Savvy Up’s workplace programmes

We create online programmes that teach young people aged 18 - 25 years the ‘soft’ skills needed for the workplace or entrepreneurship, and teach managers how to lead Gen Y and Z. Our programmes are scalable across the world using an EdTech platform by customising local content.

Savvy Up eases the transition to work for young professionals, by teaching the ‘personal enterprise’ skills needed for employability as it supports them through the first 90 days.   

Our solution is a series of online programmes for young professionals aged 18 - 25 years, delivered via website in cohorts of up to 25 people. These cover:

• Identifying your unique skills and talents (in development);

• Understanding workplace expectations in an office role(already trialled and sold to a client);  

• Learning the skills needed to become an entrepreneur and solve problems in the local community (in development).

• Collaboration and influencing skills (in development).

As a social enterprise, we sell to employers and HR managers in medium and large organisations. Tania has delivered graduate on-boarding programmes for 10 years and we already have our first client. We’ve talked to hundreds of employers and young people. We know our stuff, and that there’s a market.

We believe Savvy Up can scale globally and create jobs:

• Students can access the programmes from anywhere with local blended learning support (optional) and content.

• We use a cohort model to encourage students to build a peer network, which connects them to grow their careers faster.

• Our programmes support the development of digital literacy, increasingly needed for the world of work.

• The wicked problems we’re facing as a global community need new approaches. Learning personal enterprise skills will help students to work with others and collaborate to find solutions.

• Learning good habits will support students’ general wellbeing and save organisations time and money.

We want to make it easier for employers to hire more young professionals, and teach the interpersonal and leadership skillsneeded to navigate the workplace of the future. Ultimately, we want to help more young people into meaningful jobs.

Young people don’t have the crucial skills needed for the workplace.

And employers don’t want to hire them, yet struggle to get skilled workers.

In New Zealand, employers say it's too hard: young people lack ‘soft skills’ and work ethic. Young people feel completely lost - particularly indigenous Māori and Pacific peoples, who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) at higher rates than the general population and face systemic barriers to success in New Zealand.  

Our solution was designed to help mitigate this complex challenge.

Our ToC: Teaching young professionals ‘soft’ workplace skills will make them more successful, encouraging businesses to hire more young professionals.  

We’ve talked to hundreds of NZ young professionals/their managers over the past few years, due to Tania’s programme delivery. Our research aligns with the 2015 Victoria University survey of the top 10 skills employers want, and other NZ employability research showing a skills gap and barriers to employability.  

Online learning can close this long-known skills gap, encouraging employers to hire graduates - as this 2009 article shows. COMET Auckland, Youth Hub and Joy Business Academy also use this approach, pre-employment.

Ultimately, we want to see all young people in New Zealand, and across the world, in meaningful jobs.

Who benefits:

• Young professionals aged 18 - 25 in their first professional job/following an entrepreneurship path, are supported and equipped to be successful in their role.

• Managers of young professionals feel confident to hire and lead them, including onboarding them successfully.

• Organisations save time and money in retention and onboarding. Young professionals stay longer and are more engaged.    

Long-term impact:

• Young people gain employability skills (or in our entrepreneurship course, create their own job!), leading to better long-term employment and life outcomes.

Track number of sales and number of people in cohorts - At least 10 New Zealand enterprises engaged by the end of 2018

Evaluation surveys with managers. - Quantifiable ROI as a percentage of young professionals retained after 6 months and 1 year

Evaluation surveys. - Quantifiable ROI as student satisfaction

• Interpersonal skills are at the heart of human relationships. We teach within the applicable context as that’s how humans learn best, rather than pre-work, so there’s a frame of reference.

• We use the JumpShift platform to reinforce learning in small bursts, following the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve theory.

• Peer networks and social learning as a cohort means young people learn together and support each other. Our platform allows users to be matched with up to six peers, and see each others’ answers. This maximises accountability and learning.  

• We target young professionals at the start of their careers to maximise impact.

We’ve developed this solution from talking to hundreds of young professionals and managers in New Zealand over several years. And our experience working in the UK and US suggests minimal content changes for these workplace environments too.

We also have a ‘sounding board’ group of young professionals who regularly test our content, helped us co-design it and piloted our first programme.  

Our solution is deployed in cohorts of <25 people via a website. An administrator sets up user cohorts. Organisations purchase the programme for their young professionals, as they benefit from employees with the social and communication skills needed for success in the workplace.  

To make it affordable and accessible, we’ll also partner with NGOs and government departments concerned with reducing unemployment in their countries. For example, in New Zealand with Work and Income New Zealand (WINZ) and the tertiary education sector to help jobseekers and tertiary students prepare for the workplace, either as an employee or entrepreneur.

Both members of our team also have separate consulting businesses which bring in income as we work on this part-time - generally around 15 hours/week each. We're working really hard on sales as well as developing our new courses, to get to profitability so we can work on this full-time! 

• Employer business model and cohort approach for our main platform means the programme works best as an enterprise solution with defined cohorts, and a salesperson model.

• We are still working on how to deliver the programme to individuals in a fully-automated way from our website. We developed the course on another platform for individuals who wish to purchase the programme alone. It's less effective though as it doesn't include the peer network and social learning of our main platform, and in our experience young professionals don't want to pay.

• Our time available to work on the project as we’re part-time.

http://savvyup.co.nz

New Zealand is a small market, and everyone’s only 1.5 degrees of separation away. We spend a lot of time helping others as we believe that collaboration is far better than competition, and we’re looking to engage in the SOLVE community in the same way. Leveraging the SOLVE community would springboard our organisation hugely into a full-time business around the world, and we think we’ve got some useful skills to contribute back too.

JumpShift (we are a channel partner for them and can on-sell their courses and vice versa). Joy Business Academy and Accounting Pod - in discussions. Open to partnerships with anyone else suitable. 

Joy Business Academy

Minded.co.nz

YouthHub (indirectly)

COMET Auckland