Bird's eye view of an Employer : Workday Culture
Change the job specifications to key activities list that a job seeker will do as an employee. Give everyone equal opportunities to work their passion. Start hacking passion and not mere job specifications. Companies also exhibit great work culture during the hiring process but a workday culture helps in visualizing work by minimizing mismatches between employers and employees.
Written by priyanka botny
How will it work?
Use "Communication Design" in terms of identifying the right candidate for the job. Candidates are not previously trained to do the exact work as specified by companies. They are usually educated about their life experiences, work process and are looking for a change in job.
Workplace creation:
Everyone would love to work in an environment that covers Social, Mental, Physical, Emotional, Spiritual and Environmental checks that helps the employee work effectively and is a major motivation factor.
Key Findings:
"Explaining a typical workday culture (just like work culture ) to employees for a specific job using videos, pictures or even experiential maps (communication design) will help job seekers visualize a typical work day after being recruited and most of all help employers to build a workforce i.e strong, passionate, spending extra hours to complete work, intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, coordination, manage like-unlike minded people and most of all managing attitudes of people. "
A true story: A typical job seeker was hired for an engineering job. His key activities were to utilize time in tracking progress of the product, run test cases, develop test cases, report bugs as he has a high school diploma in Science with on the job training experience of 3 months at a small scale company. He performed welding, reporting defects, notifying the product designing to fix the edges and check for correctiveness. He was motivated by the life-cycle of testing products. He was not trained to work as a Software Test Engineer but hired as one. He enjoyed working in an environment that helped him with open communication, speaks local language, deploys test cases by looking at his peers, raised bugs for fixing them and he was satisfied with his job. This happened only because he was giving the opportunity to work as a Software Test Engineer irrespective of his quality of education or work ex.
Another true story: A mechanical engineer is a die-hard designer. He loves to design toys, clocks, motor cycles, clothes esp T-Shirts, watches, design tatoos etc. He graduated from college and worked on his own for sometime making all the equipments that he once dreamed about. He sold them to people and made his living. After 2 years of following his passion, he was hired at a leading outdoor advertising company a Designer and uses his Mechanical Engineering skills to solve problems.
Actual Situation: A product manager takes the requirements, does forecasts, deploys action items and also he/she communicates, presents, travels for customers visits. He/She in this case may not be interested in travel or does not like to talk to his/her peers, is an introvert but delivers amazing products, understands the requirements, makes minimum conversation happen and is a strategist. Defining a a job will not support this person meet all the expectations of the roles but if various activities are tracked, he/she will be able to fill the loopholes as a recruit.
Why it might work?
It might work because the job specifications are for robots and not for humans. One cannot find the exact skills that the company is looking for as the candidates do not prepare themselves to work for a specified job. Also a 2 month or 1 year training will not help meet the exact expected outcome as the job seekers also need to be motivated to do the job and at the same time earn bread and butter. One cannot be forced to do a particular work but can make most use of the human resource in human-centered way.
Questions for the community:
1. How can we design the communication better to help employers accept the concept?
Who does this idea benefit, who are the main players and what's in it for them?
Youth who are seeking for jobs as freshers and entry level job seekers. They will be benefited in terms of fulfilling their passion aka interests to work at full time jobs, passionately.How is your idea specifically increasing access to employment opportunities and pathways for young people?
Recruiters largely mention about job specifications rather than explaining job activities. If they explain activities in a day of their job, youth will be willing to work for them full-time and even in their extra time. It will provide access to follow both passion to learn and work to earn.What early, lightweight experiment can you try out in your own community to find out if the idea will meet your expectations?
Design Communication tips for job profiles by understanding the interests of job seekers. Understanding the best fit candidates for the jobs. Also to bear in mind that one cannot continuously work for earning money but also for passion.What skills, input or guidance are you keen to receive from the OpenIDEO community to help you build out or refine your idea further?
Need guidance with Communication Design Skills for attracting employers to buy the standpoint.The idea emerged from:
- A group brainstorm
How do you envision your idea being implemented?
- Keen to be involved in prototyping but need partners at some stage
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CommentShane Zhao
priyanka botny