The demand for support and education for fly-in, fly-out workers shows no signs of slowing down, with FIFO Families outsourcing components of its operations to cope with its rapid growth.
The demand for support and education for fly-in, fly-out workers shows no signs of slowing down, with FIFO Families outsourcing components of its operations to cope with its rapid growth.
FIFO Families has provided social support and education services to fly-in, fly-out workers and their families since its establishment in 2010, when Nicole Ashby discovered first-hand there was little, if any, support and education for families of FIFO workers.
Ms Ashby won a Business News 40under40 award this year, along with digital agency Alyka’s Bernard Chia, whom she later enlisted to refresh the FIFO Families website.
“It’s the third website that I’ve had designed in the past four years, which gives you an indication of how quickly FIFO Families has grown,” Ms Ashby said.
At a catch-up with past 40under40 winners a week after the awards gala in March, Ms Ashby struck up another connection with 2013 winner, Cannings Purple’s Warrick Hazeldine, and decided to utilise the firm’s PR services.
Although Ms Ashby had found a niche in establishing FIFO Families, she said it wasn’t as easy to get the idea off the ground as she had thought.
“I thought companies would understand what I was doing, what I was trying to achieve, because they would be seeing the same problems that I was experiencing in terms of isolation, loneliness and solo parenting that would be coming through their workforce,” Ms Ashby told Business News.
“Much to my dismay it probably took me six months to get my first corporate on board.”
Ms Ashby said while some of that hesitation came because what FIFO Families offered was untried in the sector, it was also the case that “for a lot of companies, families weren’t on their radar”.
Despite the clear need for the services of operators like FIFO Families, Ms Ashby said she didn’t expect a government initiative to enter the market.
“We have quite a lot to do with state and federal governments and I don’t believe this is something that’s on their radar,” she said.
Now with seven staff and more than 50 volunteers around Australia running local groups, Ms Ashby said the company would continue to grow Australia wide, with Queensland its strongest foothold, after Western Australia.
FIFO Families’ latest partnership with AngloGold Ashanti in August resulted in around 150 employees signing up to date, and follows BGC Contracting’s commitment in May to offer its 2,000 FIFO workers and their families access to the support network.
