Employment services

How the RAES works

The RAES provides opportunities for around 40,000 job seekers across 1,200 communities to build their skills and address barriers to employment.

The service:

• Helps job seekers prepare for work, move into a job when available and stay employed with greater access to mentoring and tailored support.
• Has incentive payments for providers when participants stay employed in that job for 4, 12, 26 and 52 weeks.
• Supports job seekers where work is not available through engagement in community projects that build their skills and help them become job ready. These projects give communities more flexibility to design solutions locally, tailored for individual needs.
• Changes the way providers are funded, supporting improved service delivery in critical areas, such as employment placement support (currently known as post placement support).
• Is trialling local approaches in a small number of communities to build language, literacy and numeracy as these are foundational skills for getting a job.
• Is trialling how existing job seeker assessment processes could be improved so that job seekers feel supported and comfortable, with providers working with job seekers to identify their strengths, skills and aspirations.
• Invests in building provider capability to deliver higher quality, culturally safe services tailored to remote job seekers.

What RAES means for job seekers

Job seekers are still required to agree to a new job plan, attend regular appointments, undertake job search requirements (if appropriate), accept paid work and not leave suitable paid work.

Participation in activities to meet mutual obligations for RAES participants will remain voluntary. While we work to transition from CDP to RAES mutual obligations have been paused from Wednesday 1 October 2025 until Monday 5 January 2026, resuming on Tuesday 6 January 2026.

How is the RAES different to CDP?

Community projects is a key feature under RAES. Job seekers can volunteer to engage in meaningful opportunities that lead to employment. In practice, this means that there will be less focus on compliance activities and more focus on engagement with job seekers, on the projects that are designed for their communities. 

Twenty-five per cent of funding is dedicated to establishing and deliver community projects as an ongoing mechanism to deliver innovative approaches to enterprise development and create job and employment pathways. 

This approach has been tested and proven to work through job trials with over 18,000 remote job seekers gaining access to paid work experience, mentoring and training incentives and 3,000 people into job placements.

We are also investing in uplifting provider’s capability by providing fit-for-purpose training materials and resources to help providers build their skills and capabilities, including their ability to undertake effective assessments of participant needs, capacity, strengths and barriers.

How RAES has been designed 

To help deliver and design the RAES, we have used feedback from consultations, existing evidence and learning and successes of job trials. 

The feedback we received on the draft Grant Opportunity Guidelines (GOGs), that were open for consultation between 27 March to 21 April 2025, has also informed the final design of the grant opportunity. A report summarising this feedback and how it was implemented in the final GOGs is now available.

Some of the feedback we heard from previous consultations is that:

• There is a need for more local job creation – moving people off income support and into real jobs (jobs stimulated through the RJED program or other).
• It should be planned and led by communities.
• Communities want some form of compulsory activity attendance to be introduced under the new model.
• Compulsory activities should be culturally appropriate and help participants move closer to paid employment.
• Activities should be flexible to allow for cultural obligations and personal circumstances.
• Training should be tailored to the individual and relevant to participants needs.
• The new service should encourage engagement with a strengths-based approach.
• It should be participant-centred with case management to reflect job readiness pathway.