Work Directions: Success in creating sustainable employment
Work Directions recruited us because of our proven track record in engaging the disengaged and disenfranchised. They knew from their experience that some Employment Advisors worked to a high performance level – engaging their clients, motivating them, supporting them to find work that suits them and problem solving. They wanted to recruit and train a team of high performers who could do what we do well, and get people into work. They wanted to improve the job outcome success rates of the areas they were contracted to run (which were approx 25% of clients into work and only 40% of them still there 3 months later).
We began by modelling a team of successful advisors to identify which traits were considered critical to good performance for employment advisors. The essential principles were as follows: the ability to build rapport, an appreciation of diversity and a willingness to be flexible with one's own values and shift according to other's needs. The company decided that the recruitment training for the new company’s staff should be built around these principles and that the recruitment process should also be tailored to select those who demonstrated honesty and frankness concerning diversity as well as self-awareness.
Recruiting and training a diverse team who could reach a diverse client group
Training Attention designed an assessment centre. Our role was to detect the patterns candidates were consciously presenting, the congruence between how they said behaved and what was important to them at work and then to create the conditions to observe what happened in practise. In other words, did they walk their own talk? Exercises were given which allowed the facilitators and interviewees to observe, detect and feedback patterns in the moment. How did the candidates respond? If we pointed out incongruencies did they deny or seek to justify them, or did they accept our feedback in a straightforward way?
We were recruiting for people who were aware of their own patterns or people who when made aware of them would start adjusting their behaviour. We were also interested in people who thought differently from each other – the team would have to reach a wide base of clients with differing backgrounds and needs. We tried to ensure that a diverse range of thinking styles and patterns were represented in the team
Training Attention designed a 2 week induction course to train the new advisors to spot patterns, give and receive feedback and pay attention to communication using the same methods as we applied to our work with their client groups. We trained them to do what we could do – goal setting, solutions focussed thinking, building rapport with people who think and act differently from you etc.
Did it work? Following up the success of our team of diverse high flyers
We interviewed clients to find out what they thought of the Work Directions advisors. Could they build rapport with them effectively? Could they maintain a high level of commitment with a high caseload? Could they problem solve and stay solution focused?
Some quotes from clients
"The staff before didn’t really interact with us ... if they talk to you, I don’t know them all, we’re business for them. [At Work Directions] they’re more personal, talk to you on a personal level, have a laugh and feel more comfortable, working with everyone else."
"When I come here, even if I haven’t got a proper appointment with my advisor, she’ll still make time to discuss anything that I am going to do, and when you go to the anywhere else, normally you have to sit waiting, and when you do speak to someone you’re rushed"
“Before I was simple Simon looking for work and no one really checks up, but here they do and they ring you up, make you arrange time to see them and they go through what you’re looking for ... they speak to you more ... happy people give off good vibes ... chatty, it’s like a big family"
What difference did this make to the organisation’s operational targets?
Statistically, the areas covered by the Work Directions teams had previously achieved a rate of 25% job success with long-term unemployed. ‘Sustainability’ is measured when a person has stayed in the job for 13 weeks or more. Sustainability previous to Work Directions’s inception was also at 40%. After 6 months, Work Directions were achieving 50% job success and, critically, 80% sustainability. 2 years later, they had achieved a performance uplift for sustained job outcomes 40% above average for all districts in the Greater London area.