VDAB

CareerFlow

CareerFlow

2021

Brussels

Government

Service design

Work-to-work transitions in uncertain times

VDAB is the employment service of Flanders and helps people find work and develop their careers.

  • As a facilitator, we create the inspiring network for this.
  • As a service provider we encourage citizens to develop their talents and competences to the maximum.

Our mission is to ensure, organize and promote job placement, guidance and training in the interests of employers, employees and job seekers with a focus on the lifelong and sustainable integration of job seekers and employees into the labor market.

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Isabelle Van Cauwenberghe
Manager VDAB
"Service design proves to be a fantastic method to make work-to-work transitions optimal for employees."

Challenge

CareerFlow's ambition is to offer constructive solutions to employers in order to avoid having to dismiss employees or to make them redundant themselves. By allowing employees to temporarily or permanently start working for another employer, their competencies are used optimally and we avoid them ending up in unemployment. To make this possible, a number of 'real life' living labs are being set up in cooperation with various stakeholders, including SD Worx, Acerta, Federgon, ACV, ABVV, Accent, Voka, Unizo, KU Leuven and many others, in order to provide optimal guidance for these work-to-work transitions.

VDAB asked The Argonauts to develop customer journeys and service blueprints for these transitions in which the employee is put central, in order to optimize the user experience.

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Isabelle Van Cauwenberghe

Manager VDAB

‘Service design proves to be a fantastic method to make work-to-work transitions optimal for employees.’
Lise-Nackaerts
Lise Nackaerts
Consultant skills and lifelong learning at IDEA Consult
The collaboration between Idea Consult and The Argonauts ensured that we approached this study assignment in a highly innovative and co-creative way.

Challenge

The Department of WSE asked The Argonauts, in collaboration with Idea Consult, to develop customer journeys around the learning intentions of citizens. The following goals were set:

  1. Better understand why citizens decide to go back to learning  →  identify the learning needs
  2. Provide insights into what steps/actions citizens take before participating in a learning activity.
  3. Providing insights into the factors that facilitate participation in lifelong learning  → motivation
  4. Providing insights into the barriers citizens experience when deciding to participate, and understanding which barriers are identified as reasons why they ultimately decide not to participate in a learning activity
  5. Understand better the opportunities and barriers training suppliers experience when preparing and offering training courses to citizens.
  6. Identifying opportunities and potential policy interventions to better support training suppliers and citizens in their pre-learning journey.
Lise-Nackaerts
Lise Nackaerts

Consultant skills and lifelong learning at IDEA Consult

"The collaboration between Idea Consult and The Argonauts ensured that we approached this study assignment in a highly innovative and co-creative way."
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grisha-verlinden
Grisha Verlinden
Service designer at The Argonauts
"The co-creative cooperation with VDAB and the other stakeholders in this process gives us the energy to go all the way and deliver real social added value!"

Approach & results

In the preliminary stage of CareerFlow, we developed generic customer journeys based on interviews with the project partners (see above) to map the 'as is' flow of different types of work-to-work transitions. In doing so, we distinguished between:

  • permanent transitions
  • temporary transitions
  • 'pooling' whereby the employee works for different employers

These customer journeys were elaborated from the point of view of the 3 key stakeholders: the employee himself, the employers and the HR service provider.

In a next step, we are now setting up several living labs with giving and receiving employers who wish to enter into a transition process. In these living labs, the generic customer journeys will be further refined on the basis of interviews, focus groups and co-creation with the various parties involved. In doing so, we will of course put the employees involved centre stage! So far, 3 living labs have been started up for Fluvius, Inagro and Perpodium. Very soon also labs for Delhaize, Cleaning Masters and G4S will be launched.The ultimate aim is to arrive at optimised service blueprints with which the HR service providers, the VDAB and the trade unions can steer the transitions in the right direction.

The aim is to ultimately arrive at optimised service blueprints with which the HR service providers, the VDAB and the trade unions can optimize the transitions experience of the employees.

grisha-verlinden
Grisha Verlinden
Service designer at The Argonauts
"The co-creative cooperation with VDAB and the other stakeholders in this process gives us the energy to go all the way and deliver real social added value!"
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