The Australian Government provides a range of support to help unemployed people into work. Job seekers with more complex barriers to employment will often require a significant change in personal circumstances and a conducive external economic environment to find work. Long-term joblessness can have scarring effects, resulting in a greater chance of future periods of unemployment, lower lifetime earnings and poorer physical and mental health.

This evaluation was of a behavioral insights driven soft skills training program designed to maintain and build the psychological work readiness of highly disadvantaged job seekers. The program aims to improve critical psychological precursors to employment—such as confidence, resilience, motivation, self-esteem, and life satisfaction—to prevent the scarring effects of long-term unemployment.

The evaluation began with a qualitative explore phase consisting of interviews with 20 job seekers to guide the program design. This was followed by a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with participants completing identical pre- and post-intervention assessments across four validated psychometric scales. To maintain statistical rigor against attrition, the evaluation involved both a two-stage ordinary least squares instrumental variables (IV) regression analysis to measure the local average treatment effect on attendees, and a baseline intention-to-treat (ITT) analysis.

The evaluation found the training to be highly effective at improving the psychological work readiness of disadvantaged job seekers, especially life satisfaction, self-esteem and resilience. No significant effect was detected for career self-efficacy, likely because the underlying scale was optimised for employed populations rather than active job seekers. No significant variations in net job placements were observed between the treatment and control groups due to an underpowered sample size for employment outcome detection, combined with macroeconomic softening (the trial periods covered the 2019–20 bushfires and the COVID-19 pandemic).

The evaluation made the following recommendations:
- Active labor market policies should integrate structured psychological work readiness support alongside traditional occupational, vocational, and foundational job search programs.
- Interventions must purposefully implement behavioral science techniques—such as anchoring and reframing—to help job seekers reframe negative self-perceptions into positive workplace attributes.
- Future programs should ensure trainers are rigorously certified to build trust and rapport, foster collaborative group-learning environments that rely on social normalisation, and utilise optimised pre-course fact sheets to instill a positive mindset prior to first-day attendance.