Freeing up labour flows crucial to productivity

Labour in Australia and throughout the Asia-Pacific region should be progressively freed up by 2020, according to the initial report of the Australia 2020 Summit.

The summit's productivity stream advocated "enabling the free movement of labour from the Asia-Pacific region into Australia, underpinned by Australian workplace standards".

This was in line with the economy stream, which called for a "single, national education and accreditation system to promote mobility of talent".

The productivity stream also came up with a number of suggestions for improving the quality and depth of Australia's workforce, including:

• Empowering employees to choose their preferred workplaces by facilitating the spread of information about employment experience, for example work/life balance and family friendliness
• Requiring employers to take more responsibility for developing the skills of their workforce, while also giving them access to a flexible, demand-driven training system
• Providing incentives for people to work in rural and regional Australia by supporting people to relocate from areas of few jobs to areas suffering from labour shortages

The stream also floated the concept of "golden gurus" - retired people who could be brought back into the workplace to act as mentors.

Courtesy of CareersMultiList