Compulsory Work Experience and what it means for community organisations
The Social Security Amendment Bill has passed into law and the new Community Work Experience requirements for some job seeker beneficiaries as a ‘non-financial sanction’ has come into effect from26 May 2025.
Community organisations may be approached by job seeker recipients needing to meet these obligations.
Job Seeker recipients subject to this obligation must:
- Secure a suitable community work experience placement within two weeks.
- Complete at least 5 hours of work experience each week for 4 weeks.
- Have their proposed activity and host organisation approved by MSD before they can begin.
MSD has now produced a factsheet on the proposed Community Work Experience. Our understanding is that no organisation is required to accept a client for Community Work Experience (CWE) and MSD will not recommend it to clients who are not willing to engage in CWE, they will instead be assigned either another non-financial sanction or financial sanction.
Volunteering New Zealand made a submission on the bill and provided feedback to the Select committee noting:
- Community Work Experience is not volunteering. It is not called volunteering in the Bill.
- It's likely to be time consuming or even unworkable for community organisations and volunteer centres who engage with MSD clients for community work experience.
However, volunteering is a great pathway into work or to navigate work transitions! Recent research uncovered that a third of volunteers have landed a job using their volunteer experience. Over half of these volunteers signalled that including volunteer experience on their resume was useful.
Tips if your organisation is open to supporting someone through the Community Work Experience Scheme:
- Have clear policies in place for short-term unpaid placements, including health and safety processes.
- Be ready to draft a basic placement agreement quickly, outlining tasks, hours, and support provided. [Note that MSD is providing a form that the client takes to the organisation].
- Decide in advance what roles or tasks might be appropriate for short-term, supervised work.
- Make a plan for supervision and feedback reporting to MSD.
- Consider your capacity — it’s okay to say no if you cannot support a placement safely and meaningfully.
Source: https://socialink.org.nz/blog/2025/05/15/supporting-someone-for-community-work-experience/