CenSE researchers: Karen Brabant, Philippe Eiselein, Tineke Jacobs

Duration: February 2021 - May 2023

Funding: ESF, call for Transnationality

Partners: Province of East Flanders, The Circular Hub, SBCM (NL)

Summary

The goal of this project: To seize the opportunities within the circular transition to (re) activate people at a distance from the labor market in the regular circuit and to increase their chances of a sustainable job, by drawing up competence profiles.

Within this project, we focus on short and medium-skilled profiles with a distance to the labor market. We place an important focus on the social economy. Advancement from the social economy to a sustainable, paid job (in the regular circuit) is and remains a major challenge.

Within this project, we look at new opportunities to (re) activate this target group on the (regular) labor market and to increase their chances of a sustainable job. We find this in the growing circular economy, among other things. After all, the transition to a more circular model will - in addition to an ecological and economic added value - also create important social effects, especially in the field of employment. The circular labor market offers opportunities for different levels of education, whereby there is also - and even above all - a demand for short and medium-skilled profiles to help support this transition. A circular economy could therefore boost the sustainable (regular) employment of people at a distance from the labor market.

In this project, we focused on 2 bottlenecks:

• Bottleneck 1: offering and filling (new) sustainable circular jobs
• Bottleneck 2: setting up new partnerships between managers

Both bottlenecks benefit from mapping out the desired competencies.

Expected output

We formulated 2 objectives for this project:

• Objective 1: develop competence profiles for circular jobs aimed at the short and medium-skilled at a distance from the labor market
• Objective 2: to develop a competence model for managers who wish to invest in social circular cooperation and co-creation.

Our output

During the project, we explored what opportunities the circular economy has to offer for people distanced from the labor market. Not without pride we can announce that our project, with thanks to your highly appreciated input and (sometimes) critical notes, has been positively evaluated by the ESF!

With the brand new S-Circel tool, you can experiment to your heart's content with task packages to create jobs tailored to people distant from the labor market. The first time it is necessary to create an account. The tool also allows you to check whether a candidate's competencies match a circular job or tinker with completely new task packages.

Next to that, two other products were produced during this ESF project: 5 new circular jobs with matching competency profiles and a competency model for executives to make social-circular collaborations successful.

Hopefully, these tools will help you on your way to setting up and maintaining social-circular collaborations.