Biz Hub is a fresh approach to support the employment services sector in making continuous improvements to processes and services.
Both for-profit and non-profit organizations are always looking for ways to provide high-quality client services more efficiently. Over the years, various methodologies have emerged to support these efforts but even when armed with new strategies and tools, making changes to complex day-to-day operations and processes is never easy. Biz Hub is designed to support organizations to address these challenges.
The Biz Hub project is coordinating “sub-hubs” that address various business processes of relevance to the employment sector. The first three sub-hubs focused on client engagement, staff engagement and strengthening staff capacity.
We are now ready to launch the fourth sub-hub, the focus of which will be employer engagement. This sub-hub will use business process tools and strategies to examine employer engagement with employment centres. This sub-hub presents you with the opportunity to collaborate and co-create employment engagement strategies and approaches with other group members.
Background
What is Biz Hub?
Biz Hub is a model that was developed in BC by non-profit sector leaders in the employment services sector to support improvements to business processes in this sector with the ultimate aim of achieving improved outcomes for job seekers.
Biz Hub is a pilot project mandated to test new ideas for learning and capacity building but it also provides an opportunity to create and implement innovative solutions to real problems facing the employment services sector. The belief that underpins the Biz Hub approach is that there is considerable expertise and creativity within the employment services sector that can be leveraged to improve business processes and client outcomes.
To achieve this, Biz Hub has adopted a hub-and-spoke model with two key components – a main hub and sub-hubs. The main hub serves as the “gathering place” to engage, share and exchange information on important and relevant business processes. The sub-hubs are where the action happens. Six to eight practitioners, led by facilitators and subject matter experts, will work together to address a specific business process problem facing their organizations.
The fourth sub-hub – Employer Engagement
Employer Engagement in the employment services sector was selected as the business process for the fourth sub-hub. Similar to the other sub-hubs, this sub-hub will apply approaches from Design Thinking and Behavioural Insights to support the group members in coming up with innovative solutions to the employer engagement process.
Some of the important business process topics in the employment services sector that the Employer Engagement sub-hub may address include:
- What approaches work best to raise employers’ awareness about the value employment services organizations bring to their businesses? Employers are busy and are not always familiar with what employment organizations can offer businesses. What approaches are used to increase awareness?
- How do you make the employer feel like an important client? e.g. getting to know their business through site visits, understanding their needs and challenges, etc.
- What nudges can be made in the way employers are engaged (i.e. using social norms, personalization of communications, ease of hiring a client) to improve outcomes for job seekers? Employers want immediate results and often seek or expect swift hiring or placement of candidates.
- What are the effective strategies for connecting clients directly to employers?
- Bringing it all together – from having no awareness about an agency to becoming a loyal employer of the agency’s clients
Who should participate in the Employer Engagement sub-hub?
Participants are expected to:
- Have a role in employer engagement in BC’s employment services sector
- Be interested in addressing and removing gaps in the employer engagement process
- Committed and able to participate in online and in-person meetings over a six to eight-month period
- Prepared to complete limited activities between meetings as necessary
Benefits of being part of Biz Hub, Timing and Application Process
In addition to being part of a community of practice that focuses on employer engagement, Biz Hub participants will have the opportunity to work with other experts and sector leaders to improve processes in this area.
Upon completion of the sub-hub, participants will be armed with new ideas, resources, tools and knowledge, and better able to analyze and improve complex business processes within their organizations using a client or user-focused approach to identify real solutions.
Six to eight practitioners will be selected for the Employer Engagement sub-hub. The first group meeting is expected to take place at the end of January 2018.
Interested participants are asked to fill out a short online application by January 12th, 2018 at this link.
More information about Biz Hub
Biz Hub is a three-year project managed by the BC Centre for Employment Excellence (the Centre). It is funded by the Government of Canada and the Province of British Columbia through the Ministry of Social Development and Poverty Reduction’s Research & Innovation Program. For more information about the project’s research, contact the Centre’s Managing Director, Susanna Gurr, at sgurr@cfeebc.org. For more information about project activities, contact the Centre’s Stakeholder Coordinator, Greg Lockwood, at glockwood@cfeebc.org.
