31
People have been supported back into employment
132
Placements to fill
12
Employers within the gateway
OVERVIEW
P3 stands for People, Potential, Possibilities and is a charity and social enterprise, made up of a passionate team, who care about people.
P3 is working with Meganexus to develop their Possibilities Portfolio platform to enable their service users to access employment support through several of their charities in a consistent way. P3 has a network of charities within the main organisation and several of them are spread across the country. The development of their Possibilities Portfolio enables them to support their users in a consistent way, no matter through which of their charities users reach out, or where they are geographically based.
Since implementing the APT solution in July 2021, P3 has helped 31 people return to employment through employability support.
CHALLENGES
P3 runs a variety of services across the UK that aim to give everyone the chance to be part of the community they live in and feel connected to society. P3 believes that everyone is unique, and with support and confidence can unlock their inner potential, opening up a world of possibilities. P3 Charity and a network of charities and community organisations across the UK have joined forces to create 118 placements as part of the Government's Kickstart scheme, which aims to provide employment and skills training for 16 to 24-year-olds. P3 has secured the funding to allocate 60 placements by the end of 2021, in roles ranging from support work to communications. P3 is also acting as a 'gateway' for 12 other charitable organisations and CICs to access the scheme, with a further 58 placements being delivered across the partnerships. The partners hope to collaborate to offer permanent job opportunities to some of the young participants.
As part of P3 acquiring this new scheme and having taken on the role as a "gateway" provider, they needed to think ahead and look for solutions that would enable them to have a uniform offer across all their partners with a minimum standard of employability support that every single young person who comes through the P3 gateway would have.
P3 knew they were going to be bringing on young people in new roles, probably their first-time employment or new employment since a long time, therefore they needed a platform that was able to not only offer support but that also that could be online to answer the current context of remote working. When presented with the APT software solution, they saw the real opportunity that this innovative software solution could have for them as an organisation because it was an online platform that could sort and standardise their delivery across many different partners.
SOLUTION
Gemma Bukel, Director of Strategy, and Innovation as well as Wendy Heale, Assistant Director of HR, Kathy Kozlowski, Director of HR, and Jack Buckler HR Onboarding Coordinator came together to look at the challenge that this new opportunity would bring and started to explore solutions to support their own project. For P3, it was apparent at the very beginning that the choice of the solution was a very critical one to successfully deliver the programme.
They were looking at a solution that would be user friendly as well as be able to provide support for people who might not be particularly tech savvy, that could provide an easy point of access as well as a platform that would be easily customisable. An easy-to-use back end for staff to track progress and participants' engagement was also part of their requirements when searching for a solution.
They explored the market briefly but there was no other platform that quite offered what they needed, and from the initial meeting with Meganexus, they were pretty much convinced that APT - Assess / Plan / Track was the right solution for them.
The real offer that made the solution stand out was the fact that it could get rolled out quickly and with a unique tracking feature enabling them to capture data in a uniform way across all their different regions to better evidence outcomes. The suggested content and recommendation engine behind the content was another feature that led to the decision of going for the APT solution as it is unique and different from other solution providers.
APT is used by P3 professionals and their service users to support service delivery for the young people across the large geographical areas that P3 covers. APT enables the building of situation-specific needs assessments and matches assessed need to targeted content. A personalised life plan is created and progress against the plan is tracked. The solution eliminates paper records and duplication. It can be used collaboratively with service users including self-service, if appropriate. APT enables individuals to upskill and empower them to take control of their journey to employment.
P3 liked the ease of use that APT gives to users (key workers and service users) as well as the simple navigation and the ability to record interventions. They appreciate the flexibility of the Meganexus team that has always put everything in place to meet their needs.
The CV builder and online internal jobs board are both two really important features that they use through APT. It helps people who might not have a particularly strong CV and is ideal for young people who need help to get started, the additional possibility to save documents on their Digital Wallets is a great advantage, as centralising all that information is key for P3.
Reporting on this information is also important, for example getting an idea of how many users have created their CVs within six months and how many users have applied to a job. This Information will help P3 in evidencing their outcomes and is being captured through the APT software solution.
Jack Buckler, HR Onboarding Coordinator said: "My expectations are exceeded as you always have someone to speak to if you need too, which is great. I feel like we have like good relationships, and it is something quite strong. In the past, when I have worked with other external suppliers, sometimes you just email the generic inbox, and you get to log a problem without having a real person to speak to. Meganexus is different and really takes the time to speak to us and we really appreciate that."
RESULTS
P3 is reaching out to the Kickstart leads across the regions and expect 15 to 20 people from a back-end perspective to be using the system. They have arranged quite a large demo arranged in partnership with Meganexus to train all the leads on the platform as well as all the partners and other charities.
The main expected results are set around tracking engagement. P3 wants to be able to evidence all the activity around the Kickstart programme. One of their main KPIs is that users will have key checkpoints, such as attending three workshops during their six-month placement, everything is being documented and stored for them to reference afterwards.
As DWP have not imposed to monitoring of specific outcomes, P3 has decided to increase the monitoring and evidencing of outcomes when it comes to employability and employment support. It was key for P3 to think ahead as they wanted to quantify the results to articulate their outcomes.
Being able to track and evidence outcomes is something that P3 is very keen on, because many charities do amazing work, but for a lot of them it is anecdotal or qualitative, and sometimes that is very hard to capture when it comes to outcomes, but with a solution like APT, the work is being recognised.
Data gives them that bit of concrete evidence and contributes to the growth of the charities, as they are able to help more users and able to evidence and show progress.
P3 sees APT as a game changer because they understand its value for their charities as it will enable more users to be supported. It will remove the dependence on paper entries that need to be doubly inputted into a central system.
