Eindhoven

There is a growth paradox in the south-east of the Netherlands. High economic growth in technical sectors and the labour market in this Brainport region coexists with a growing distance to the labour market and decreased employability for the lower-educated workforce. Both supply and demand agencies have voiced immediate need of a structural change of the labour market.

One of the region's strong suits is design thinking, not just in product design, but also in the design of processes. PASSPORT4WORK is a solution that uses proven principles to redesign the journey to (re)employment for the lower educated workforce. It allows for an intersectoral transformation of the labour market, combined with existing the urban innovations of Gas-free Neighbourhoods and Robotics. It ensures an efficient cooperation between employers, jobseekers and government through a low threshold, intersectoral platform:

1. Development of an intersectoral skills passport with a gamified assessment
2. Development of a restructured education program for skills improvement
3. Improving efficiency of time-to-employment and sustainable employability

• Municipality of Eindhoven
• Province North-Brabant – Province
• WIJeindhoven – Foundation for temporary support 
• GRWRE – Foundation for labour participation
• UWV – Employee insurance agency
• Transvorm - business support organisation for care and welfare sector
• MKB Eindhoven - business support organisation for SME’s
• Tilburg University - Higher education and research institute 
• Organiq – SME in gamification, e-learning and multimedia
• Building Changes – SME for support in the construction sector

Passport4Work will realize the following changes:

• 1500 jobseekers with distance to the job market will have a filled-out skills passport.
• the skills passport is accepted and a basis for recruitment by 75 employers
• 600 jobseekers started with a new personalized educational track
• 200 jobseekers have sustainably matched with an employer on one of the urban innovation projects

September 2019: Initial assessment of stakeholder needs and wants for the intersectoral platform completed and initial designs for tools have been started. A public event to kick-off the project with all relevant stakeholders has been organised and held.
March 2020: The design phase of all tools has been completed and the building (programming) of the intersectoral platform has started. Initial prototypes will be tested to optimise the finalised product. Design of lifelong learning matrix has started. 
September 2020: Local stakeholders and partners are working together to optimise their working together and to prepare for an effective roll out of the intersectoral platform. Initial prototypes have been tested and feedback has been incorporated to ensure that the final product is in line with the needs of the partners and stakeholders. 
March 2021: The tools have been finalised and the roll out of the intersectoral platform has started. The new way of working together between partners and stakeholders, aided by the intersectoral platform, has been tried and tested and optimised. The focus is on matching job seekers and employers. Candidates have started their learning routes and these routes are being evaluated to further optimise them.
October 2021: The intersectoral platform and the new way of working together has now been implemented completely and the focus is on embedding the results of the project in de local infrastructure to enable future support of jobseekers and employers. Candidates have successfully started a learning route and joined the workforce. Employers have accepted the new way of seeking and selecting candidates and are seeing their employment shortages reduced.