Work Integration Social Enterprises (WISEs)

Work Integration Social Enterprises, commonly known as WISEs, are businesses that exist to create jobs and employment pathways for people who face significant barriers to work. Their primary social mission is employment itself.

WISEs operate like any other trading business. They sell goods or services and aim to cover their costs through revenue. The difference is that they deliberately employ people who are often overlooked or excluded by mainstream employers. This includes people with disability, people experiencing mental ill-health, those with a history of homelessness, people leaving the justice system, young people disengaged from education and training, refugees and people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and First Nations peoples facing the compounding effects of systemic disadvantage. Many WISEs also provide wrap-around support, meaning they offer additional services alongside employment, such as mentoring, counselling, skills training, or help with practical needs like housing and transport. The employment itself is the social intervention. It is not a side effect of the business; it is the point of it.

In Australia, WISEs operate across a wide range of industries, including hospitality, cleaning, landscaping, manufacturing, construction, retail, and food production. Well-known examples include STREAT in Melbourne, which supports young people experiencing homelessness through hospitality training and employment, and The Bread and Butter Project in Sydney, which employs refugees as professional bakers. Many WISEs work alongside or complement government programmes such as Disability Employment Services (DES) and the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), though they are often not formally funded through these systems despite delivering comparable or better outcomes for participants. Social Traders, Australia's social enterprise certifier, reports that more than half of all certified social enterprises in Australia are primarily focused on employment or training as their key form of impact.

There are real and persistent challenges that WISEs face. Because they employ people who need additional support, they incur what are known as impact costs, which are costs above and beyond what a standard business would pay. These include the wages of support workers, additional supervision, slower production processes, accessible equipment, and other adjustments. Research by the Centre for Social Impact Swinburne, commissioned by Social Enterprise Australia, found that these costs can account for up to 30 per cent of a WISE's total running costs. Despite this, WISEs have historically had limited access to government employment service funding, which is more readily available to mainstream employment service providers. This funding gap has made financial sustainability a constant challenge and has constrained the ability of many strong organisations to grow. Advocacy through the WISE Hub, a sector collaboration, is pushing for systemic change to ensure that WISEs are properly recognised and funded for the public value they create.