Four people sitting in front of a large screen with faces of people on computer screens. The words

Participants at an early on orientation session for the Proficient Task 5060 program, a corporate social responsibility initiative in South korea. (Image courtesy of the Proficient Job 5060 plan)

The number of retired people in their late 50s and early 60s is growing fast in S Korea. In 2010, 24 percent, or 1.7 million people between the ages of 58 and 66 retired, compared to 33 percentage, or 2.iv one thousand thousand people, in 2019. But while early retirement may seem enviable to some, it presents a large trouble for others: Retirement for South Koreans in this historic period group is rarely voluntary, and many are not financially prepared to leave their jobs. In fact, almost lx percent of retirees hope for reemployment after leaving their former workplace due to economical concerns.

Unfortunately, only a fraction of all retirees aged 55-64—virtually 26 pct—succeed in reemployment, and those who do observe new jobs tend to piece of work in low-paying ones. Most 80 percentage of people who succeeded in finding new piece of work in 2018 engaged in labor jobs such equally janitorial, caretaking, and building security services, and, every bit of 2018, their average monthly wage ranged betwixt $1,000 and $ane,600—significantly lower than the median income.

This state of affairs often leads straight to poverty. People ordinarily start receiving a pension at age sixty, but the average retirement age in Due south Korea is 49. According to a 2019 survey, 76 percent of the early retirement was nonvoluntary and 41 percentage of early retirees said they were non prepared. Many people therefore face a decade without sufficient income, forcing them to utilise upwards all their savings and assets even before reaching old age. Indeed, South korea's elderly population has the highest poverty rate amidst the Organization for Economical Cooperation and Development (OECD) fellow member countries.

Information technology besides means that valuable professional knowledge and experience accumulated by this grouping—which could peculiarly do good small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)—gets wasted. Despite the fact that many senior people want to keep working and that many businesses are willing to employ them, an inefficient labor market with information asymmetry prevents them from contributing to businesses, and from receiving the financial and psychological rewards that come up with it.

An 'Adaptive Problem'

An employment arrangement that effectively matches capable, middle-aged workers with businesses that need their expertise is essential to solving these issues. Yet by efforts to create a working system have failed to effectively coordinate the array of organizations necessary for their success. Consider: While the government can identify center-aged people seeking reemployment, information technology does not take the skill or capacity to develop and operate task-training programs. It therefore needs the back up of nonprofit organizations and social enterprises that specialize in operating reemployment training programs. At the same time, nonprofits and social enterprises need to engage with employers so that they can develop appropriate curricula, and empathize how to connect applicants to interviews and on-the-job training.

In their 2004 Stanford Social Innovation Review article, "Leading Boldly," Ronald Heifetz, John Kania, and Marker Kramer defined a "technical problem" every bit a well-defined social problem that has a known solution, and that 1 or a few players can solve independently through an isolated initiative. They defined an "adaptive trouble" as one that involves many different organizations with different perspectives, and that requires those organizations to create and implement a new solution as a collective. In this sense, creating an effective chore-matching organisation is an adaptive problem; no unmarried establishment has the resource or authority to solve it lone. Even if job applicants have access to effective reemployment training programs, they won't have sufficient opportunities for sustained employment without the collaboration of potential employers. On the other manus, fifty-fifty if companies agree to collaborate, they volition exist reluctant to hire applicants if the reemployment training is costly or inadequate.

A Combined Approach

Then how can governments, nonprofits, and businesses—each with different needs, competencies, and resource—work together to create an effective matching system that benefits all? One promising effort is a corporate social responsibility initiative called the Good Chore 5060 program (GJ5060). Launched in 2018, it aims to train 1,000 center-aged people and help half of them get reemployed. The uniquely cross-sector endeavour is led by Hyundai Motor Group (HMG), which committed to supporting the program through 2022, in partnership with Seoul City l Plus Foundation, the Korean Ministry of Employment and Labor, and the social enterprise Sangsang Woori.

HMG began the procedure by using a business ecosystem approach, which is based on the idea that companies in an interdependent system should piece of work together to create a seamless value chain that satisfies the needs of target customers. As a showtime step, it mapped the "customer experience journey" of its target beneficiaries (middle-anile people searching for reemployment) and identified a range of pain points, including:

  • Recruitment and grooming were fourth dimension-consuming and expensive for companies.
  • Middle-aged people had little money to pay for training after retirement.
  • Middle-anile people institute it fourth dimension-consuming and difficult to directly contact companies for job search.
  • Reemployment training curricula and bidder expectations did non marshal well with businesses' (specially SMEs') needs.

This process made it clear that HMG could not solve the problem solitary; it simply was not viable for the visitor to pattern and implement all necessary operations, including retraining sessions, job matching, and corporate interview arrangements. And then it began identifying partners within the employment ecosystem that had the capacity and cognition to accost each hurting indicate. In the months that followed, the Seoul l Plus Foundation took on advertising, recruitment, and bidder choice. The Ministry of Employment and Labor committed to providing aid through policy support and engaging with potential employers. And Sangsang Woori began developing and operating reemployment preparation programs, and offering employment back up services for middle-aged people. Importantly, the initiative as well sought to include companies looking to recruit qualified heart-aged individuals, in social club to become ideas and feedback on training programs, and increase the gamble of getting job interviews and/or on-the-job preparation programs for applicants.

The clear and complementary allocation of roles and responsibilities among partners within the employment ecosystem set the stage for working under a second approach: collective impact, or the commitment of a group of organizations from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem. Since the business ecosystem approach clearly defined beneficiaries' pain points, there were few disagreements about the common goal or agenda. In addition, the measurement system for achieving the goal was relatively easy to share, because the plan had a clear purpose of matching decent jobs to middle-aged people. Thus, Good Chore 5060 could see the 5 conditions of collective impact success:

  1. A common agenda: The program is based on a common vision and mission of creating and matching decent reemployment jobs for eye-anile people. It aims to train 1,000 retired people and help reemploy one-half of them by 2022.
  2. Shared measurement systems: All partners concur to measure the number of people reemployed subsequently the plan, annual salaries, and employment duration. Partners also committee an independent, professional house to collect, organize, and analyze information for measuring and reporting bear upon. The business firm can access information freely, and deport surveys and interviews with program participants.
  3. Mutually reinforcing activities: The program creates synergy past highlighting the different strengths of each partner organization and mobilizing various resources. The clear sectionalisation of roles and responsibilities helps partners use limited resources and achieve goals efficiently and effectively.
  4. Continuous, open communication: Business managers from HMG, Seoul 50 Plus Foundation, and Sangsang Woori convene weekly cheque-in meetings to share information. They also actively seek feedback from potential employers, which increases the success rate of re-employment for middle-anile people by developing and refining a training curriculum that reflects the needs of employment partners.
  5. Backbone support organization: Sangsang Woori plays the part of the backbone organisation, coordinating activities and resources. It has ii full-fourth dimension staff supporting the Good Job 5060 program. Ane directs the coordination and communication of the programme; the other finds and manages businesses, and matches them to eye-aged people.

The Power of Partnership

And so far, Good Job 5060 has provided reemployment training and employment support to 414 participants, and virtually 65 pct (268 participants) accept succeeded in finding reemployment. This figure greatly exceeds the thirty- to 40-per centum reemployment rates of previous, public agency-led programs for this grouping. The recruitment satisfaction of companies that hired these individuals has too been high at 85 percent, and as companies have figured out how to fully use their competencies, employees accept been able to earn a reasonable average wage of $2,400 a month.

Co-ordinate to the Good Job 5060 Impact Measurement Written report we conducted, the monetized social bear on (which accounts for the social value of gratuitous job training, job-matching services, and increased income) Good Job 5060 created between 2018 and 2020 was about $4 meg. In improver, its social render on investment was computed as iv.vii, which implies that every 100 dollars spent on this program could generate a social value of $470 for the social club. The study highlights three important factors that have contributed to Good Task 5060's success: incentivizing potential employers, establishing a hiring intermediary, and aligning skills and expectations.

1. Incentivizing potential employers. One of the main reasons for the success of Skilful Chore 5060 is that information technology engages potential employers every bit partners early on. The idea of creating quality reemployment jobs through collaboration with companies is not new, but companies often have petty reason to actively participate; they can recruit and select suitable applicants without external partnerships. Skillful Job 5060, however, provides incentives to potential employers by identifying their needs and reflecting them in the program design. For example, the Seoul fifty Plus Foundation handles chore advertizement and recruitment, reducing company costs. Applicants who complete the program can likewise immediately start work without further preparation, which besides curbs company expenses. According to the written report, business organisation recruitment and training savings over the by iii years amounted to about $2.5 million.

2. Establishing a hiring intermediary. Another reason for the programme's success is that participants do not demand to straight contact potential employers subsequently completing the reemployment preparation; instead, Sangsang Woori steps in as a hiring partner and connects them with on-the-task training programs and/or task interviews. In fact, 53 percent of middle-aged people who completed the Good Job 5060 programme have gotten their jobs through Sangsang Woori'due south intermediary service.

3. Aligning skills and expectations. Finally, Sangsang Woori designed its training curricula and content based on feedback from the employment partners, more often than not SMEs. This has non only aligned employee skillsets with company needs only also improved retention of potential employers. That's because, while most program participants have valuable piece of work feel at major Korean companies (such as Hyundai Motors and Samsung) or companies in the financial sector, they frequently fail to consider the relatively limited resources of smaller businesses. As a effect, they ofttimes devise unreasonable plans, complain about the budget, or even abruptly leave later a few months. Accordingly, many SMEs tend to come across experienced participants every bit a liability.

To solve this trouble, Sangsang Woori familiarizes participants with these situations during training and provides opportunities for them to meet with existing employees so that they tin can develop a realistic expectation of the working conditions. This means they are amend equipped to adapt to the SME surroundings and accomplish good results through cooperation with team members. The businesses meanwhile benefit from reduced risk of turnover.

Information technology is worth highlighting that if 1 partner were missing or non functioning properly, the collective effort would produce only limited outcomes. Instead, partners actively adopt the kind of mutually reinforcing activities, share measured outcomes, and engage in open up communication to achieve common goals. In so doing, they leverage the business concern ecosystem approach to place the pain points of target stakeholders and design solutions accordingly.

Of class, while Skilful Job 5060 is producing meaningful results, the attempt remains relatively pocket-sized in scope. To increase its affect, it is expanding its recruiting boundary from Seoul to the entire nation. Nearly 31 percent of Republic of korea's population is expected to reach ages fifty to 69 in 2035. Establishing an constructive, big-scale reemployment system for heart-aged people now volition enable them to proceed to earn and prepare for later on stages of life. Businesses tin also benefit from the group's more than substantial purchasing power, and use their skills and labor to increase productivity. Good Task 5060 offers a proven working model that governments, nonprofits, and businesses can use to subtract belatedly-life poverty and put valuable professional knowledge to use.

Read more stories by Hoyoung Lee, Haeun Kim & Hyun Shin.