Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Stakeholders include:

Consejería de Educación, Formación y Empleo (the Department of Education, Training and Employment)
The unions (UGT, CCOO)
The regional association of enterprises (FER)
Other relevant social stakeholders in the region (Asociación Promotora de personas con Discapacidad intelectual Adultas, ASPRODEMA, Consejo Estatal de Representantes de Minusválidos, CERMI, and the political parties)

Beneficiaries include:

The citizens of La Rioja

Co-creation process

This was a project that aimed at providing citizens with services, co-designed and co-produced with them (through the unions and most representative companies’ association in the region). This is demonstrated in the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 (out of 6) objectives stated by the working group for this Plan: (2) To set specific priority objectives in terms of PE and employment to guide the development of skills through-out space and time along the current office term, and promote them among citizens. (3) To lead the strategic approach of all the actors involved in PE and active employment policy in La Rioja, seeking to link their actions to the proposed objectives. (4) To integrate and coordinate the available resources in terms of PE and employability, both in the educational and employment markets, so that they support the objectives more effectively and efficiently. (5) To improve the interrelation between the different PE-providing subsystems and modes and, essentially, between all of them and actual employment. A greater involvement of the regional production system is essential. (6) To reach the highest degree of consensus in the formulation of the Plan from the technical, social and political points of view, so that public and private actions are mainly oriented towards shared strategic objectives.

Digital Transformation Process

Not applicable.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The general guidelines that grouped the results of this project aimed at improving employment qualification of human resources were:

To reduce structural unemployment and to promote employment of quality;
To achieve a qualified active population through lifelong learning;
To improve the quality and results of education and training systems at all levels;
To promote social inclusion and to alleviate poverty reinforcing social protection systems, lifelong learning and active and comprehensive inclusion policies, with special attention to women.

Additionally, the EU 2020 Strategy helped identify other results along the objective of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth:

Smart growth, through the development of an economy based on knowledge and innovation;
Sustainable growth, by promoting an economy that uses resources more efficiently, that is green and more competitive;
Inclusive growth, through the promotion of an economy with a high level of employment that results in economic, social and territorial cohesion.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

Regarding R&D and innovation investment, La Rioja presented certain weaknesses. According to Eurostat data, it reaches 0.87% of regional GDP. This is lower than the national average (1.33%) or that of the European Union (2.02%) and far from the 3% target of the Europe 2020 Strategy. La Rioja had 23,083 companies in 2015. Out of the total, 99.92% were companies without employees, micro-enterprises and SMEs. More than 50% of business units do not have salaried workers (12,314, according to the latest published statistics). This atomization is also reflected in the fact that most of the companies in the region are legally formed as solo-corporations or freelances. Likely, this bears an individualization effort to promote and engage these individuals into employment and training policy.

Transferability & Replicability

The Plan FP+E is a complex strategical project. Our selection of this case is justified as an example of the tremendous impact that PSINSIs may have in all sorts of public sector initiatives. In this case, a strategic plan for a social issue of major relevance such as unemployment and your professional education was handled with such a type of network. What surprised us from this case, beyond the formation of the network itself, is the publicity and openness of the initiative. It is true that it was subject to criticism, but the Working Group developments and final version of the plan was publicly and easily available from the regional government website. Moreover, the sessions of the Working Group, being a heterogeneous group including less qualified organisations, or certainly, not used to develop strategic political and operational plans, must have been rather complex to coordinate. Still, using the European, Spanish and earlier regional mandates and frameworks, they put together a complex plan that includes not only young people entering the labour market, but also long-term unemployed, disabled people, and those willing to re-qualify to improve their employability.

Success Factors

One of the major drivers for this Plan FP+E is the willingness of all economic actors to regain the competitiveness of the economy of La Rioja. Even along the economic crisis of the 2008-2013, the greater weight of the secondary sector justified that the economy of La Rioja was more productive than the Spanish economy. Measured through the relationship between GDP and the number of hours worked, La Rioja’s productivity was 36.37 in 2012, compared to 34.75 in Spain as a whole (Regional Accounting, Base 2008, INE). Another decisive driver of this Plan was the (EU) 2015/1848 Decision of the Council (October 5, 2015) on the guidelines for the employment policies of the member states for 2015. It set the following guidelines in terms of employment within the EU:

Boost the demand for labour.

Improve the job offer, qualifications and skills.

Improve the functioning of labour markets.

Promote social integration, fight poverty and promote equal opportunities.

Lessons learned

The 3rd Plan for Professional Education and Employment (Plan FP+E: Plan de Formación Profesional y Empleo of La Rioja) for the 2016-2019 office term represented an effort towards facilitating access to employment of the citizens of La Rioja, a region in the central northern Spain, World-famous for its wines, shoes and agriculture. The new federal government of La Rioja soon declared the care for its youth and unemployed a priority of its policies and public actions. And it embarked in a new plan towards improving professional education and employment in the region. This initiative was led by the Consejería de Educación, Formación y Empleo (the regional Department of Education, Training and Employment) and was the result of a very close temporal collaboration with the most representative unions (UGT, CCOO), enterprise association (FER) and other relevant social stakeholders in the region. Together, they built a Working Group to design and implement a new plan for professional education (PE) and employment for the 2016-2019 term. This has been a project then that can be associated with the new public governance paradigm (NPG) paradigm, and fits into the public sector innovation networks for social innovation. Besides the specific context described earlier, there have been several news concerning the implementation of the Plan FP+E since its inception. Maybe the most relevant is that the Spanish Court of Auditors, in its evaluation of the different instruments for employment policies in La Rioja, 2016 has observed a degree of implementation of the objectives of the Annual Employment Policy Plan higher than the average of the Autonomous Communities. In the case of Plan FP+E though, there is an absence of an evaluation. Also, some criticism from the political opposition publicised the plan was delayed in some of its proposals.

Bybi – Citybee

Bybi is a social enterprise and association that enables co-production of honey by renting beehives to public, private, and social organisations in the city of Copenhagen. Bybi is in charge of processing and selling the honey produced by these rented beehives, and moreover Bybi conducts beekeeping and honey production courses in both the collaborating and other organisations, such as schools and non-profit housing organisations. The association is founded on an urge to find a model of production that contributes to a richer environment and inclusive communities.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

Key stakeholders are the companies and organisations that rent beehives and the municipality of Copenhagen. Beneficiaries can be understood as both the employees of Bybi, but also the customers of the honey products.

Co-creation process

The production of honey is inherently based on a co-creation process; Bybi-employees work closely together with the employees from the different organisations, and when customers buy Bybi products they also receive seeds to plant – to ensure biodiversity for bees.

Digital Transformation Process

No digital transformation process is going on.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Some of the people who work at Bybi are at the edge of the labour market. However, they are not treated as people that need to be re-integrated into the labour market, since the outset is that all people contribute to society. Hence Bybi aims to build an inclusive community of people with a shared vision of bees and honey production.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

There are some challenges related to communication, that is, to communicate what the company is all about and that it takes time to communicate identity. Another type of challenge is related to the ambitions of turning a factory on its head making space for consumers to act as co-producers – but it can also be understood as a driver, since it triggers an urge to find new ways and solutions.

Transferability & Replicability

Still, Bybi only exists in Copenhagen, but the idea and form of organisation are not limited to this context.

Success Factors

The objective of Bybi is to change humans from passive consumers into active co-producers of a richer natural environment and a more inclusive society. More concretely, Bybi’s influence can be described with regard to areas where Bybi has potential contributions: Creating opportunities for people to contribute to society, improving the experience of the environment, helping organisations to carry out CSR strategies and turning the factory on its head.

Lessons learned

Bybi grows out of social economy, but is confronting a wider societal and public problem of transforming the labour market and enriching the environment. It argues that this goes far beyond the Danish system of social enterprises. Hence Bybi is more an institutional entrepreneur than a social entrepreneur aiming to reconfigure relationships between labour and pleasure, production and co-production, humans and non-humans and consumption and production.

Zero Long-Term Unemployed Territory (TZCLD)

The “zero long-term unemployed territory” (TZCLD) project has at its centre the “Job Factory” which is a Job-Oriented Company (JOCs). Its purpose is to solve long-term unemployment by involving a methodological innovation (a new recruitment method based on a reverse process), and an organizational innovation (the creation of a firm with an employment objective and a horizontal management).

The project TZCLD was initiated by the association ATD Quart Monde (ATD Fourth World) in 2011, after being tested mid-1990 in Seiches-Sur-Le-Loir but not carried out to completion because the financing package proposed required a change in the French law. After ATD Quart Monde won the support of a Parliamentarian, Laurent Grandguillaume, who defended the project at the National Assembly, the “Zero long-term unemployed Territory” (TZCLD) association was created in October 2016 to pursue the project at a national level. A law was voted on 29 February 2016 to enforce the TZCLC project, and 10 experimental territories, financed for 5 years, were chosen in November. The project is currently in the testing phase.

The idea of the project is to be able to offer to any unemployed person in a given territory, a job adapted to his/her know-how, paid at the guaranteed minimum wage, based on an indeterminate duration contract, for a chosen period of time. Unemployed persons are hired by the JOCs, which are created for the purpose of this project. These JOCs fall within the scope of the Social and Solidarity Economy. They propose indeterminate duration employment contracts with guaranteed minimum wages. The unemployed persons create their own jobs on the basis of their know-how, their desires, and the needs of the territory. The jobs created must not compete with the activities of “traditional” incumbent companies.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main beneficiaries are the ten authorized territories for the testing phase. These territories are the following ones: Pipriac and Saint-Ganton (Ille-et-Vilaine), Mauléon (Deux-Sèvres), Thiers (Puy-de-Dôme), Jouques (Bouches-du-Rhône), Villeurbanne, Saint-Jean Disctrict (Rhône ), the Community of Commons (between Nièvres and Forests) (Nièvre), Paris 13th, the Community of communes Pays de Colombey and South Toulon (Meurthe-et-Moselle), the European Metropolis of Lille (North) and Colombelles (Calvados). This experiment targets the long-term unemployed, who have been deprived of jobs or employees who have been in a reduced activity for more than one year. The eligibility criteria are i) to be unemployed for more than one year and ii) to be domiciled in the selected territory for at least 6 months. Around 1,000 to 2,000 people for the whole set of territories are expected to benefit. This national project, and the corresponding local experiments, is carried out by a network of public and associative actors (such as regional and local authorities, the National Employment Agency (Pôle emploi); associations fighting unemployment and exclusion, Social and Solidarity Economy companies. In each of the authorized territories, a local steering committee is created. The committee includes the local authority concerned, a representative of the State, the National Employment Agency, employers’ and employees’ unions, ordinary companies and the person who will set up the company that aims to create employment, associations whose purpose is to combat unemployment and reduce social exclusions, and all representatives of the persons concerned by the project.

Co-creation process

This project comes from the associative world, the innovation process is bottom-up. The first experiment (1995) could not be completed because of legal rigidities. Thus, the members of this Bottom-up project had to find other associative partners to give credibility to the project, as well as the support of a parliamentarian so that the project could be validated by the government on a national level, and be launched. Therefore, at this stage, the innovation network moved to a top-down approach. Therefore, it is a nice process of co-creation of public services by the government at different levels and by a network of associations. The TZCLD project includes the creation of Job-Oriented Companies, which objective is to provide long-term unemployed with jobs that meet their personal projects as well as the unsatisfied needs of the territory. The management mode of these companies is based on horizontality and transversality functions and participatory work. The management of the activity is done collectively, employees establish their working conditions. Jobseekers are project leaders. Every day, people innovate about how to work together.

Digital Transformation Process

The main innovation is a conceptual and social innovation, rather than digital transformation. This project applies to long-term unemployment, on a given territory, a business model already used to enable disabled people to work. This methodological innovation leads to organizational innovations (the creation of a job-oriented company); an innovative financial mechanism (the reallocation of unemployment-related expenses and costs to enable employment); and informational innovations (development of communication tools, management tools…).

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

Many (human, societal and economic) benefits derived from the TZCLD experiment. These expected benefits can be split according to the type of beneficiary: – For the long-term unemployed, the benefit is gaining a “right to work”, in order to get out from exclusion. The experiment is still ongoing but the first observations indicate that the beneficiaries of the Hauts-de-France experiment have been reintegrated into society, at least at the civic level and through social ties. – For local economic actors, the benefit is to have access to a potentially available workforce, This workforce accepts to do useful works that is not completely solvent on the market place. – For the territory, the main interest of a JOC is to recreate territorial social links. As the local labor is locally prepared, this makes it possible to locate or relocate productions or services on the territory. – For the economy of the country: On the economic level, JOCs contribute to taxes and social contributions, they create value. Permanent job creations boost purchasing power. It also reduce social problem issues such as health problems, school dropouts, etc).

Challenges & Bottlenecks

At the national level, the project met barriers from the financial administration which was reluctant to have to advance public funds without being assured of the success of the experiment. It was also necessary to convince the government and members of Parliament of the non-destruction of employment. It has been decided to create local committees to ensure this non-competition. This fear of competition has slowed down the start of this project. At the local level, the barriers may be human, financial technical and territory-related. As for the challenges, one of the main is that jobs created must not compete with existing jobs. Also, when this experiment will be over, if the process continues, all partners/organisations who are currently concerned by indirect costs (such as social security) will have to pay the corresponding amount of money. Currently, the cost is covered by the territorial Fund. In each local experiment, researchers are currently working on indicators that will have to establish the social prevention that has been carried out on the territory thanks to this experience.

Transferability & Replicability

Given the difficulties related to territories, this project could be extended to other interested communities but not generalised to all territories. Sometimes, local authorities are not enthusiastic to create activities from grassroots contributions, they may be afraid of losing their authority. Thus, the success of the project depends on the involvement of the territorial stakeholders. The project can only work on the logic of volunteering. Such a system cannot be established by the government without the approval of the unemployed. This means that generalisation across the country will not be possible.

Success Factors

As the project is in the inception phase, it is not yet possible to evaluate its success. However, a large number of jobs have already been created. The number of contractual workforces from January 2017 to June 2018 in the 10 territories included in the project has increased from 33 to 564 people.

Lessons learned

The lessons learned so far will focus on the weight of the state regulation in this social issue, on the importance of building the project on existing links on local territories, on the nature of the jobs created by the JOC, and finally on the importance of the choice of the territory. The first lesson learned is that social innovation including national social issues are impossible to implement solely with a bottom-up process. This type of project as TZCLD can only be achieved with the intervention of the government in terms of regulation. Another important lesson is related to the importance of existing territorial networks to implement the project. The network of partners at the local level may be different from the national network of partners. First, because national partners do not always have local branches on the authorized territories, while partners must belong to the territory to take advantage of existing social links, and to favour the creation of links with other partners at the local level. When it comes to the nature of activities created by the JOCs, it is necessary to clearly identify the role of each stakeholder of a TZCLD territory to send the long-term unemployed to the most appropriate structure according to its degree of exclusion, in order to avoid the destruction of value. Finally, the nature and size of the chosen territory is an essential element for the success of the project. The local level creates social bonds that cannot be achieved at a macroeconomic level. The identification of needs, and of competing activities can also only be established on a very limited territory.

E-BRO-Let’s Go to work

“E-BRO APS” is a small company that has developed “JobIntra”, an IT solution that has been first applied by Jobcenter Brøndby in Denmark in the context of the flexi-job scheme, which is an initiative within the Danish unemployment scheme. Flexi-jobs imply that a company employs a disabled citizen for 10-12 hours a week in a permanent form of employment. The company pays the salary for the 10-12 hours per week, while the state pays the rest. JobIntra’s aim is first to increase the number of available flexi- jobs and then to substantially reduce the time it takes to find a permanent flexi-job to potential candidates. The case represents a special form of social innovation, a “reverse” process of finding flexi-jobs to disabled citizens.

Stakeholders & Beneficiaries

The main stakeholders and beneficiaries are Brøndby Jobcenter, the disabled citizens, Brøndby Municipality, the recruitment companies as well as the society at large.

Co-creation process

The co-creation process can be divided into two phases. In the first phase, Jacob, an employee in charge of the flexi job scheme at Jobcenter Brøndby, and his manager recognize that the flexi-job process and network is operating in an inefficient way. As a result, it takes too long time to get a flexi- job candidate into work. For example, in the first 13 weeks after a citizen came to Jobcenter Brøndby, nothing happened and in some cases, nothing happened maybe for another 13 weeks. After the waiting period, a disabled citizen was allocated to a recruitment company at a time, so there was no competition between the different recruitment companies to get a citizen into work. Therefore, Jacob and his manager had made some strategic considerations about simultaneously allocating several recruitment agencies to find a flexi-job to a citizen. The process involved a lot of discussions, reflections and co-creation. The result of this process was that Jacob discussed this issue with one of his friends who is an IT expert and together they started conceptualizing and co-creating an IT solution that could solve this problem. This represents the second co-creation phase. The idea for establishing a company started therefore in 2012 and in 2013 the IT solution, “JobIntra”, was developed and E-BRO APS was founded with Jacob and his partner as co-founders.

Digital Transformation Process

JobIntra has induced a digital transformation of the process of finding a job to a flexi-job candidate. This digital process innovation can described as a “reverse process” of finding a job. In fact, prior to JobIntra the Jobcenter Brøndby allocated a candidate to one and only one recruitment company at a time, who then tried to find a job to the candidate. With JobIntra, Jobcenter Brøndby inputs a candidate information into the IT system. This information can be accessed by all recruitment companies that simultaneously try to find flexi-jobs to the candidate, thus competing on a candidate. Furthermore, the recruitment companies can directly get in contact with the citizens, if necessary, thus improving substantially the communication among the different actors involved in finding a job. This speeds up the process.

Results, Outcomes & Impacts

The adoption of JobIntra at Jobcenter Brøndby has generated several positive results. Firstly, JobIntra has contributed to decrease unemployment among the flexi-jobs in Brøndby Municipality, which as a result has been ranked as one of the Danish municipalities with lowest flexi-jobs unemployment rates. Second, due to its functionality, JobIntra has substantially reduced the amount of time that the Jobcenter Brøndby’s employees use on each specific flexi-job. This in turn has generated resources that can be used on the most complicated cases or on other types of activities within the job center. Thirdly, by reducing the amount of time it takes to place an unemployed disabled on the job market, it has increased the satisfaction of these citizens. In the long term, JobIntra may benefit Brøndby Municipality and the Danish society, because by speeding up the process of finding jobs and by decreasing the number of unemployed disabled citizens, JobIntra decreases the amount of public subsidy paid to the unemployed by saving public unemployment expenditures.

Challenges & Bottlenecks

The main challenge concerns JobIntra’s wider adoption and use in other Danish municipalities, thus restricting the potential benefits that it could bring to society. It takes a lot of effort for E-BRO APS to get through the public eco-system, mainly due to the distance between the operational level and the policy level.

Transferability & Replicability

The IT solution “JobIntra” can be used and adopted by other job centers within the Danish context. This is what E-BRO APS does now: tries to sell the application to other Danish municipalities. Whether JobIntra could be applied and used in other national contexts depends on the way unemployment agencies are organized in such contexts.

Success Factors

An important success factor is the use and adoption of JobIntra in other municipalities as this may contribute to decrease the number of unemployed flexi jobbers at national level with several societal benefits such as increased happiness and satisfaction of the unemployed disabled citizens and saving in public unemployment expenditures. This is also the very main challenge that E-BRO APS is facing on a day to day basis.

Lessons learned

JobIntra is an innovation that may bring strategic changes at job centers in Denmark within the flexi job scheme. However, as most innovations, it is difficult for E-BRO APS to have it adopted and used in other municipalities. The main reasons being the distance between the operational and policy level in Danish municipalities.