Passport4Work Journal 3

Leadership in a project of the magnitude of Passport4Work is complex, especially with a combination of 10 private and public organizations. This has required a constant juggling of priorities and expectations among the project partners. A key lesson learned here is to be as transparant as possible, both within the MUA as well as among the project partners. By frequently touching base with the project partners, especially those which are involved more in the peripheral sense, P4W managed to maintain its urgency across its partners (despite the barriers imposed by the pandemic). For instance, it has been difficult to get the upcoming scientific experiment off the ground, in part due to GDPR-issues and capacity constraints due to COVID. By acting open and pro-active on this, and involving all stakeholders in this challenge, the project team has secured the commitment of several project partners, who are all contributing towards this (as opposed to merely one partner managing this, which was the initial strategy). As such, the joint effort made has compensated for the unforeseen externalities (COVID and rigid GDPR legislation). Furthermore, openness is critical to maintain political support levels (which is an important prerequisite for the project's success, more on that in Challenge #3) and also for its recognizability, which is slowly but steadily increasing due to the timeliness and relevance of the jobs & skills topic.

As denoted in the previous journal, this challenge has caused some problems at the start (where the EU  guidelines conflicted with increasingly flexible employment contracts,  network organizations and the implications of running an innovative project ). To remedy this, Passport4Work has propagated a outcome-based procurement procedure among its partners, rather than one based on extensive specifications, to allow more for more freedom and agility towards the envisioned outcome of procured services. In the past year, this challenge has not manifested itself.

As mentioned in the first challenge, a project run by a municipality hinges on its political support. The MUA has a broad labour market agenda, spanning several projects and initiatives. As such, it is important to maintain the relevance and urgency across all levels of the MUA. On the other hand, it also provides opportunities. For instance, as mentioned there have been some difficulties getting experiments with target users up and running. One of the solutions (apart from involving other project partners than originally enviosned) has been to connect P4W to another regional initiative, with an overlapping target audience. By doing so, the outreach of P4W is increased, the other initiative and its beneficiaries benefit from the P4W platform, and the data collection has become richer. This would not have been possible without short ties and a strong network of involved actors and stakeholders with shared interests (but are otherwise often organized in silo's). 

In the first half of the project, this was a big concern. On a day-to-day basis, it had proven to be impossible to maintain continuous points of contact across all project partners, with varying levels of responsibility and allocated resources. As such, a core project team was appointed to manage the project on a day-to-day basis. Other project partners have been involved, but at appropriate times rather than at a fixed frequency. For instance by organized thematic workshops or events (the last one being around the launch of the P4W prototype for employers).This decision has allowed for quicker decision-making, more targeted involvement of partners, and in the past year this has worked well for the project. As such, the urgency of the challenge has been reduced from high to normal.

In the previous journal, this challenge had a "easy" status, but due to unforeseen GDPR and COVID contraints, it has changed to medium/hard. The development of the administrative system, in which information on job seeker skill assessments and job matching is stored, has been impeded by on-going GDPR concerns and barriers. The monitoring and evaluation of the project, which in a large part comprises an elaborate impact analysis, is dependent on the realization of this tracking system. Furthermore, the storing of personal information in general, beyond the scope of monitoring and evaluation, is also subjected to GDPR-related scrutiny and applicable legislative protocols. The remediate this, external expertise has been sought by the project. While the project team is optimistic about the outcome, it has delayed the execution of the impact analysis. Another arising issue here has been the availability of participants (job seekers), which was greatly reduced by COVID due to lockdown measures. However, as mentioned in the first challenge, by combining efforts of several project partners (otherwise not involved), this has been solved. 

Communication with the target beneficiaries has increased over the past year. COVID caused some hurdles here, with jobseekers under the supervision of the Eindhoven municipality not being able to visit the premises where coaching took place. As such, it was difficult to organize workshops around using the Passport4Work tool. However, several remote sessions took place, and in the past few months physical meetups started being organized again. This has resulted in several job seekers using Passport4Work, either remote or as part of a job coaching trajectory. This has resulted in detailed feedback on the tool and its user experience, informing future prototype versions. In addition, focus group sessions were held with university students to ascertain the utility of P4W for a broader target group. In both cases, this has resulted in positive anecdotal evidence on the perceived value of Passport4Work. For example, it was reported that the tool has a positive effect on the self-worth and motivation of previously discouraged jobseekers. University students were also keen to use the tool, with the difficulty of finding an appropriate job upon employment being a shared concern among the group. The guidance the tool provides in painting a systematic picture of one's skills and personality was found to be extremely useful in this regard. 

Other than targeted end users, communication towards prospective employers and policy makers has also increased. The project team was present at the largest HR conference in The Netherlands, to demonstrate the employer interface of the tool, and its underlying psychometric principles. This was a kick-off of the activation campaign, which is continuing over the remaining period of the project. In the coming weeks, a two-part webinar is being released about skills based matching, and the implications for employers.

To ensure the sustainability of the project and its impact, the project team has decided to adopt a double-sided strategy. On the one hand, completing the technical development and scientific testing of the tool. In parallel, P4W is heavily investing in embedding its outputs in existing, broader initiatives. For instance, the results of the national O*NET survey will be shared with the national skills language initiative "CompetentNL", as well as an upcoming data exchange standard, which exists alongside CompetentNL. The team is in talks with both organizations about the implications thereof. Questions that are being addressed include: who is hosting and owning this data, how do we make sure it remains up-to-date, how can we upscale this skill validation activity to other sectors of industry, beyond the three that are central to P4W? Other matters related to upscaling include the management of GDPR legislation, which is proving to be a major obstacle.