At the time of writing, unemployment in the US hit 15% - record levels not seen since the Great Depression. With analysts and pundits expecting levels to hit 20% by the end of the month. Covid-19 has hammered some industries forcing them to take drastic measures and furlough or lay-off large chunks of their workforce. In contrast, others wrestle with the entirely different challenge of meeting an unprecedented, and at times insatiable, demand for products and services. Governments across the globe are implementing measures to help cushion the blow of economic disaster on business and employees alike. Alongside these measures are a plethora of initiatives from the private sector, with one of the most innovative coming to fruition when an alliance of Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) set about solving for one of the biggest challenges facing the modern economy. As the Covid-19 pandemic battered businesses, the CHROs from Accenture, Lincoln Financial Group, ServiceNow and Verizon, put their heads together and launched People + Work Connect, a platform with the simple goals of bringing organizations together to help get people back to work faster.
People + Work Connect is a B2B platform helping CHRO's from different businesses connect and keep their teams employed
Within fourteen days of their first meeting, the coalition of CHRO's had designed and launched an elegant solution. A platform that enables executives from different companies to tap into large talent pools of staff that would otherwise have become unemployed or furloughed. Companies impacted by Covid-19 can advertise they have pools of talent available, and those who need more resources to service increased demand can tap into those pools temporarily - or at least until the long-term situation becomes clearer.
The platform provides an elegant and straightforward solution to a complex problem. Accenture, providing and fully funding the technology behind the solution, uses the ONET job taxonomy to help define distinct job families and skillsets and suggest the right talent pools for the positions in demand. Combined with an analytics underbelly that processes non-confidential data on groups of employees such as location and experience, the platform ensures employees transition to new, relevant work – rather than becoming unemployed.
According to executives at Accenture, the solution is more than a simple platform. The relationship-driven approach, supported by a simple and balanced solution to streamline technology and legal concerns, is helping a group of CHRO's do the right thing. The motivation is simple "we can't make a vaccine, but we can make a solution to connect workers".
The solution is rapidly attracting new firms either looking to find work for batches of employees that would otherwise be furloughed or laid-off, or those looking to satiate unprecedented demand in particular industries. The platform now has over 1000 leading organizations engaged, with the unparalleled movement of talent across industry lines and between companies with thousands of professionals kept in work as a result of the business to business exchange.
Bottom Line: People + Work Connect is a worthy cause, but what this proves is Accenture's capacity to rapidly innovate and scale solutions with a range of partners and stakeholders
At a time when uncertainty is the new normal for many employees across the globe, the People + Work Connect coalition is helping bring some stability back to a large section of the labour market in the US. Bringing together this alliance of CHRO's demonstrates Accenture's capacity to work with a diverse selection of business leaders, and rapidly mobilize its technology, strategy, and operations heft to bring a scalable solution to market.
The reality for many enterprises dealing with the current business environment is this type of innovation at both speed and scale, will become more important as they pivot their business to tackle new waves of demand. And through its work on the People + Work Connect project, Accenture has proved it can not only bring fresh ideas to the market, but can also steer them to the point of delivering real value at break-neck speeds.