More than a dozen high schools will participate in the upcoming Say Yes to Trades Expo 2025 which is being held at Entertainment Park, Bankstown on August 27, 2025.
The event is designed to inspire the next generation of tradies and brings together employers, training providers and industry leaders to promote trade careers.
The Expo highlights both well-known and lesser-known trades, including refrigeration, air conditioning, metal fabrication, and electrotechnology.
These events help to alleviate the industry’s acute skills shortage and address diversity issues that have plagued the refrigeration and air conditioning trade.
A new report released earlier today confirms that the groundbreaking Culture Standard delivers measurable improvements to some of the biggest cultural issues plaguing Australia’s trade workforce.
It addresses issues that cost the economy nearly $8 billion every year.
Developed by the Construction Industry Culture Taskforce (CICT), the Culture Standard is a collaboration between the Australian Constructors Association, the NSW and Victorian Governments and leading academics.
The Culture Standard alleviates long-standing issues affecting the industry’s productivity including excessive work hours, poor worker mental health and wellbeing, and lack of diversity.
CICT chair, Gabrielle Trainor, said applying the Culture Standard to projects works.
“It helps address the industry’s acute skills shortages, improves worker wellbeing and the attractiveness of the construction industry to young people and especially to women. It pays a productivity dividend,” Trainor said.
Led by researchers from RMIT, the CICT piloted the Standard across five major projects over two years. The outcomes, including a cost: benefit analysis show:
- Employee turnover dropped significantly, with retention gains estimated to save the industry $383–771 million annually across NSW and Victoria.
- Female participation increased—32% of pilot project staff were women, compared to 24 per cent industry-wide.
- Projects trialling a 5-day work week instead of the standard 6-day model reported higher productivity and better worker wellbeing—without increasing costs or extending delivery timelines.
- Applying the Standard had no negative effect on delivery time or project cost.
Early scepticism about the impact on cost and delivery time has been disproven. The research found no adverse impact on time or budget—only upside.
Australian Constructors Association CEO, Jon Davies, said the research puts to bed the myth that looking after workers hurts the bottom line.
“On the contrary—prioritising culture improves both performance and people,” he said. “It is time to break free from outdated work cultures.”
The Culture Standard is designed to be embedded in the procurement of public infrastructure, making better work practices a baseline requirement, not a nice-to-have. It sets minimum expectations around three core pillars: working hours, diversity, and health and wellbeing.