Statement from Hireup's co-CEO

A message from Hireup co-CEO Jordan O'Reilly

When my sister and co-CEO Laura and I started Hireup seven years ago, we could not have anticipated the amazing journey that was to come. Side-by-side with our team of wonderful colleagues, we have built Hireup into Australia’s largest NDIS-registered platform for people with disability to find and hire their own support workers. Tens of thousands of people with disability, and a similar number of support workers, have joined us on this journey. All of it has been made possible by our talented back-office staff.

The quality of the back-office team we have built at Hireup makes today’s announcement only more difficult. It was with deep sadness that, at an all-staff meeting on Wednesday 10 August, Laura and I announced that we are proposing reducing the size of Hireup’s back-office workforce by 10%, or 35 roles.

This is by far the hardest decision we’ve had to make as the leaders of Hireup across the business’ journey, and not one we’ve taken lightly. However, it is the decision we need to take to ensure Hireup’s ongoing success as a sustainable business with a long-term future.

Over the last few months, the combined impact of the ongoing COVID pandemic and the relatively sudden, but significant, economic downturn has had an outsized impact on our business, which we now need to adjust for going forward. At Hireup, we’ve also found ourselves increasingly undercut by some competitors choosing to avoid NDIS-regulation and its costs, and others opting for an ‘independent-contractor' (‘Uber-esque’) model rather than formally employing support workers, as Hireup does. We are glad the Labor government is starting to pay attention to these issues which, if left alone, threaten to undermine the foundations of the disability sector.

Our decision to right-size a number of our non-client facing teams, and doing so in a timely manner, will enable us to weather the current headwinds, and thrive for our community going forward. 

It is important to be clear that the changes we are proposing today do not impact our 10,000+ frontline disability support workers, where we continue to recruit. The proposed reductions also do not impact our technology and product teams, nor the front-line experience our clients and support workers have with us, where we continue to invest.

Hireup is a really special organisation, of which both Laura and I are enormously proud. Our organisation has had a deep impact on the Australian disability sector, and on the lives of many thousands of individuals with disability over the last few years. The decision today, hard as it is, is all about ensuring that Hireup can continue on its journey sustainably, and to continue impacting the lives of people with disability right across Australia.