Our aims
Australia is experiencing a workforce skills crisis that will only intensify given a mismatch between the current skills of workers and the skill demands of the booming digital, low-carbon economy, and an ageing population. Reskilling the Australian workforce will ensure its economic competitiveness and mitigate against a productivity slowdown to maintain Australians’ quality of life, and to ensure the ongoing viability of thriving communities. Our project will:
Understand how workers practically undertake reskilling at a range of scales and how this impacts households, communities and regions.
Evaluate the social and geographical barriers and enablers to reskilling.
Develop a framework to guide socially inclusive policy responses for industry, service providers, communities and governments to assist reskilling in a socially equitable way.
Our uniqueness
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So much thinking about reskilling unwittingly imagines reskilling as either a ‘view from nowhere’, or is developed in the context of large cities. These frameworks do not necessarily work well in regional Australia. Our project seeks to understand how reskilling is taking place in regional Australia in unique ways. In regional Australia, the need to reskilling is especially urgent given the rapid changes brought about by digitalisation in key industries that are vital to Australia’s economic success, including agriculture, manufacturing, and mining.
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So much thinking about reskilling imagines individual workers in isolation. But this is not how the world actually works. Our project seeks to understand how reskilling takes place in relation to social and geographical ties and responsibilities to families, households, friends and wider networks in place.
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So much thinking about work transitions focuses on so-called ‘regular’ transitions, such as school-to-work, and work-to-retirement. Our project will shed light on highly overlooked ‘work-to-work transitions’ — both in terms of moving between jobs, and changes to people’s current roles —and its impact on opportunities to reskill. We’re interested in how these transitions intersect with a range of other social lifecourse transitions relating to gender, generation, domestic responsibilities, and caring responsibilities.
Contact us
Interested in participating? Fill out some info and we will be in touch shortly. We can’t wait to hear from you!