CONTEXT/BACKGROUND Erasmus+ Program has set the objective of fighting unemployment through training and education, stating that “EU businesses need to become more competitive through talent and innovation” (see Part A of the GUIDE). The project SOCS aims to address this goal by improving learning provisions tailored to the specific needs of organisations or people who have HR and organizational development tasks. SMEs (especially social enterprises), Start-Ups or young entrepreneurs are very often low budgeted and therefore do not have the financial means to develop and install tools and trainings to further develop their business and the competencies of their teams. It is usually impossible for them to hire an external counsellor to support them in their strategical plan. OBJECTIVES Thus, the objective of the SOCS project is to improve empreneurial practice by improving the skills of the responsible staff, especially those in charge in small organizations by the approach of symbol work. During the two years project period, partners aim to intentify the areas of interventions most needed by the targets, by finding the existing tools most adequate for use, adapt them if needed or to develop new tools based on symbol work, especially for the final download versions or online versions of the tools for free use. RESULTS: Regarding the specific Intellectual Outputs Partners aim to focus on the different intervention areas of business counselling: IO1 - Symbol - Toolset for Strategical Organizational Development IO2 - Symbol - Toolset for Team Development IO3 - Symbol - Toolset for efficient Communication and Conflict Interventions IO4 - Symbol - Toolset for Work Place - Quality Check and Evaluation of Staff Satisfaction and to ensure their multiplication and mainstreaming, via an effective dissemination and exploitation strategy. METHOD & INNOVATION The specific approach with symbol work will lead to empowerment of the targets, to self-activation, taking self-responsible decision for their business, build their capacities in problem identification and developing effective action plans to solve problems. Visualisation will be used as a very precious technique to create new responses instead of only dealing and being pushed by day to day business. Symbols help to express preconscious attitudes and mental barriers, even blind spots and get more clearness about future actions. 3 out of the 5 Partners learned the power of working with Symbols in two previous Erasmus+ projects "SymfoS, Symbols for Success" (developed for professional orientators/counsellors working with the target group of young people on their professional orientation and integration" and SymfoS for Youth Care" (developed for youth workers dealing with young people in youth care system to overcome their problems). Both projects proved the impact of symbol work in regard to self-activation of the users in assessing and solving their problems and the potential of making aware new resources. Therefore, the partners decided that they want to further develop the tools being effective in individual intervention measures to the field of their original activities - business counselling - as they see a huge potential in this method. PARTICIPANTS Organisational counsellors, Consultants, Business owners, Entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs, organizational and human resources managers, organizational and human resources management students, technicians for organisational development and HR decisions in organisations, start-up founders. DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIES The results will be developed in a 5 steps process: Step 1: Transnational screening with at least 6 interviews per country Step 2: Draft Symbol - Toolset (Tool creation, validation with 25 targets, Training-Guidelines) Step 3: Testing of Training Version & transfer to online version (test with 125 targets) Step 4: Evaluation Step 5: Dissemination and Mainstreaming IMPACT • SOCS fosters the recognition of own strengths, skills and resources and goals which needed to be set • SOCS provides low but effective threshold service compared to text-based methods • SOCS develops an entire counselling process, containing clearing, design of pathways and creation of action plans. • SOCS works as it provides a holistic systemic approach The long-term impact on the target groups will be that SOCS will improve their skills in the following ways: - help them to apply strategies for development which suit to their business - Develop their innovation management and innovation skill and help them to adopt innovation as part of their day-to-day work - drive economic growth, through innovation and adaption in their work - improve their overall economic situation, by creating new opportunities for themselves and their staff members - come up with solutions for problems as processes and change will be accelerated or shortcut - improve company culture and working climate by more efficient team development.
The objective was to improve organizational practice by improving the skills of the responsible staff, especially those in charge of small organisations in the 4 areas mostly needed by this target group: 1) strategical organizational development 2) Team development 3) Interventions for communication and conflict resolution 4) Quality control and evaluation of staff satisfaction. The final guides, the explanatory videos and online tools are free to use. The approach used in SOCS leads to the empowerment, the self-activation, the self-responsible-decision finding in the own business, the development of capacities to identify the problems and develop efficient action plans to solve them. Visualization is used as a powerful technique to create new answers instead of only dealing and being pushed by day-to-day work, which is even more important in times we are going through. SOCS may be seen as a tools for auto reflection and source for ideas to discover new solutions and potentials which have not been used before.
The objective of the SOCS project was to reduce unemployment and improve rentability of enterprises by offering them and their staff in leading positions and HR learning opportunities and tools adapted to the needs of SMEs. SMEs, especially those in the social sector), startups or young entrepreneurs lack often the budget to develop or install tools and trainings which allow them to enlarge their business and foster the competences of their teams. Often it is impossible for them to hire external counsellors to help them with their development strategies, as big organizations use to do. What we did not know at the moment of the application how much digital tools would be needed to replace f2f interventions to be able to work on distance.