Social economy represents one of the pillars of the European social model being an engine of sustainable and inclusive growth, social inclusion and cohesion. Social economy represents «2 million businesses and 14 million jobs across the EU» (EESC, 2016), in other words, about 10% of all EU businesses and more than 7% of the EU’s employees. Innovative recruitment and management instruments and methods play a key role in fostering social organizations’ success and the achievement of both social and economic goals. Nonetheless, as underlined by the European Commission, SEEs and SEOs’ managers often lack business and management skills. Similarly, nowadays few innovative tools exist enabling to connect with communities and to entrench their entrepreneurial and social mission (EC, 2016). The potential of the social economy must be unleashed and innovative methodologies must trigger the building of a new and solid framework for SEOs and SEEs in Europe. Nowadays, SEEs and SEOs are confronted with unmet challenges related to transparency, sustainability and their entrepreneurship model. Despite the efforts carried out so far, social economy still has a long way to go through to respond to these challenges. Important differences exist among European countries both in terms of size and development of social economy. These differences have major consequences even on the degree of skills’ development of human resources and managers, that change consistently from a country to another. In most countries, recruitment and management processes including diversity remain an unexplored ground, lacking adequate tools and adapted training modules to be treated. The direct experience of the Consortium has confirmed these findings: most of the SEOs and SEEs interviewed claim the need to develop specific trainings on diversity addressed to managers and HR. These latter increasingly ask for being supported in the inclusion of diversity within their structure and claim the inexistence of adapted tools at present. For these reasons, the SENSENET project is focused on creating a learning network model to support SEEs and SEOs’ managers and human resources who face challenges in dealing with the recruitment, welcome and retention of vulnerable people, in particular people with disabilities. The project will specifically aim to: Raise awareness on social economy and its importance as an engine of social innovation; Collect data and information on diversity management in social economy in different European countries; Build capacity of SEEs and SEOs’ managers and human resources to include diversity in their recruitment and management processes; Foster mutual learning and exchange of good practices among different European countries on diversity management in social economy; Improve SEEs and SEOs’ performance in terms of social innovation and cohesion. The project will specifically target SEOs and SEEs, in particular managers and human resources, being them in charge of the recruitment process and staff management within these structures. Nevertheless, managers and HR participating in the project will be invited to raise awareness and train their staff members on the importance of diversity. The implementation of the project and the achievement of its objectives, will be ensured through different activities. At the beginning, the selected SEOs participating in the project will run an internal organisational assessment, especially configured to identify participants’ (managers and HR) learning needs. The identified needs will drive the fine-tuning of the training contents and learning activities, included in the SEOs’ managers and HR learning programme. National training pilots will be delivered in each country using blended learning format. These pilots will contribute to improve the SEOs’ learning network model, produced within the framework of the project. This network, including all the created outputs, will ensure the replicability of the project in different countries and contexts. To guarantee the adequacy and efficiency of the project’s outputs, a methodology foreseeing the co-participation of the direct beneficiaries of the project (SEOs, SEEs, managers and human resources) and of other relevant stakeholders will be adopted. Thanks to the involvement of different actors in the creation of the outputs and in the implementation of the activities, the project will ensure its impact and its effectiveness. Moreover, to guarantee the implementation of the project’s activities in compliance with the budget and the timeline, a shared leadership of each activity has been foreseen. Through the SENSENET project, we expect to promote a better corporate social responsibility and more inclusive SEOs. The project will foster the creation of a EU-wide movement of SEOs engaged in the promotion of diversity in their recruitment and management processes. Moreover, we expect to improve managers and HR’s skills, promoting better work environ
The cooperation between the 7 partners of the European project SENSENET (France, Denmark, Italy, Portugal and Romania) has enabled the successful delivery of all the intellectual productions expected within the 36 months of the project, translated into 6 languages, which can be consulted on the project website www.sensenet-project.org : The 1st output is a state-of-the-art (60 pages) of existing diversity and inclusion practices focused on improving the performance of managers and human resources (HR) in Social Economy organisations aiming at strengthening the potential of the most vulnerable workers. It has been written by the co-responsibles FACE and APROXIMAR, with the support of the other 5 partners and the collaboration of 81 participants. This production allowed to collect data on diversity management in different European countries, promoting mutual learning and exchange of good practices between the project partners, and to build the following deliverables. The 2nd output is an online self-diagnostic tool for managers and HR managers to assess their performance in terms of managing diversity and inclusion (D&I) within their organisation. It has been developed with the cooperation of managers and HR to : - raise awareness on D&I management in SE organisations and companies, - help them to become aware of recruitment practices or management methods implemented within their own organisation, especially when they are not sufficiently inclusive (not encouraging the inclusion of vulnerable groups within their teams) or socially innovative. The questionnaire is divided into 5 dimensions: organisational policies within organisations, recruitment processes and policies, talent management, performance management and inclusive leadership and then, the user receives recommendations adapted to its level of maturity. The tool has been widely disseminated on social networks and during the project dissemination events. The opinions of 67 users were collected through a satisfaction form. This method was also used for each intellectual production. It appears the result of the diagnosis depends strongly on the involvement, sensitivity and knowledge on D&I issues of the respondent, thus demonstrating the relevance of developing a comprehensive learning model (IO4). The 3rd production is a learning programme on diversity and inclusion for SE managers and HR. It aims to provide them with the necessary skills to integrate diversity into their recruitment and management processes and thus improve the performance of their organisation in terms of cohesion and social innovation. The programme is divided into 6 modules: D&I business case, D&I policies, attracting talent, developing talent, retaining talent and team management. The training format has varied from country to country, ranging from 6 to 24 hours and can be delivered both online and/or face-to-face. The programme was presented during the pilot courses undertaken by the project partners as well as at the 5 national closing events. All the results of these pilot courses are available online in a compiled report. However, these results have been negatively impacted by external events such as the transport strike in Paris in December 2019 and more widely by the Covid-19 related measures. At the end of the training, the 119 participants mentioned in their evaluation questionnaire that they would recommend the training and that they wanted to keep the link between them, which is in line with one of the objectives of the project to create an active network of committed structures. The fourth and final output is divided into two deliverables : - The networked learning model written in the form of a short and attractive guide to enhance the results and promote understanding of the process. It represents a visual element that will facilitate the dissemination of the project tools and the integration of new stakeholders into the SENSENET network. - The end-user instruction guide for the implementation of the model presents coaching methods adapted to small organisations to help them engage their team towards more diversified D&I practices, starting with awareness-raising exercises. These methods were tested during the oline staff training activity carried out in an original, interactive format that mobilised 33 participants over 3 days. The objectives of the project were achieved despite the context of the global health crisis. However, monitoring the impact of the post-training project to assess the appropriation of the tools by the participating organisations was hampered by the lack of availability of the participating managers and HR staff due to containment management.