The Challenge
In 2019, Article was received a 500k€ grant from Accenture Foundation (World) to develop their platform Jobready. After one year and a half, Jobready reached more than 8,000 young people who connected to the platform. However, Jobready was not sufficient to fulfill the value chain toward employment and could be leveraged if connected to another platform.
To this aim, Accenture French Foundation encouraged Article 1 and Mozaik RH to collaborate to leverage their two platforms and gather their efforts toward a shared ambitious goal to support 100,000 young people toward employment within 3 years.
The Practice
This tripartite collaboration relies on 5 components / mainstreams:
- Advocacy: The objective is to generate a change of mindset among recruiters and promote recruitment based on soft skills. Each of the partnering organizations will mobilize its own corporate network to engage them around a common advocacy on the importance of soft skills (advocacy) but also to go beyond the declaration of commitment (use case) by raising awareness among recruiters in charge of candidate search. They will also support partners in the design of ad hoc recruitment drives
- Acquisition: to involve as many young French people as possible within the scope of the target and help them increase their ability to “get a job”. After their involvement, beneficiaries are enrolled in various activities to develop their employability such as tests on soft-skills, online training, job placement workshops (interview, CV, cover letter, self-confidence) and secure actual job offers from recruiters. Complementary funding is brought by other partners of the two organizations to support the related activities and enable greater reach and impact.
- Technology: the aim is to enhance the two platforms DVT and Jobready that are necessary to scale the program. It includes the improvement of the existing platforms and connection to the different job boards and Application Tracking Systems (ATS) of companies involved, to both optimize the volume of job opportunities and better connect candidates and recruiters, maximizing the technological services of each of our two partners platform. On this stream, Accenture Foundation is strongly committed to provide probono.
- Replication and expansion: based on insights and learning gained, in the mid-term deployment of the program, replicable assets should be identified to encourage similar projects to occur in other countries.
- PMO support: an Accenture manager expert in human resources is dedicated to program management to respect the schedule, facilitate the coordination between the two organizations and set up probono support from the foundation.
Results
The collaboration only started for 6 months and requires time and patience to be set up. Therefore, there is little observable results to this day. The two main stakeholders, Article 1 and Mozaik RH, observed the following externalities attributable to their collaboration:
- Acceleration of the web functionalities: thanks to sharing experiences and expertise of the two tech teams, better UX and best practices were defined, to improve the two platforms. The optimization of their two products was less costly in terms of money and time.
- Transparency in their development and partnership strategies: collaboration generated greater impact since they could identify share values and discourse to address new partners. The two organizations gain more prospects and increased their visibility.
- Shared advocacy strategy: sharing resources allowed the two organizations for greater ambition in their project (including survey, events, social media…) and better qualitative insights on their practice.
These three issues accelerate the number of beneficiaries, the reputation of the two organizations and secure their business model by conveying openness and collaboration propensity, comforting for the funders.
Insights / Advice to Peers
There is a long path toward intimate collaboration between organizations with their own structures, constraints, projects and roadmap. Here are some recommendation and insights to increase chance of success:
- Take time and learn to know the other organization. This includes to work upstream on collaboration practice and identify potential adhesions.
- Involve as many team members as possible on both sides to maximize chance of success
- Be transparent on the individual gains of each structure
- Chose a trusted third-party (facilitator, funder, common partner…) to secure the roadmap and facilitate collaboration.
Further Resources
Accenture CoLab Award Submission
Contacts
Sarah Lourdez
Project manager, Accenture Foundation