Shouldn’t everyone have an equal chance at success?
Together we’re working with EveryYouth, a charity dedicated to ending youth homelessness through improving social mobility for some of the most disadvantaged young people in the UK. We launched Flourish, a pro-bono service for organisations that are able to help disadvantaged young people secure jobs with real future prospects.
About Project Flourish
The number of young people experiencing or at risk of homelessness is continually rising. We developed Project Flourish to help disadvantaged young people find and sustain meaningful employment. In this video, we hear from Nick Connolly (CEO, EveryYouth), Karen Young (Social and Environmental Purpose Director, Hays) and Jamie Houlders (Project Flourish Lead, Hays) about the important mission of Project Flourish.
HOW IT WORKS: OUR FIVE-STEP EMPLOYABILITY SERVICE
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1) Planning
We work with employers whose values are aligned, and we support and help shape your DE&I strategies to create a supportive, inclusive and positive culture for young people to flourish.
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2) Inclusive recruitment
We support the young person throughout the recruitment process and advise the employer on inclusive recruitment processes, designed to assess skills and behaviours over work experience.
We provide access to financial support for young people through bursaries for travel, clothing, food and rent deposits, enabling them to remove financial barriers to employment and move towards independent living.
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3) Onboarding – soft landing transition
To help create an environment where young people are more likely to flourish, we deliver a free ‘Employer Awareness Session’ to your team, which is designed from Psychologically Informed Environment (PIE) principles and is tailored to employers of disadvantaged young people.
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4) Help ‘Flourish’ through engagement, retention and development
We provide access to a ‘Learning Management System’ for young people to support with: health and wellbeing, employability, and skills training.
We ensure a mentor is engaged throughout the process, providing pastoral and ‘on the job’ care, and can access additional expert support for the young person’s individual needs.
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5) Social impact
We work with you to continually improve processes to help create greater social impact as we monitor positive short-, medium- and long-term outcomes for the young people.
Case Study: Project Flourish
Putting Flourish into practise in our own organisation
We hear from Lesley Trapasso (Bid Director, Hays) and Akame Hotaru (Bid Administrator, Hays) about their experience with Project Flourish. Akame was hired into Lesley’s team through Flourish over 6 months ago and has since passed her probation with flying colours. Following a difficult time in Akame’s life, securing her first corporate role has given her the fresh start she deserved. Watch this video to find out more about their success story.
To start your Flourish journey, fill out our enquiry form and our team will be in touch.
INSIGHTS INTO OUR PROJECT FLOURISH JOURNEY AT HAYS
My experience with Project Flourish
Through Project Flourish, I hired a young person who had been through extreme hardship. Here’s my experience and why I think other employers should get involved too.
Reframing the narrative on youth employment
Discover how organisations can provide young people meaningful employment opportunities and help break the cycle of youth homelessness through closer collaboration.
How you can help the homelessness crisis
As homelessness numbers are on the rise, find out what your organisation can do to help, from supporting current employees to hiring homeless people.
Would you hire a homeless person?
An in-depth look at the rising homelessness in England, misconceptions about hiring homeless individuals, and the systemic barriers they face in securing employment.
Snapshot:
Project Flourish roadshow
I’m Jamie, project lead of Flourish. I’m determined to help some of the most disadvantaged young people in the UK gain meaningful employment, and to help get them out of homelessness. Follow my three-day visit to London to support this mission.
Helping for your tomorrow
People are at the centre of everything we do here at Hays. Not only do we believe that the right job can transform a person’s life – and that the right individual can uplift an organisation – but that our tenure and expertise can help create a better tomorrow for us all. As the world’s largest specialist recruiter, we’re in a unique position to enable real change; both on a local and national scale.
The value of our ‘Helping for your tomorrow’ programme can be seen through our Flourish collaboration with EveryYouth, designed to tackle inequality in employment opportunities. Combined with our year-round fundraising events for EveryYouth, we’ve created a lasting social impact; not least £343,000 in funds generated, placing over 250 young people into an employment, education or training pathways, or alternatively funding 13,720 hours of 1-2-1 job coaching support with a specialist coach. Of young people accessing this support, 85% report greater independence and 88% feel more confident.
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Our EveryYouth partnership
Through this unique recruitment partnership, we’re committed to improving the social mobility of the most disadvantaged young people in the country and helping to end youth homelessness.
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Our FinWELL partnership
We're delighted to be working with FinWELL to understand and improve financial wellbeing, empower a healthier relationship with money and better mental health too.
Find out more: Project Flourish FAQs
The aim of our employability and career support programme is to help some of the most disadvantaged young people in finding and sustaining meaningful employment. We want to prove that social mobility can be possible for everyone, including those facing homelessness and poverty. In collaboration with charity EveryYouth, and their delivery partner charity network, we’re supporting their mission to end youth homelessness.
Our programme provides disadvantaged young people the skills and tools needed to secure and succeed in meaningful employment, as well as supports the employer to create inclusive processes and positive environments, enabling the young people to ‘Flourish.’
There are many barriers which prevent them from gaining and importantly, sustaining, meaningful employment. Sometimes, they haven’t had the close support networks we may take for granted, or they may have lived through traumatic experiences which impact their behaviour and confidence.
Some may have had disruptions in education, resulting in fewer qualifications. Others don’t have access to financial support or struggle with navigating the benefits system, making it extremely difficult for disadvantaged young people to compete with their peers for job vacancies.
Homelessness is a vicious cycle: if a young person doesn’t have a fixed address, it can be challenging to secure employment, which then creates further barriers to finding a job. By breaking this cycle, we prove that social mobility is possible, and we help young people have equal career opportunities. We see employment as a critical element to breaking this cycle as all young people deserve to ‘flourish’ in work and life.
We collaborate with a range of organisations who
help support the mission of Project Flourish
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FinWELL
FinWell helps with financial wellbeing and budgeting.
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AutonoMe
AutonoMe can give support to neurodivergent people.
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Autism at Work
The Bloomfield Trust and the National Autistic Society’s Autism at Work programme aims to bridge the gap between skills shortages in industry and talented autistic candidates.
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Movement to Work
Wider collective support as members of a significant employer-led initiative to tackle youth unemployment in the UK.
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Crisis
As a signatory to the Crisis Homelessness Covenant, Project Flourish, is providing insights through pilots to support our ‘Covenant’ pledge to prevent and end homelessness through inclusive and supportive employment practices.
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Other acknowledgements