In case you missed it, back in June the Fair Work Commission made the most significant update to the SCHADS (Social, Community, Home Care and Disability Sector) Award in more than 15 years. One of the fundamental shifts was to formally recognise lived experience as a source of professional expertise when classifying employees’ salaries.

From October 2027, a new classification and pay structure will explicitly recognise relevant lived experience alongside formal qualifications and training when assessing workers’ skills and expertise.

So what does this mean for NFP employers? What actually counts as lived experience? How should organisations assess it for candidates alongside other forms of knowledge and expertise? And what does meaningful inclusion look like beyond the recruitment process?

We spoke to Dr Snita Ahir-Knight, lecturer and Programme Lead at the University of Otago, in New Zealand (she’s also a trained child and adolescent therapist, and social worker) whose research focuses on lived experience, mental health and reducing stigma, and Romy Durrant, a lived experience peer support worker, about what organisations need to consider.

What counts as lived experience?

Lived experience is a term used increasingly across the community services sector, but people can use it in different ways.

For Ahir-Knight, the starting point is recognising lived experience as a legitimate form of knowledge in its own right.

“Lived experience is the knowledge people acquire through rich personal encounters with systems, services and social conditions,” she says. “I question the assumption that it must become an expertise based on institutions’ definitions – because lived experience is already a valid way of knowing. It does not need professional validation to be legitimate.”

A role that values lived experience is therefore one that recognises a person’s personal experience as a valuable qualification and an integral part of their work.

Across the sector, the term ‘lived and living experience’ is increasingly being used too. While ‘lived experience’ refers to past experience of particular circumstances (such as mental illness, disability, homelessness or family violence), ‘living experience’ recognises that these experiences may be ongoing and continue to shape a person’s perspective.

Why has lived experience been undervalued?

Despite its growing recognition, lived experience has often been treated as secondary to academic qualifications and conventional professional expertise when NFPs have recruited employees. This has meant that candidates whose understanding of complex systems comes from navigating them firsthand, rather than through formal training or employment, may have been overlooked.

Ahir-Knight says: “Academic and professional institutions hold the power to define legitimate knowledge. Credentials are treated as default markers of authority. Experiential knowledge is often dismissed as subjective or anecdotal. Challenging this requires dismantling these rigid hierarchies”.

She points out that lived experience can make a significant contribution across an organisation – well beyond frontline service delivery. “It provides insights into how policies and services affect real lives,” she says. “It exposes barriers and structural blind spots invisible to traditional decision-makers. People with lived experience can lead research, education, policy development and governance.”

Someone who has navigated a mental health service, for example, may identify barriers to accessing care that aren’t immediately apparent to those designing or delivering it. That knowledge can help organisations rethink how their services operate and how they respond to the people using them.

So how can NFPs better recognise and value this expertise, starting with their recruitment practices? Ahir-Knight offers five practical recommendations for HR teams and hiring managers.

1. Make lived experience relevant and explicit in the job ad

Job ads should ideally explain how lived experience relates to the responsibilities of the position, rather than just including it as a selection criterion. As Ahir-Knight says, “Be explicit. Explain why lived experience matters for the role.”

For ‘peer support’ or ‘peer worker’ roles, doing this would be obvious. But for other roles where lived experience may be valuable but not essential, it’s also worth doing.

For example, an organisation recruiting a social worker might explain how lived experience will inform their approach to clients or supporting others through similar challenges. For a policy or advocacy role, it might outline how first-hand knowledge of systemic barriers can contribute to program development.

One common mistake, Ahir-Knight warns, is treating lived experience as “a raw personal story rather than structured knowledge.”

Being specific about the skills and expertise required helps employers avoid this pitfall. It also ensures lived experience is recognised for the knowledge and perspectives it brings to a role, rather than simply as a personal attribute or story.

2. Respect applicants’ privacy

For roles that require lived experience as a key selection criterion, it’s important to make sure that candidates aren’t required to reveal deeply personal or potentially distressing details to demonstrate their suitability for a role.

As Ahir-Knight says: “Distinguish between purposeful sharing and forcing applicants to disclose.”

She also says “forcing intrusive personal disclosures during interviews” is a common recruitment mistake.

For NFP employers, this means designing interview questions that allow candidates to demonstrate their expertise without requiring them to recount traumatic events or disclose sensitive personal information. It can be a fine line to walk.

Rather than asking applicants to describe their own experiences in detail, interviewers might ask how lived experience can inform service delivery, strengthen relationships with communities or identify gaps in existing systems.

A question might ask the candidate to draw on their lived experience to answer the question, without requiring actual disclosure.

The Mental Health Commission of NSW has some example questions which can be downloaded free here.

Organisations should also be clear about what information applicants are expected to share, how it will be used and who will have access to it. Respecting an individual’s right to decide what they disclose will help make recruitment processes safer and more accessible for all candidates.

3. Remove unnecessary qualification barriers

NFP employers should review whether formal qualifications are genuinely essential to a position, or whether equivalent skills and experience could be demonstrated through other pathways. “Remove barriers,” Ahir-Knight says. “Eliminate legacy qualification requirements that exclude non-traditional expertise.”

When it comes to mental health, AOD, housing & homelessness and other parts of the NFP sector, valuable knowledge can be developed outside formal education or conventional employment. Relevant skills may come from community organising, advocacy, volunteering, informal peer support or navigating complex service systems.

Consider a community engagement role that requires a university degree, even though the skills most important to the position are communication, relationship-building and an understanding of community needs. Relevant community experience or advocacy work may be just as valuable as a formal qualification.

This isn’t about removing qualifications that are genuinely necessary, but ensuring that unnecessary requirements don’t exclude people who have the skills and experience to do the job well.

4. Involve peer or lived experience workers in recruitment design

Recruitment processes are more likely to recognise lived experience expertise when people who hold that knowledge are involved in developing them.

For Ahir-Knight, co-design is an important part of this process. Her advice is simple: “Pay people with lived experience to write job descriptions and recruitment processes.”

This could involve engaging team members with lived experience to review selection criteria, participate in interview panels or help develop assessment methods that better reflect the requirements of the role.

The Victorian Department of Health’s Mental Health Lived Experience Engagement Framework emphasises the importance of involving consumers and carers as active partners in shaping mental health policy and practice, rather than simply consulting them after decisions have been made.

However, Ahir-Knight also cautions against tokenism – “such as expecting one person to speak for or represent an entire community.”

5. Invest in meaningful career pathways

Ahir-Knight’s final recommendation is to ensure that employees with lived experience have genuine opportunities to develop and progress within an organisation, supported by competitive remuneration and clear pathways to leadership.

Recruiting people with lived experience shouldn’t mean limiting them to entry-level or frontline positions. Organisations should also consider opportunities for progression into management, research, policy and governance.

For NFP leaders, this could involve reviewing pay structures, providing access to professional development and mentoring, and creating opportunities for workers to move into supervisory or strategic roles.

Again, Ahir-Knight warns against hiring for “symbolic inclusion without granting real [organisational] power.”

Ultimately, employing lived experience workers is only meaningful if their expertise can influence organisational decisions. This means giving them genuine opportunities to contribute to service design, policy development and organisational strategy wherever possible.

Building workplaces that support lived experience workers

Recruitment is only one part of the equation. Organisations also need to consider what happens once a lived experience worker joins the team, and whether the workplace is equipped to support them.

As lived experience peer support worker Romy Durrant says: “There needs to be a recognition that people employed in [lived experience] roles naturally face higher psychosocial risks. At least in clinical mental health spaces, it’s often less the consumers/clients creating risks for the workers as it is these hierarchical workplace cultures themselves.”

This means looking beyond individual wellbeing to consider how workplace culture, management practices and organisational structures can affect workers with lived experience.

Practical steps include clarifying role descriptions and boundaries, ensuring managers understand lived experience principles and providing opportunities for workers to contribute meaningfully to organisational decisions. Professional development and supervision are also essential.

“Access to ongoing professional development is very important,” Durrant says. “As is access to regular co-reflective spaces. Access to external supervision is a basic entitlement because many people in these roles work within a very small team as an extension of a clinical service, or completely on their own.”

It’s also important that employees aren’t expected to educate colleagues, represent an entire community or share personal experiences beyond their comfort level.

Ultimately, creating a supportive workplace means giving employees with lived experience the same investment and professional recognition as other specialist staff, while understanding the particular challenges and responsibilities of their roles.

Changing how we value expertise

The forthcoming SCHADS Award changes offer NFPs an opportunity to review not only how they classify and remunerate workers, but also how they define professional expertise more broadly.

For organisations that have traditionally relied on formal qualifications and conventional career pathways, this may mean rethinking job descriptions, selection criteria, workplace support and opportunities for leadership.

As Ahir-Knight puts it: “Recognising lived experience does not mean dismissing other forms of knowledge. It means challenging the idea that credentials are the only legitimate forms. The goal is not to force lived experience into broken systems, but to change how we value knowledge and distribute authority.”

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