Current projects
Our unique methodology is a continuous cycle from Scan, to Build, to Scale and back again. Each cycle leads to new insights, tweaks to the methodology and constant learning loops. As the landscape of the labour market continues to change, so too do the challenges we tackle and the underserved populations we fight for. Here are the latest projects that the Innovation Foundation is working on.
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Youth@Risk
Women back to Work
Mature Workers
Pre-pandemic, youth in OECD countries were already three times more likely than adults to be unemployed. Covid-19 hit youth disproportionately hard, and some studies show that 1 in 6 young people stopped working altogether. This has severe impact on their long-term prospects.
Of these youth, the most vulnerable are those between the ages of 16-24, NEET (not in education, employment, or training) and from low-income families. It’s a demographic that is just past the point of compulsory education, in danger of falling out of the system and at a higher risk of long-term unemployment. It’s also a group that often feels demotivated by the lack of information and resources, caught in the limited belief systems of their environment and unable to envision a different future.
While there are many existing solutions to help combat youth unemployment, there was one challenge that stood out as promising and where the Innovation Foundation could drive the most impact. The challenge: How might we help disadvantaged youth overcome the perception that they need to give up learning to earn income?
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Women who return to work after taking a career break due to caregiving responsibilities face multiple barriers when returning to work, including a lack of flexible working opportunities and suitable jobs, and bias and discrimination from employers. These are often compounded by personal barriers, including a lack of skills and low confidence. Furthermore, the longer women are out of the labour market, the more barriers they face when trying to get back in. This particularly applies to women who previously worked in low- to mid-skilled jobs and had low- to middle-level wages.
The global population is aging, and the proportion of older people is increasing in almost every country in the world. As people live longer, they work longer, some by choice, others due to the need to make the ends meet financially. The retirement age continues to increase, and there is a growing population of 55-65 and older workers facing new challenges and making new choices during the work-retirement transition.
Completed projects
Workforce Vitality
A vital, healthy workforce is good for business, people, and society. So, what are the barriers to the provision and uptake of effective programmes?
Building on the successful Win4Youth programme, this project aims to create a new paradigm of what a good employer does to make the global workforce holistically healthy and fit for purpose. It is not an app, not a platform, but a combination of policy, practice, culture, environment, technology & tools to create stickiness.
It employs the Social Innovation Lab methodology of rigorous research and design thinking, culminating in a prototype of a product, service or way of doing business that has both social value and business potential. Initial research by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) fuelled a series of co-creation workshops with a multistakeholder working group, facilitated by design thinking expert John Kembel of d.global out of the d.school at Stanford University.
The end result is a blueprint for how institutions can more effectively approach workforce vitality in a holistic, sustainable, embedded way. It hinges on a set of necessary elements to create a truly enabling, human-centric environment. Employee wellbeing has never been more critical. At a time when the world of work is changing at the speed of light and workers are under immense pressure due to COVID-19, businesses should invest more time and effort to ensure their employees are engaged and healthy.
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CEO for One Month
Supporting Work Readiness and Giving Young Talent a Chance
Many young people struggle to find a way into work because they lack the experience and skills that companies look for. Through CEO for One Month and Experience Work Day, we give young people hands-on experience to help them to get a foot on the career ladder and prepare for success
CEO for One Month
The CEO of tomorrow will be quite different from the CEO of today. Both have much to learn from each other. Our aim is to find creative, innovative leaders among today’s youth and offer them the career opportunity of a lifetime: the chance to spend 24/7x 30 days with Adecco Group CEO, Alain Dehaze. It starts at local level, where 47 young people are selected to shadow the Adecco CEOs in their home countries. After rigorous assessment and a gruelling boot camp, only one of the 47 will be chosen as Global CEO for One Month and start their journey with Alain. In 2021, we received more than 140,000 initial applications for the programme But the value is not only for those who make it to the final round. All applicants receive information, tools and support that will help them move from the world of education to the world of work.
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Experience Workday
Supporting Work Readiness and Giving Young Talent a Chance
Many young people struggle to find a way into work because they lack the experience and skills that companies look for. Through CEO for One Month and Experience Work Day, we give young people hands-on experience to help them to get a foot on the career ladder and prepare for success
Experience Work Day
Hands-on work experience is vital in today’s labour market, and young people are often excluded. On Experience Work Day, offices across the Adecco Group open our doors to thousands of young people, inviting them to work alongside us to learn from our experts. In 2021, Experience Work Day had more than 6,600 registrations with 60 sessions in 15 languages.
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Portfolio Career
Leveraging the expertise and methodology of the Athlete Programmme, this innovation project aims to unlock hidden pools of talent by increasing the employability of two underserve populations.
Employability for young musicians: Partnering with the Lucerne Festival and Davos Festival, we scanned how musicians are prepared for the world of work. In the build phase, we co-created a bespoke training programme for young musicians to help them prepare for careers both on and off the stage. This approach was piloted with both academies and refined based on feedback. Now in the scale phase, we have trained a cohort of trainers and prepared a comprehensive package to enable partner organisations to take it forward in the music world. The aim is to create systemic change in how musicians are prepared for the world of work.
Disability inclusion in emerging markets: Partnering with the Physical Rehabilitation Programme (PRP) of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), we scanned why people with disabilities in bottom of the pyramid countries struggle to integrate into the labour market. In the build phase, we co-created a training programme for ICRC Inclusion Officers to equip them to increase the employability of people with disabilities in developing countries, fragile states and conflict zones. This train-the-trainer programme provides tools and methods for preparing people with disabilities for work. In the final scale phase, we are scoping how to close the loop by training Inclusion Advisors to engage with employers and build the case for hiring people with disabilities.
Following the same methodology as the Workforce Vitality project, Portfolio Career employs design thinking and co-creation of solutions with consortium partners.
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Related programmes within the Adecco Group
Athlete Programmes
Created in partnership with the International Olympic and Paralympic Committees, the Athlete Programmes help elite athletes, with and without impairments, to build job skills and transition successfully into post-sport careers. The programme offers training, guidance, mentorship and hands-on work experience. Since its inception, the programme has supported more than 40,000 athletes from over 185 countries.
Win4Youth
Supporting Workforce Vitality
Harnessing the power of sport to change lives
Win4Youth inspires Adecco Group employees, associates and clients to live an active and healthy life by engaging in sports. The model is simple: log your time or kilometers spent doing your favourite sports, and raise money for programmes that help young people around the world to be work-ready. This popular programme already engages over 22,000 of our 34,000 employees. Including associates and clients, in 2017, nearly 50,000 participants logged more than 7.3 million kilometres. This resulted in a total donation of 500,000 CHF. From 2018, we are pleased to work with Plan International as our Global Charity Partner. Our donation will support their current work and we will collaborate on new solutions to global youth unemployment.
Sustainability
As a multinational company and leader in our industry, we fully embrace sustainability at the heart of our work. We have a duty to ensure that environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies and practices are mainstreamed across the company and are integral to how we do business.
