Carer support is having a moment in Australian workplace policy and for good reason. As WGEA reporting requirements have intensified and the link between caring responsibilities and the gender pay gap has become impossible to ignore, organisations are increasingly being asked to demonstrate not just what they think about carer support, but what they’re actually doing about it.
The good news: there are practical, implementable initiatives that make a genuine difference to carers in your workforce, and make a genuine difference to your WGEA standing at the same time. Here are four of the most impactful.
1. Formalise Carer's Leave as a Distinct, Supported Entitlement
Australia’s National Employment Standards provide a baseline for personal/carer’s leave, but many organisations stop there. Treating it as a compliance minimum rather than a genuine support mechanism.
Progressive employers are going further: introducing dedicated carer’s leave policies that are clearly communicated, actively encouraged, and free from the stigma that often surrounds taking leave for family reasons. This means manager training on carer support, explicit language in leave policies, and leadership modelling.
For WGEA purposes, a formal carer’s leave policy that goes beyond the legislative minimum is a reportable initiative. More importantly, it’s a foundation for cultural change, signalling that caring is a valued and respected part of your employees’ lives.
Only 38% of Australian employers have a formal carer support policy beyond the statutory minimum, despite carers representing a significant proportion of most workforces (Carers Australia, 2023).
2. Implement Structured School Holiday Programs
This is the most operationally impactful carer support initiative on this list, and the one that delivers the most immediate, visible benefit to working parents in your organisation.
Corporate school holiday programs, like those delivered by KidsCo, bring qualified, teacher-led childcare directly into your workplace during school breaks. They remove the single biggest logistical barrier that working parents (and particularly female primary carers) face during school holiday periods: the childcare gap.
For WGEA reporting, an onsite school holiday program is a formal, operational carer support initiative with measurable uptake data. You can track participation rates, the gender split of employees who access the benefit, and downstream outcomes like leave reduction and engagement scores. That’s the kind of evidence that supports EOCGE applications and demonstrates genuine action rather than policy aspiration.
What makes KidsCo particularly reportable:
- Formal program structure with qualified teaching staff
- Participation data is trackable by employee cohort
- Operational across multiple school holiday periods per year
- Supported by testimonials and case studies from recognised Australian employers
- Directly addresses the structural caring barrier that WGEA identifies as a key driver of gender pay gaps
3. Build Genuine Flexible Working - Not Just the Policy
Most Australian organisations have a flexible working policy. Fewer have a genuinely flexible working culture, one where employees can actually use flexibility without career penalty, manager friction, or the unspoken expectation that ‘real’ commitment means being available at all times.
The distinction matters enormously for carers, who often find that formal flexibility policies exist but cultural norms make them inaccessible in practice. Building genuine flexibility means training managers to lead by outcomes rather than hours, modelling flexibility at the leadership level, and tracking whether flexibility uptake correlates with career advancement or penalises it.
For WGEA, genuine flexible working is assessed not just by policy existence but by utilisation rates and whether flexibility usage is correlated with gender, a telling indicator of whether the policy is genuinely accessible to all employees or subtly discouraged for certain groups.
4. Include Carers in Your DEI and Pay Equity Audits
Pay equity audits are increasingly standard practice for WGEA-reporting organisations, but many stop at gender as the primary lens. Adding carer status as an intersectional variable in your pay equity analysis reveals something important: whether employees with caring responsibilities are experiencing pay progression that’s proportionate to their colleagues, or whether carer status is functioning as a hidden career penalty.
This is not a minor technical adjustment. It’s a meaningful expansion of your equity lens that reflects the real-world complexity of your workforce and it’s the kind of analytical rigour that WGEA and progressive investors are increasingly expecting.
The data from these audits often generates uncomfortable findings but uncomfortable findings, acted upon, are what genuine progress looks like.
Organisations that conduct intersectional pay equity analysis (including carer status) are significantly better positioned for EOCGE citation and demonstrate the kind of analytical sophistication that distinguishes compliance from genuine commitment.
The Common Thread: Visibility and Measurement
What unites these four initiatives is that they’re all visible, measurable, and operational – the three criteria that distinguish genuine carer support from policy window-dressing. WGEA’s reporting framework increasingly rewards organisations that can demonstrate specific actions, track outcomes, and show year-on-year progress.
Of the four initiatives outlined here, structured school holiday programs are arguably the most immediately implementable and the most visible to your workforce. The KidsCo program doesn’t sit in a policy document, it shows up in your workplace, with children running through the corridors and working parents genuinely exhaling for the first time all holiday.
That kind of visibility creates culture. And culture, not compliance, is ultimately what closes the gender pay gap.
Want to make carer support a genuine strength of your WGEA strategy? Start with KidsCo. Get in touch with our team today.
