This is a CTP of initiative: RIPESS/ APRES‐GE (Switzerland)
The program for work experiences in the SEE field, called PPE +, was launched in 2007 in order to develop the competences of people lacking skills or seeking to re-orientate themselves on the employment market. Since its creation in 2004, the Chamber had been looking for a program or a project which would not only be linked with its missions but would also allow hiring staff in order to consolidate its action force. As she explains, "We started from the observation according to which there was a bunch of people on the job market, and especially young people, who, despite their skills and their willingness to work in the SSE [Social and Solidarity Economy] field, missed a work experience which would allow them to get a paid employment. On the other hand, our members had projects in the pipelines but missed the financial and human resources to develop them. [...] The idea was to do the link between these unemployed people and the member organizations with human resources needs, these needs being related to the career plans of the unemployed of course". The Chamber would act as an intermediary or match-maker between the two. Concretely, it would provide a support for job seekers by evaluating their skills, their career plans and the kind of work experiences they missed and would provide individual coaching sessions and trainings. On the other side, Chambers' members would come up with mission descriptions related to a particular project or event. Eventually, this process would end-up in a 6 month internship (or "mission" as framed by the Chamber).
The Essaim incubator was launched in 2008, and lasted until the end of 2015, as explained in another CTP file. As the interviewee explains, "The incubator was aimed at contributing to the economic development of (mainly) SSE enterprises in the Geneva region. The activity was divided into two components: first, we provided support for business creation or, for existing businesses, business development; second, we supported individual activity creations via the shared enterprise we created in 2009". This shared enterprise allowed people not only to start a business with an employed-entrepreneur status but also to meet other entrepreneurs in order to facilitate mutual exchanges. On the other hand, the support activities consisted in backing the construction and validation of an economic project (including market studies, communication strategies or business plans), offering back-office services (for administrative procedures and accounting) and organizing office hours to answer specific questions.
PPE+ was and still is entirely financed by public funding, via the Office Cantonal de l'Emploi or OCE (the regional public body in charge of unemployment) or, to a lesser extent, the "Service de reinsertion professionnelle" (a cantonal service in charge of social assistance). However, the OCE has been the main source of financing from the beginning of the program, as the interviewee explains: "When we came with this idea, we approached the Office Cantonal de l'Emploi and they were seduced because it fell in their scope of activities aimed at helping the unemployed to get back on the job market. They decided to finance the program and we became sub-contractors or service providers for them". Concretely, this meant for potential participants (the unemployed willing to take part to the program) the need to be registered with this public body. For APRES-GE, sub-contracting resulted not only in administrative processes requirements (regular reporting on each individual case, a bi-annual statistics report, a general report and a budget once a year) but also in objectives to be attained (in terms of available places and placements). In terms of attraction, the interviewee recognizes that, even though most of the program participants were supposed to come via the public entity, a great part of them (around 40%) came via other processes such as word-of-mouth.
The launch and the development of the Essaim inclubator also relied on public financing, but this time at the municipal level (ie. the city of Geneva). APRES-GE managed to sign a 6 year convention with the city thanks to the support of a socialist representative who was the Mayor of the city during 2 years of the Convention: more generally, during 5 out of 6 years, the municipal majority was left, and naturally keener to support an SSE incubator. For that matter, the municipal subsidy accounted for around 80 to 90% to the program budget, which reflects a great dependence on public funding. The rest was auto-financed, by taxing the entrepreneurs benefiting from the incubator’s back-office services (10% of their turnover), making them pay for other kind of services and providing expertise for some outsiders: they sometimes acted as consultants for cities (e.g. for an ecodistrict project in a city near Geneva) or members (doing environmental and/or social impact assessments). This financing led to the recruitment of 5 people and allowed some experimenting, as explained in the anticipation part.
Two related events, which closed this period of development, had consequences on the content of the two programs: the 4th revision of the law on unemployment benefits (2011) and the launch of the cooperation with the city of Meyrin on an ecodistrict project for Essaim (2014).
The 4th revision of the law on unemployment benefits, approved by referendum in 2010 before entering into force in 2011, had consequences on the PPE+ program, and especially on the profile of beneficiaries: "Before this revision, young graduates could register as unemployed as soon as they finished their studies. They had access to unemployment services, including financial support and counselling during one year. With the legal change, they are entitled to only 4 month benefits, and only after a waiting period of 6 months [during which they are not entitled to touch any benefits]. Since our program lasts 6 months in principle, it means that it is far more complicated for them to have access to PPE+". This change made it more difficult for young graduates to access the program, which was one of its core objectives when it was launched. As a result, the participation percentage of young graduates drastically fell over the years. As she explains, "Today, we have less than 1% of first-time job seekers (ie. young graduates who have almost never worked and who are registered as unemployed). Our audience is mainly composed of people between 25 and 55 years old". This means that the content of the program had to be adjusted to this new audience, with a particular focus on re-orientation activities: "We have a lot of people who want to re-orientate and make a change, either in terms of job, either in terms of sector of activities. For the job part, this can concern a person who started to evolve in his/her past job (e.g. someone who was recruited for administrative tasks and gradually took over communication tasks) but who misses a work experience clearly labelled 'communication' to have access to this kind of jobs. For the sector part, it can be a person who spent several years in the private sector and wants to work for the non-profit sector: as long as this person does not have a proper experience in the non-profit sector, he/she is labelled 'private sector' and it is very difficult for him/her to find a job in an association".
Regarding Essaim, it is worth mentioning that APRES-GE was commissioned in 2014 by the city of Meyrin (near Geneva) to help with the designing and the functioning of the commercial arcades of an ecodistrict. More precisely, it was charged with the analysis and the ranking of potential candidates, based not only on their economic viability but also on their potential environmental and social impacts. It was done according to a participative process: "We were careful to ensure that the commercial activity of the district would be thought in a coherent manner by identifying, with the inhabitants and the developers, which kind of shops and services the district would need". They proposed to adapt the rents according to the kind of activities offered: "This was quite an innovative stance, to think about tailor-made rents based on environmental and social benefits". For APRES-GE, it was a way to show once again that "another economy is possible" through a concrete project. It was also a way to engage more clearly on sustainable development issues, which would result on an internal discussion on the possibility to incorporate transition as a core concept in the framing of the objectives of the Chamber few months after the beginning of the project (as stated by another interviewee, Christophe Dunand). In that sense, it had "positive side-effects".
Running public-funded programs can be tricky at some point, in terms of red-tape, budget-reduction threats or critics over a lack of performance. Despite providing financial stability, responding to formal criteria and procedures can seriously hinder innovative practices. In that sense, it can have negative side-effects. Responding to administrative requirements can be cumbersome sometimes, as the interviewee explains, when talking about the PPE+ program:"the problem, when you work on a services contract basis, is that you have red tape at times, even if sometimes it is relevant, especially for the individual counselling of the unemployed. But obviously, I wouldn't mind if it was lighter!". Moreover, in a context of austerity plans and public-spending cuts, the question of the budget amount is recurrent: "the OCE [Office Cantonal de l'Emploi], as the majority of public entities, is seeking to reduce public spending. One year, we were asked to reduce the budget of all activities by 2 to 5%. We have to deal with this kind of demands. If they feel that we can do the same things with less money, they won't mind cutting our budget".
Moreover, tolerance regarding the meeting of objectives has been reduced over the years, even though the labour market has been increasingly difficult: "Today, the job market is more challenging and the OCE wants to reduce its expenses. For example, until now, the program was not always "full", which means that the number of actual placements was smaller than available places, but it was not an issue since we managed to help a great number of unemployed people finding a job. Now, we are told that the program has to be "full" and that, if it not the case, we will receive less money. This threat does exist".
The threat over financing, especially when received on an annual-basis can have consequences on the possibilities to experiment and develop innovative projects, which are usually thought on a mid-term basis at least:"What can be relatively annoying, when you work on an annual budget basis, is that if you did not spend the entire amount of the budget at the end of the year, you have to give back the money: we cannot put a bit aside. We really are in a binding system because we really work [for PPE+] on a one-year basis and it does not leave much space to innovate or develop new projects".
The same kind of observation, when it comes down to quantifying innovation and designing objectives for innovative practices, applies for Essaim: "there were expected results, regarding the number of businesses supported or created or in terms of job creation, that were not necessarily achieved. But we should not forget that we were launching an innovative project with innovative practices and that the objectives which were set in advance were not realistic".
The launches of the PPE + program and of the Essaim incubator were understood at the time as key moments, particularly because the new financial flows helped to hire people and to develop activities. The PPE + program was thought as a way to ensure a stable source of revenue, while the Essaim incubator was more of a challenge made to support the development of sustainable SSE.
The PPE+ program idea came from Christophe Dunand, one of the founder and actual Secretary of APRES-GE. He was also at the head of one the biggest insertion enterprise in Geneva (with around 300 employees) with a good reputation. This might have given some credibility and facilitate contacts when APRES-GE proposed the program to the OCE. In this sense, the founders of APRES-GE covered all their bases by making a safe choice regarding the content of the first program. However, one consequence of launching this program was that it led to confusion between SSE and insertion and this confusion had to be overcome at some point, as the interviewee explains: "One of the key issue we had to face during the first years was about the fact that SSE was often associated with insertion because of a misunderstanding or maybe because it was easier to put us in that box (and maybe it was a way to make us less disruptive). One of the big challenges of the Chamber has always been to show that SSE is indeed composed by enterprises with a high societal impact (including via insertion) but that it goes beyond those enterprises. [...] There are other aspects of SSE that have nothing to do with that. But it is clear that the fact that the 1st program of the Chamber was about insertion reinforced this brand image that we don't necessarily want to project. Some people did raise this issue at the time". This willingness to show how SSE was more than just about insertion might explain the strategic turn that was taken with the launch of Essaim the year after.
In particular, the shared enterprise project inside Essaim was thought as a way to take a very innovative stance given the fact that it did not exist in Switzerland at the time. They took inspiration from the French "coopératives d'activités et d'emploi" which are SSE structures allowing the creation and the development of economic activities by entrepreneurs. The Chamber made a tremendous effort to obtain recognition of this status by several key bodies: "The status of salaried entrepreneur did not exist in Switzerland, and we had to build it and to ensure it was recognized by several bodies even though it did not fit in any box. It did not end up in legal change but it became tolerated. The recognition of the status was acknowledged by the most important bodies, ie. the insurance sector and the public unemployment entities". Contrary to PPE+, the launch and the development of the Essaim incubator was more of a challenge and was understood at the time as very important for the Chamber.
PPE+ allowed the Chamber to develop by offering very concrete services to the members participating in the program and by hiring a team, including the position of General Secretary. As the interviewee explains, "This program was a way to cross the threshold between a voluntary-based organization (based essentially on the work of the board) to a professional organization with an employed team". Consequently, it enhanced the reputation of the Chamber, which became the reference when it comes down to SSE in the region and more broadly, in Switzerland. Moreover, if PPE+ is still a very important program of the Chamber, the interviewee does not think it can be labelled as a flagship program. More precisely, it is "the flagship program in terms of size and financial volume but it is not the flagship program in terms of strategic positioning. Essaim was far more strategic, as well as various other projects such as the SSE statistical studies [ie. 2 studies on the development of SSE in the Geneva area] or some activities directly linked with the entrepreneur, the academic or the political spheres".
Regarding Essaim, which terminated its activities in 2015, the interviewee thinks that a clear SSE positioning could have been relevant: "As the incubator was something new, we really tried to make it better and better over the years. But on a personal level, I'm wondering if we could have made it more powerful by profiling it clearly towards SSE development. There were periods when it was not so clear in my understanding. But well, we have also to recognize that when we launch a project, we cannot have a vision on every aspect. I think we could have supported more projects with a clear SSE profile and developed for example specific tools adapted to them".
Stay informed. Subscribe for project updates by e-mail.
