How Accenture is collaborating to advance sustainable employment and entrepreneurship opportunities in communities worldwide.
By Jill Huntley
A few years ago, Anowara Shuley from Bangladesh faced seemingly insurmountable odds. At the young age of 24, a disagreement with her husband’s family left her destitute. With young children to support and no work experience outside the home, Anowara enrolled in a local tailoring course in an effort to make ends meet.
Through grit and determination, Anowara succeeded in learning a trade that offered financial independence, but her story does not end there. Thanks to a $1,875 micro-loan and steady mentoring and support from Youth Business International (YBI) member organization B’YEAH, Anowara not only continued to develop her skills, she built her own tailoring business that now employs six full-time and 160 part-time staffers.
Anowara’s success proves that having the right skills makes a tremendous difference to those who seek to find lasting employment or create a business of their own—especially in today’s uncertain economic climate. According to the International Labor Organization, more than 200 million people—more than a third of them young people—are currently unemployed, and an additional 280 million jobs must be created in the next five years in order to keep that number from rising.
To address this need, we launched our corporate citizenship initiative, Skills to Succeed, in 2009, to help equip people like Anowara with the skills to start their own businesses or secure employment. Together with our strategic partners, we have equipped more than 800,000 people to date—more than tripling the impact we had hoped to achieve when we established our initial goal in 2010. Now, we are aiming even higher. By the end of fiscal 2020, we will equip more than 3 million people with the skills to get a job or build a business.
We know that our program has a solid foundation and has changed many lives over the past six years, but Skills to Succeed will only be effective in the long run if its beneficiaries are able to secure lasting jobs, maintain successful businesses, and experience enhanced economic opportunity. For that reason, we are increasing our focus on helping people make a successful transition from skill-building programs to sustainable jobs and businesses and improving our collective ability to measure and report on outcomes.
For example, we continue to partner with YBI and other organizations to help disadvantaged young people build their own businesses. With improved tools, funding, mentoring, and training from Accenture, YBI and its network members have equipped nearly 38,000 young entrepreneurs with the financing and mentoring required to build and sustain their businesses. We are also working with Conexão, a Rede Cidadã initiative, to provide low-income Brazilian youth with training in job readiness and entrepreneurial skills. To date, we have trained more than 30,000 young Brazilians and helped approximately 14,000 trainees find employment with local employers, including Accenture.
Through collaboration with our partners and experience on the ground, we are able to gather insights about what works in helping people make the transition into jobs and businesses, and we are aligning our initiatives accordingly by:
- Addressing market needs: Our demand-led skilling programs are designed with outcomes in mind; we are building skills that will result in job placement and long-term career agility. By partnering with local employers to design demand-driven curricula, we are meeting the changing needs of employers and improving the job placement rates of the people we skill.
- Providing on-the-job work experience: Many Skills to Succeed initiatives match beneficiaries to internships, apprenticeships, and job-shadowing opportunities that help them land a job in the short term and boost their long-term earning potential.
- Investing in digital learning: We live in a digital, constantly changing world. Learning offerings need to reflect this, producing even more efficient and flexible skills training and placement support. Digital learning also reinforces classroom lessons for job seekers and entrepreneurs.
- Offering sustained support: For entrepreneurs whose businesses are up and running, the continued support from non-profits, NGOs, governments, and businesses keeps the momentum going. This broad-based support is key, and we have found that our entrepreneurs have a “multiplier effect” on their communities by creating game-changing opportunities for others.
For example, Anowara allows her employees to perform their duties part-time so they can work from home and also continue their education if they wish. And she is not alone; YBI projects that each of the entrepreneurs it supports will hire at least two to three people, creating a new pool of talent with the resources to effect further change around them.
One of the primary success factors of Skills to Succeed is that it reflects who we are as a company and draws on Accenture’s core capabilities. We understand the importance of collaboration, recognizing that no single organization can adequately address the issues of employment and entrepreneurship. By mobilizing the time and expertise of our employees and teaming with a number of partners, including non-profits, NGOs, governments, and other businesses, we are making a more meaningful and measurable impact on society.
Looking ahead, we are using the knowledge we have gained to replicate our efforts and extend our insights across our network and beyond. None of this work would be possible, however, without the tremendous enthusiasm of everyone involved in Skills to Succeed. I am inspired by the dedication of our people, partners, clients, and local communities, and extremely proud of the progress we have made. Closing global employment gaps is a huge challenge involving complex issues, and solutions will not come easily, nor will they come from Skills to Succeed alone. But by working together, I am confident that we can address the issues of employment and entrepreneurship head on.
Although Skills to Succeed is focused on reaching millions and effecting global change, behind the numbers lies the heart of this initiative: the individuals like Anowara whose lives are transformed by gaining the skills to get a job or build a business. We are honored to have the opportunity to work with them, and to help them drive improved economic opportunities for themselves, their families, and their communities.
Author Biography:
Jill Huntley is Global Managing Director for Corporate Citizenship at Accenture. She has worked in the areas of talent and organizational change in Accenture’s Management Consulting business, and with clients in the public sector and financial services. In 2002, Jill co-founded Accenture Development Partnerships, an innovative not-for-profit venture that channels Accenture’s skills and expertise to the international development sector. She has served on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Youth Unemployment and currently serves on the Board of Directors for the Solutions for Youth Employment coalition.
This article was featured in the Q3 2015 issue of Ethisphere Magazine. To subscribe and learn more about Ethisphere Magazine click here.
