Work that works for everyone

For more than 500 marginalised individuals in regional Queensland, Ability Enterprises has provided so much more than just a job. It’s provided them with community – and a transformative sense of purpose. 

 

For Ability Enterprises CEO Claire Torkington, the measure of success looks a little different to some of her C-Suite peers. “It’s not that common for a CEO to be proud of their high staff turnover,” Claire laughs, “but the higher the turnover for us, the better. Because that means we’re moving people along a pathway. At the moment, we have about 20 percent of people per year go from our model of what we call ‘employment with support’ to mainstream employment.”

 

The jobs-focused social enterprise, which has been in operation in the Toowoomba area since 2012, supports people from marginalised communities in regional Queensland facing barriers to employment. And as much as Claire loves to see employees moving through the pipeline, she stresses that it’s not a necessity.

 

“All employees are paid full award wages,” she says. “No one has to move on, and that’s where we’re a little different. If you land here and realise this is your place, then we’ll have you for as long as you want to stay.”

 

Partnering with local councils and governments to provide service contracts across waste management, cleaning, grounds maintenance and car washing, Ability Enterprises fosters financial independence and skills development as well as regional employment infrastructure. Since launching, Ability Enterprises has supported more than 500 people and over the next three years plans to create 104 additional jobs and 77 employment pathways.

 

“We tender for service contracts alongside full-scale commercial operators,” Claire explains, “which can be challenging financially, because we have to strike a balance between being commercially competitive and also funding the additional support that the team may need.”

 

“We have people with physical disabilities, people with lived experience of [poor] mental health. We have people for whom English isn't their first language, Indigenous team members and people who just had life get really hard at some point.”

 

Having a range of jobs on offer allows the organisation to be flexible when meeting individual needs. That might look like someone suffering from severe social anxiety being rostered on for the night cleaning shift so they can work alone, Claire explains. Or it might look like someone whose medication works better in the morning getting rostered on purely for early shifts.

 

In 2024, Ability Enterprises was awarded a three-year grant from the Westpac Foundation. “The support has been invaluable to us,” she says. “It has allowed extra time to build up our services models to a point where they’re still commercially viable but amortised across enough contracts that we can fund those additional supports.”

 

Ability Enterprises’ longest-serving employee has worked with the organisation for 12 years. He’s now 83 years old. “He came to us at the end of a cancer journey in his 70s, and he’s stayed,” Claire says proudly. “He’s still going strong and is a real part of the community at the waste facility where he works. He told us he works here to fund his hobby, which is building life-sized replicas of World War I aircraft.”

 

For others, a job is a lifeline to community that they’ve never experienced before. “We have a team member who always had trouble staying in jobs,” says Claire. “She’s coming up to her four-year anniversary with us, and she told me it’s the first time she’s felt part of the community. She works at a waste facility and customers will bring her mandarins from their tree, or bake her biscuits, or just come for a chat. For the first time, it’s about her responsibility to uphold that community as well,” says Claire.

 

“You cannot beat the joy you get from seeing people go from feeling like they are not valued in society, to being connected, secure and knowing that they're actually making a real contribution.”