Social Hiring Advocates as IntermediariesP R O M I S I N G P R A C T I C E S C A S E S T U DY S E R I E S | C A S E S T U DY 2

E M P L O Y E R E N G A G E M E N T F O R C O M M U N I T Y B E N E F I T

Through funding from the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities (MTCU), First Work

researched and developed a series of case studies to represent the experiences of employers,

employment agencies and other organizations involved in employer engagement initiatives.

The case studies profile innovative examples of promising practices that are intended to promote

the hiring of individuals traditionally underrepresented in the workforce. The lessons learned

suggest strategies that will inform future work in this area.

Emerging from discussions at the Futures Conference, Canada’s largest and longest running youth employment networking event, this series highlights important concepts in employer engagement.

Sponsored by

BACKGROUND

PROFILE OF FIRST WORK

Through supporting the work of local youth employment centres

across Ontario, First Work aims to help young people find and

maintain meaningful employment that will help improve the quality

of their lives.

Visit us at www.firstwork.org

SOCIAL HIRING & SOCIAL HIRING ADVOCATES

Social hiring is the practice of deliberately hiring individuals traditionally underrepresented in the workforce. This includes low-income individuals, people with disabilities, youth, Aboriginals and single parents.

Social Hiring Advocates are defined as one, or a cluster, of organizations—non-profit, private, public or some amalgamation thereof—that are committed to promoting social hiring.

P R O M I S I N G P R A C T I C E S C A S E S T U DY S E R I E S | C A S E S T U DY 2

Social hiring advocates often act as intermediaries

between employment service agencies and

employers, applying innovative practices to

engage employers and promote the hiring of

individuals traditionally underrepresented in the

workforce. In highlighting the promising employer

engagement practices of social hiring advocates

that have successfully supported employers to

hire agency clients, this case study aims to give

agencies clear information about what social

hiring advocates do and how they do it.

This information will help interested

employment agencies to:

1) Gain insight into how they can work

effectively with social hiring advocates to

leverage their own clients’ success, and

2) Learn about strong, innovative employer

engagement practices that they may be

able to utilize in their own dealings with

employers.

Overview

Assess Fit with Potential Employers

Part of building strong relationships with employers is learning to

distinguish between strong, willing employer partners and those not

receptive to social hiring in a meaningful way.

There is no question that social hiring advocates must earn the trust of

employers by acting as reliable brokers between employment agencies

and companies. This means being honest, maintaining consistent

communication before, during and after a job placement and placing

agency clients in positions to which they are suited.

At the end of the day, the effectiveness of social hiring advocates hinges

on the willingness of employers to make a substantial commitment to

social hiring, and not to view it as a favour or one-off gesture.

This means engaging with employers who are open to spending time,

and potentially, resources, on the social hiring relationship. They must be

invested in the idea and receptive to giving it the attention it requires.

Promising PracticesThe following promising employer engagement practices were identified through discussion with the social hiring advocates: Assess fit of potential employers.

Emphasize the business case.

Understand and respond to employer needs.

Play a neutral mediation role.

Facilitate realistic matches.

“We need to look critically at employers to separate the wheat from the chaff.” — Social Hiring Advocate

Emphasize the Business Case

In acting as advocates for those who are often excluded from

the workplace, social hiring groups take both a sensitive and a

pragmatic approach. They work to balance the interests of individuals

traditionally underrepresented in the workforce with the business

needs of employers. Social hiring should not be confined to the realm

of, “a nice thing to do,” left as an altruistic gesture. Social hiring

advocates insist this approach doesn’t convince busy, resource-

strapped employers to make a long-term commitment. Neither should

social hiring be viewed as a method for businesses to hit corporate

social responsibility quotas. Rather, to be sustainable, social hiring

must be regarded as a legitimate recruitment channel.

The corporate sector is increasingly receptive to the notion that

business value and social impact needn’t exist in silos. Social hiring

advocates are both accelerating and capitalizing on this trend. This

past March, RBC Generator, the investment arm of RBC’s Social

Finance initiative, invested $700 000 in Social Capital Partner’s

(SCP) Community Employment Loan portfolio.

“ By linking interest rates to employment outcomes, SCP is demonstrating how financial incentives can drive social good in a way that makes sense for business owners… SCP is a leader in the social finance landscape in Canada…”  1

In addition to financial incentives like low-interest loans and wage

subsidies, social hiring advocates continue to emphasize to employers

some of the auxiliary business benefits of social hiring. These include:

Social hiring addresses skills gaps in the labour market: Employers

from a range of industries claim it’s difficult to find skilled workers,

and some labour market analysts have been referring to an overarching

Canadian “skills gap.” With socio-economic factors like a rapidly

aging workforce and declining birth rates at play, there is merit to the

idea that employers should expand their hiring practices to include

traditionally marginalized groups.

“ There is a skills shortage in almost every industry out there, whether because of an aging workforce or other factors. Social hiring is another option for employers to hit a pain point, this being, ‘we simply don’t have the people.’ So why not ride the wave and tie social hiring into this?”

— Social Hiring Advocate

“The whole point is to prove that there’s value to the employers to seek out and use the services of community agencies, and to hire people with barriers”— Social Hiring Advocate

P R O M I S I N G P R A C T I C E S C A S E S T U DY S E R I E S | C A S E S T U DY 21 Sandra Odendahl, head of RBC’s Social Finance initiative, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal [Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/PR-CO-20140317-902265.html].

Studies show certain marginalized groups make more loyal employees:

In exploring the phenomenon of social hiring, certain studies, such as

Deloitte’s 2010 white paper “The Road to Inclusion: Integrating People with

Disabilities into the Workplace” have emerged, finding that individuals with

disabilities—a group typically underrepresented in the workforce—often

make more loyal employees than those who haven’t faced employment

barriers.

Employers are increasingly open to the idea that recruiting individuals with

disabilities or other barriers can be a way of securing employees that will

Understand and Respond to Employers’ Needs

To ensure optimal employer engagement, an in-depth assessment of an

employer’s hiring needs should be undertaken. Social hiring advocates

may assess employers’ needs in the following ways:

On-site visits to ascertain the company culture and the personalities

and dynamic of the staff.

In-depth discussions with employers to understand what they need

in an employee beyond the hard skills listed on a job posting. It’s also

important to elicit past and previous hiring or retention issues.

Questions to consider include:

• Has the employer seen high turnover in the past and needs

employees who will stick around?

• Do they need to find an employee whose personality better fits

their company culture?

• Do they need someone to work part-time? On certain days of

the week?

Ascertain if the employer needs help with Human Resource tasks,

such as crafting job descriptions; advertising vacancies; pre-screening

and screening applicants and help with paperwork, like payroll

documentation. Part of this assessment is determining whether,

instead of engaging an employer with a wage subsidy, HR assistance

would be of greater value to them. Whatever an employer’s principal

need, it’s important to pinpoint it and offer to help.

“Sometimes, a community or employment agency will send their job developer to an employer and she’ll return with a job posting but nothing more... we call that throwing spaghetti against the wall.” – Social Hiring Advocate

As well as determining an employer’s needs,

social hiring advocates offer concrete supports.

For example, in order to encourage companies

to hire people with disabilities, Viable Calgary

provides any or all of the following to employers:

Consultation on workplace readiness and

related policies

Access to a comprehensive online library of

disability and employment resources

Information about local job fairs

Invitations to events Viable Calgary hosts,

in which they bring together employment

service providers and employers

Introduction to local providers that offer

workplace disability services

Support in developing a strategic workforce

inclusion plan, which allows employers to

diversify their hiring policies (this can take

anywhere from two months to two years to

develop, depending on the company’s size)

stick around, and of creating workplaces that

better reflect the diverse markets they serve.

For social hiring to have any lasting success

as a movement, an employer should hire

individuals from employment or community

agencies because they believe that person

is well-suited to the job and is likely to stay

awhile, rather than out of a sense of duty

or pity.

“Where we can help is getting more information about these specific needs from employers... it’s almost like we need to compensate for some of the shortcomings these job-seekers might have going in—they likely won’t have every single hard skill that has been advertised right off the bat.”

— Social Hiring Advocate

Play a Neutral Mediation Role

Unlike employment service agencies, which often face pressure to hit

job placement targets, social hiring advocates typically don’t have a

vested interest in getting clients from a particular agency placed. This

frees them up to play a kind of mediating role between agencies and

employers.

They are often privy to the activities and challenges of both agencies

and employers, putting them in a position to point out gaps or

inefficiencies in the ways the two entities interact. Further, they can

pinpoint and disseminate innovative ways that some agencies are

working to fill in these gaps. For example, Social Capital Partners was

told by some employers that they found the Employment Ontario

service system difficult to navigate. The employers explained that they

were overwhelmed by being contacted by multiple job developers from

competing agencies. In addition, some employment agencies identified

that having to compete with fellow agencies in their communities

proved challenging.

“Some Employment Ontario providers have been frank about their challenges trying to make headway and build their own capacity when there are [numerous] job developers from other agencies all calling the same company...there can be eight of them within a [neighbourhood] and they’re all competing to place clients with the same employers.”

— Social Hiring Advocate

“It is important to reduce as many barriers as you can ahead of time, so that the workplace is ready for diversity groups.” — Social Hiring Advocate

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FIGURE 1 | Stakeholders in Social Hiring

CLOSE RELATIONSHIP

EMPLOYERSOCIAL HIRING

ADVOCATEEMPLOYMENT

AGENCY CLIENT

REFERRAL CLOSE RELATIONSHIP

Social Capital Partners points to a group of agencies in one Ontario

city who decided to counteract competition and confusion by forming

a coordinated sector council. These agencies pooled their client bases,

assembled a shared database of resumes and appointed the agency

with the strongest relationship with employers to manage referrals.

This approach, which is underway in several cities, allows for stronger

relationships with employers and increases the likelihood that the best

possible client is referred to each job. Spreading the word about innovative

examples of collaboration and transparency amongst agencies provides

an opportunity to leverage good works and enhance effective employer

engagement.

Viable Calgary plays an intermediary role by working to break down

barriers for job-seekers with disabilities, simultaneously striving to

remove stumbling blocks for employers. Acting as a kind of broker

between employers and employment or disability service agencies, Viable

Calgary has identified that many private sector managers fail to actively

seek information regarding workplace disability support services. Viable

Calgary strives to fill this gap, bringing information about services to

busy employers and encouraging them to shift towards a more proactive

approach when it comes to accessing services.

Facilitate Realistic Matches

“Social hiring cannot be expected to fill the high skilled gaps in the workforce... to take someone like an at-risk youth and think they’re going to fill a position like that is completely unrealistic.” — Social Hiring Advocate

Part of engaging employers is ensuring they aren’t overwhelmed with

inappropriate employee referrals. Though gaps in the labour market make

social hiring a viable business need at present, clients should never be

referred to positions beyond their capacities.

Because social hiring is generally geared to entry-level positions—ideally,

those with room for advancement—many employers value soft skills, like

an individual’s positive attitude, above the technical skills they possess or

lack starting out. In this way, a social hiring advocate won’t push for a client

to be hired to a position that’s beyond them, yet they also understand that

a client shouldn’t be written off if they are initially short on certain hard

skills identified in the job description. For instance, Social Capital Partners

has placed a number of agency clients in entry-level oil and lube technician

positions. From there, these clients often acquire specialized training and

progress to more sophisticated automotive service apprenticeship roles.

Viable Calgary operates according to the philosophy that people are

different, and that equal opportunity means that every individual

has distinct needs. The Viable Calgary method is therefore practical,

encouraging employers to note the benefits of hiring a person with

disabilities when they are the right person for the job, but not to ignore any

extra workplace supports that the person may need. Workplace supports

can range from flexible hours to an ergonomic desk set-up.

Ultimately, employer engagement isn’t tenable if agencies or social hiring

advocates make a habit of slotting candidates into jobs they are unable

to do. By demonstrating to employers that they can be trusted to find

appropriate candidates with the willingness and potential for growth,

social hiring advocates establish employer buy-in and trust.

Concluding Comments

Social hiring advocates are privileged to have a ‘bird’s eye view’ of

the employment service network. They aren’t obligated to reach job

placement quotas and don’t always have a vested interest in getting

certain clients hired. Nor do they have to contend with the atmosphere

of competitiveness that employment agencies often face. Relatively

unencumbered by external pressures, social hiring advocates have had

the freedom to develop creative employer engagement practices. They

understand that barriered clients may not have all the necessary technical

skills going into a job and may require extra support to thrive in the

workplace. In engaging employers, social hiring advocates don’t oversell a

client’s capabilities. They facilitate good matches, and step in as required

to provide extra assistance.

The promising practices offered by social hiring advocates suggest that

they have an important role to play in the sector. They are in a position to

help facilitate the development of relationships between employers and

employment agencies, convening joint forums and facilitating a shared

understanding of needs and expectations.

This case study highlights specific employer engagement strategies that

have yielded successful job placement results, including: assessing fit

with potential employers; emphasizing the business case; understanding

and responding to employer needs; playing a neutral mediation role,

and facilitating realistic matches. These techniques can be adopted by

employment agencies or other social hiring advocates. At their core, these

strategies speak to the importance of building trust with employers and

finding sustainable employment opportunities for clients.

This publication is one in a series of case studies addressing issues surrounding employer engagement for community benefit. Please visit www.firstwork.org for more information about the series and our organization.

Contributing StakeholdersSocial Hiring Advocates

Social Capital Partners (SCP) is a national nonprofit organization

founded in 2001 by Canadian business leader and philanthropist

Bill Young. Its mandate is to apply market-based solutions to tackle

systemic social issues like unemployment. For the purpose of this case

study, they have been defined as a social hiring advocate, as their

work focuses on easing issues of unemployment across the country,

particularly for people facing employment barriers.

Through their Community Employment Loan program, started in

2006, SCP provides loans to franchisees on the condition that the

latter do a certain percentage of their hiring through community or

employment agencies. SCP currently works with over 50 franchises

across the country, most of whom are located in Ontario. The bulk of

their success has been in the automotive and service sectors, with

franchisees of Active Green + Ross, Mr. Lube, Boston Pizza, Shoeless

Joe’s and Swiss Chalet.

In acting as a mediator between agencies and employers, SCP

leverages the good work that the agencies are already doing to

help find work for marginalized job-seekers, while simultaneously

appealing to employers’ business needs.

Viable Calgary, an initiative of the nonprofit organization Prospect

Human Services, is a government-funded workforce project located

in Calgary. This case study defines Viable Calgary as a social hiring

advocate because they encourage and facilitate opportunities for

companies to hire people with disabilities. Specifically, they work with

employers and industry associations to develop strategies for more

inclusive hiring practices.

Employment Service Agency

Goodwill Career Centre is a charitable nonprofit agency that provides

job training programs to people with disabilities and employment

barriers, serving Hamilton and Halton regions. Social Capital Partners

has worked with their team to find employment for marginalized job-

seekers.

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