My Blog

Experience Banks - a response to the changing job market July 19, 2011

The changing job market

in many ways we are in a time of transition. The job market reflects this.

People who have recently left the work force have useful like-skills and experience,

We should be doing something in response to the fact that people who have recently left the work force are usually people with useful like-skills and experience. This is true for many people and does includes people who  have been made redundant and whose specific skills are not currently marketable. They are a resource. At the present time we need all the resources we can get.

The importance of stewardship

Resources of any kind need to be stewarded. If resources are to be fit for use they need to be kept in good condition. If you throw something on the rubbish heap - even if it is discarded in working order - it will deteriorate and gradually become rubbish.  If you "scrap-heap" people they can face a similar fate - especially if they are struggling to get back into the workforce. It is hard to stay positive, confident and as capable as you used to be if your days are spent largely in isolation, trying to "sell yourself" in an overcrowded job market, often trying to remould yourself to take some unfamiliar role - and being repeatedly ignored or rejected.

Facts

There are more people than jobs - this means there are currently people of 'working age" who are without paid work and are time-rich. Some will go back into "traditional employment" and some won't. Some have huge financial pressures on them as a result of being out of work, some don't. Some have never worked before. Some have tremendous experience and skills.

Experience Banks

While these experienced people are in a situation of being time-rich (short term or long term) they could be part of a "community of experience". Maybe we could establish "Experience Banks" that would be a local resource," Exactly what projects each 'Experience Bank" would support would depend on the local situation and the people and skills available in that Experience Bank at any time. 

While the Experience Bank is investing its wealth of skills,knowledge and networks, in the local community it could also be passing on work skills to younger people who have never been part of the work force and have no idea how to go about projects of any kind in a business-like professional way. These young people could do their work experience at the Experience Bank.

Motivation - not coercion - win-win working

Working in an Experience Bank would be a choice. It would definitely not be something that people were coerced into doing in order to claim their benefits. However people would not loose any benefit either because of spending time working in the Experience Bank. People would work in the Experince Bank in a win-win way - i.e. they would choose to work on particular project because of the personal value that they got from doing the work (even though it was not a financial reward). It could different things for different people - skill development, personal satisfaction, "CV-worrthy" evidence of current skills and achievement, social satisfaction and being part of a team, progressing a pet project that would not have been possible without the support of the Experience Bank, etc.

Practical action - looking forward

I would like to set up Experience Banks. There would be several complementary initiatives.

  • Initial workshops for people wanting or needing to reposition themselves in the job market - mainly people recently redundant or facing future redundancy.
  • Initial workshops for recently retired people wanting to keep working in some non-paid way.
  • Initial workshops for school leavers and university graduates who had no work experience and needed some in order to become economically active.
  • Online groups providing follow up to the workshops - a source of possible recruits for the Experience Banks
  • Face-to-face meetings for people who had attended the workshops - a source of possible recruits for the Experience Banks
  • Experience Banks based in physical locations - perhaps temporarily available buildings
  • Induction courses and workshops - explaining the thinking behind Experience Banks and helping people to find a role in them if they wanted to.
  • Opportunities for on-the-job training within the Experience Banks - including skills needed for working effectively in a "post-web" world.
  • Local practical action projects run by Experience Banks on a win-win-working basis
  • Projects undertaken on a commercial basis by entrepreneurial teams of people incubated through the Experience Banks
  • Creation of personal 'digital footprints" and testimonials as evidence of current work skills and recent work history.
  • Mentoring schemes
  • Support for people who were entering or re-entering the traditional job market, or moving into a more entrepreneurial work environment.

Some context for my thinking on employment/unemployment and well-being

Features of 21st century thinking and behaviour

For more about this see:

It makes no sense to scrap-heap people - it's an outdated approach.

A team of people, fresh from the work force, is a resource. So are young people who are ready to enter the workforce, and people who are recently retired. We should be recognising that and making the most of it. The way that we scrap-heap people belongs in a 20th century mindset -  a mindset that treats people as objects, an outdated mindset that also thinks of objects in terms of scrapping - of built-in obsolescence rather than repairing, re-using and re-cycling. We live in the 21st century now, and we need to think and behave with a 21st century mindset. That is a mindset of collaboration, new ways of working, and different organisational structures.