities presented by the Government's commitment to working with the sector to achieve its employment Objectives and growing corporate and consumer interest in social procurement. With experience advising on all sides of outcomes-based contracting and impacting investing, MinterEllison can provide strategic advice on contracting with social enterprises, establishing impact funds and incorporating social enterprises into supply chains.

MinterEllison supports more than 200 social enterprises with the full spectrum of legal advice, from start-up entity formation, charity registration (for not-for-profits) through to governance, compliance, financing, contracting, property, risk management, insurance, franchising, M&A and restructuring support – building teams dependant on identified legal needs and priorities.

MinterEllison also provides broader sector support including supporting social enterprise peak bodies, certifying bodies (including Social Traders), funds (including Social Enterprise Finance Australia (SEFA) and First Australians Capital) and intermediaries (such as Social Ventures Australia, Social Impact Hub, White Box Enterprises and Impact Seed). MinterEllison also works alongside Government and corporate clients to amplify social impact through shared values partnering (including our longstanding relationship with the Westpac Foundation, in which we offer legal support to social enterprise grant recipients and social change fellows).


Please reach out if you have any questions regarding social enterprises, outcomes-based contracting or social impact investing.

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