New national initiative to make Australian workplaces fairer

In Australia, social background still shapes who gets ahead.

Fair Chance Initiative is a national effort to change this narrative – creating workplaces where everyone has a chance to thrive, regardless of family background.  

Supported by SVA, Australian Business and Community Network (ABCN), The Smith Family, and partners across business and community, Fair Chance aims to remove barriers to employment and ensure talent from all backgrounds can access opportunity.  

If you’re born into a low-income family today, there’s a 30% chance you will remain in a low-income family for the rest of your life.

On current trends, it would take four generations for a child born into one of the poorest families to reach the national average income.  

Over the next twelve months, the Fair Chance Initiative will work with employers to build awareness and share good practice through workshops, research, webinars and case studies.

At SVA we believe everyone deserves a fair chance of secure and fairly paid work. We’re pleased to support this initiative which aims to remove the social barriers that lock people out of good jobs” James Toomey • CEO SVA

To learn more

Bec Jackson, Principal Policy Advisor APM
“I love what I do. The work we do in employment services can be genuinely transformative when done well, but as both a policy advisor and a parent of young adults I can say young people today just aren’t given enough opportunities.

Employers expect them to arrive with experience and polish from day one. That’s not realistic. Everyone must start somewhere. Skills matter, but so do values, drive, and determination. We’ve become so narrow in how we think about hiring. We don’t do enough to help people build social capital. So much of opportunity still comes down to luck - who you know or being in the right place at the right time.

If we keep dividing people into “us and them”, those like us or not like us, the experienced and the inexperienced, the ones from the right side and the wrong side of town, nothing will change.”

Read Bec’s story