Will hire more with CV holes – E24

– This is not a rehabilitation measure, there is nothing wrong with these people. For one reason or another, they ended up outside and may not have dared to sign up again, says Johan H. Andresen.

Ferd’s owner receives E24 together with CEO Morten Borge at the investment company’s new premises at Vika in Oslo. On Monday, they will receive a visit from Prime Minister Erna Solberg, who will open Ferd’s annual conference on social entrepreneurship (see data box).

This year’s theme is job inclusion and open-minded employment, and it aims to provide business leaders and recruiters with “knowledge and tools that make it easy to hire good people with gaps in their CV.”

– Social entrepreneurs have given many platforms to walk out the door, build a CV and, in some cases, also get a permanent job. Now we want to build a bridge between the solutions and attitudes that social entrepreneurs have created, towards large companies that, after all, will represent the majority of job opportunities in the future, says Andresen.

It tells how one of Ferd’s portfolio companies, human resource management company Simployer, recently announced a new position.

– He was a guy who did not meet the requirements in any way. But then he sat down and learned the entire programming language over the weekend before the deadline expired. If you, as a recruiter, don’t recognize it as a skill and say that he doesn’t check the boxes anyway, then we’d like to help you change your mind, says Andresen.

Will be more daring

The invitation to the fully digital seminar, which already has several hundred participants, states, among other things, that “different backgrounds can contribute to a more diverse work environment, better well-being and a strengthened bottom line. This is also supported by research.

– In an employment process, the pile is generally divided in advance. Those who are affected by judgmental processes often end up on the pile that is no longer considered. We want to be more aware of their potential, bolder if you will, and get more out of that pile in the process, says Andresen.

Ferd established social entrepreneurship as a separate business area in 2009, and in recent years he has supported various entrepreneurs and companies that provide job opportunities to people who have been left out of work life.

Among them are Employees, who offer subscription-based collection of recyclable household waste and employ people with drug expertise. Gammel Nok is a recruitment agency for people over 50 on involuntary unemployment.

– Profitability is something capricious

Andresen believes that being called for a job interview in itself is an important factor in building self-esteem and believing that you are on the right track.

– The ultimate goal is to include them through work, and some will have a longer path. If they lack language or other critical skills, one should look at the possibilities for training either in advance or down the road, Andresen says.

– You yourself emphasize that companies can become more profitable by hiring less traditional people. But does it appear that this will instead lead to higher costs for companies and thus reduce profitability?

– Profitability is somewhat capricious and depends largely on the period you measure. It is not certain that everyone is profitable from day one, as a more traditional job might have been. But it is very possible that they will be much more profitable from day 1000, says Andresen.

According to the owner of Ferd, it is difficult to explain or measure the value of diversity in a company.

– Many work well out of the box. Others also bring something else, some call it additionality. We don’t know exactly how to describe it until the person raises their hand at the meeting and points to something that no one else has thought of, and takes the project down a completely different and more correct track, Andresen says.

– Our experience is that the people who are most surprised to get the job also do so with a very strong sense of loyalty. In a longer-term profitability perspective, this will mean a lot to many companies, says Borge.

Ferd’s portfolio companies have almost 16,000 employees in the Nordic region. Andresen and Borge will send a clear signal to their own organization to broaden the horizon in the selection processes.

– It should not be underestimated that it takes courage to get off the beaten track. We hope that when we now encourage Ferd companies to reflect on this, the threshold can be lowered for those who do the daily hiring, whether in the yard at Aibel or in a construction warehouse in Mestergruppen. Our message is that trying is allowed, says Borge.

– And mistakes are allowed, Andresen adds.

Depending on how society works

Through his work with social entrepreneurs, Ferd has calculated that the inclusion of a person in working life who would not otherwise be, has a positive present value for society of around NOK 12 million. DNV GL verifies the calculations.

– For society, it is of great value that these people can contribute. And as a business owner, of course, we depend on how society works, says Andresen.

Point out several sources of exclusion. Hard social antecedents, health problems, stays in prison or in an institution, newcomers to the country who do not know the language.

– The role of social entrepreneurs is usually to prepare people to apply for a job. Now we want to go a step further, inspiring both our own company and other large companies to think differently about job seekers who aren’t quite A4, says Andresen.

– But won’t this increase employment in general?

– At Ferd, we have a clear ambition to contribute to more jobs through our growing and well-performing companies. But in this case, it must also be taken into account that the more time people spend without work, the greater the negative social effect on that individual and their family. Therefore, preventing too many people in Norway from being permanently out of working life has independent value, says Borge.