Workforce planning is essential to understanding the challenges and opportunities shaping workforce development.
Contribute to building a safe, inclusive and resilient workforce
Skills Insight is exploring how the jobs and skills system can support a safe, inclusive and resilient workforce. This focus emerged through industry, union and peak body engagement and reflects increasing interest in how the system can respond to evolving workforce conditions across agribusiness, fibre, furnishing, food, animal and environment care industries.
The Leading a safer, inclusive and resilient workforce consultation paper proposes actions against four priorities identified in the Workforce Plan 2025-2026: leadership, skills, accessibility, and data and evidence. For each action, we raise a consultation question to gather your input. We also seek your feedback on a list of potential recommendations for addressing systemic issues and enabling better safety and wellbeing outcomes.
Providing feedback
You can contribute via the following options:
Feedback will be collected from 28 January to 3 March. Your input will inform the Workforce Plan to be submitted to the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations (DEWR) on 30 April 2026.
If you would like to see the data and evidence that support the statements in the consultation paper please contact us on [email protected]
Workforce Plan 2025 – 2026
A Workforce Plan report is produced annually as a central part of the workforce planning process. Each annual edition builds on the last, considering the latest stakeholder feedback and newly released data.
Previous Workforce Plans
Four strategic workforce planning priorities have been identified for 2025-26, and they reflect a shared view that addressing systemic workforce constraints and growing future capabilities requires coordinated responses that elevate:
Leadership
Support industry leadership to understand, facilitate and promote VET solutions
Skills
Identify current and future workforce skills needs and develop improved VET products
Accessibility
Encourage improved quality and supply of training delivery where, when and for whom it is needed
Data and evidence
Promote data improvements and evidence-based solutions to address skilling and employment barriers
Industry data and insights highlight persistent, systemic workforce challenges – particularly in attraction and retention, and enabling education and training. While opportunities exist, piecemeal efforts have proven inadequate. What is needed now is a shared workforce vision, tripartite collaboration, and bold policies that are shaped by data and evidence.
For such a vision to gain traction, it must cut through complexity with a compelling and clearly articulated value proposition. Any new vision with the ambition of being adopted across stakeholder groups, both to complement and supersede existing visions, therefore needs to clearly articulate the ‘why’ to build buy-in – the value proposition needs to be defined.
The Workforce Plan 2025-2026 presents case studies of best practice in workforce attraction and retention and enabling education and training. With tripartite leadership, more accessible and high-quality education and training can be the vital ingredient in supporting a virtuous circle, in which skilling at all levels can lift industry productivity and profitability, increase capacity for professionalisation and process improvement, and support the attraction and retention of a diverse workforce. All parts of this virtuous circle are inter-dependent, and strengthening one part will naturally strengthen the others.
Thirteen industry pages
Industry-specific webpages are in development and will be available in the coming months. They will feature data for each industry, including skills and workforce trends, challenges and opportunities, along with links to some relevant resources.
In the meantime, industry data can be explored through the data dashboard, with further insights available in the Workforce Plan 2025-2026.
Data Dashboard
The Skills Insight Data Dashboard brings together workforce, occupation, and training data to provide an overview of 13 industry groups. It highlights demographics, employment trends, top employing occupations, and VET activity.
Use this Data Dashboard to explore data and insights relevant to the industries you’re interested in.
Further information on how this data links to real-world experiences and stakeholder insights is detailed in our Workforce Plan 2025–2026.
About workforce planning
Workforce planning helps build a shared vision of workforce priorities and identifies strategies to address key challenges and skill needs.
By combining statistical data with insights from industry, it supports informed decision-making and highlights where action is needed to strengthen workforce capability.
This work translates into Skills Insight’s priorities and project submissions, while also providing industry bodies, employers and other stakeholders with evidence to inform their own workforce planning, training strategies and investment in skills.
Workforce planning is an ongoing process that explores and integrates data from the following areas:
Findings are tested with industry leaders and the Stakeholder Forum to identify and confirm strategic workforce planning priorities.