Spring Aboard - online career planning information service

Elizabeth James

Elizabeth James is the project manager for Spring Aboard. She is a principal of the business consultancy, See Change, which specialises in identifying, developing and promoting e-services. She was formerly a senior policy adviser on science and technology in the Department of the Prime Minster and Cabinet, and has had a number of university appointments.

Presentation

A key skill in our present society, and one becoming more and more important with changes in work practices is career planning. Career Planning is the term used to describe the process of making systematic, informed choices in entering the labour market, and managing a career.

It is not easy, or simple or straightforward.

It is a process that needs to be learnt, and to be supported, and to be regularly practiced to be effective. As such it is very resource intensive.

Spring Aboard is a virtual resource for online career planning information. It recognises that career planning is not a process undertaken by an individual in isolation, but a highly interactive and dependent process. Spring Aboard deals with career planners, career planning professionals, teachers, businesses, business organisations and educational organisations as a single mutually dependent group.

Spring Aboard

• makes choosing education and training options, careers and employment options easier and better informed for individuals who are part of or planning to join the labour market;

• provides a guided process for career planning professionals to use with their clients, including online forums for virtual classrooms or job clubs;

• gives local businesses the chance to profile themselves and their industry, use web pages and e-mail for their business, show where future employment opportunities are in their business; and access web based resources for business;

• will give timely information to educators on education and training needs for the northern Tasmanian business community;

• will identify and address skill imbalances in the region, and

• focuses on the social and economic development of northern Tasmania by facilitating the operation of the regional labour market.

Presentation

Introduction

Tasmania, like many other regional areas, has an aging population, with youth migrating out to take up education and employment opportunities in metropolitan areas. The State’s population is showing a slow but steady decline. The main reasons given by young people for leaving the State are the lack of employment, lack of education and training, lack of entertainment.

In short, no present and no future.

This bleak picture is supported by labour market demographics, which show over 30% youth unemployment in some rural areas. Yet, there are any number of local businesses with the capacity to employ staff, who are disappointed each time they go through the recruitment process without finding suitable skilled and experienced applicants. Recent economic figures also show a slow, steady upturn in the State’s economy.

The Tasmanian Community Network conducted a State wide community consultation process in 1997 and 1998. The these forums with the twin objectives of identifying issues of most widespread community concern, and then creating viable solutions using information technology to address the concerns. The forums identified youth leaving the region as one of the most critical threats to the long-term viability of our community.

Spring Aboard was created to address this.

Spring Aboard is an online career planning information service designed for a single economic and geographic region. It provides a virtual infrastructure for career planning that can be used by individuals, either on their own or working with the support of career planning professionals.

In the current labour market, the employment framework, job structure and content and the human resources infrastructure are changing so quickly that it is difficult even for those engaged professionally in the field to keep up to date.

Yet there is a great deal of information put out by governments, business, and educational organisations on

• the labour market,

• the process of entering the labour market, and

• resources that can assist in the process

that are available through the Internet.

The barriers to using the Internet for career planning are that these resources are fragmented across many sites, are of variable quality, and are often out of date. A major barrier is that many sites are engineered for connection speeds that end users do not have.

Spring Aboard is a virtual infrastructure for career planning more than a conventional site. Career planners need an infrastructure to get information about themselves, the labour market, occupations, education and training. Spring Aboard provides this infrastructure in a virtual environment.

It recognises that career planning is not a process undertaken by an individual in isolation, but a highly interactive and dependent process. Spring Aboard deals with career planners, career planning professionals, teachers, businesses, business organisations and educational organisations as a single mutually dependent group. That is why it is regionally focused. It gives specific accurate information about a particular region, and gives the businesses, educational organisations and career planning professionals in that region the capacity to constantly monitor and update Spring Aboard. They are able to use it as part of the infrastructure of their own business operations.

Methodology

An IT solution was developed to address the problem and client groups identified through community consultation. Some premises were taken as given in developing a project methodology.

The product had to

• be focused on providing effective career planning based on the needs of individual career planners,

• be easily accessible at any time to any one who needed it,

• be deeply rooted in the local community, owned, defined and managed by the community,

• couple together businesses (employers), labour market facilitators (career planning professionals) and individuals (potential employees),

• have the capacity to be self sustaining in the long term, and

• provide a useful resource to all key players in the labour market.

The issue of accessibility made the most efficient delivery method via an Internet based infrastructure. Tasmania communities have public access to the Internet in Online Centres in most towns; public libraries, all schools and many homes have Internet connections.

One other major consideration – that of sustainability – also meant an Internet based infrastructure.

Building a dynamic Internet based resource requires a high level of effort and capital to develop, but once that is done, it can be maintained with relatively modest running costs.

The premises defined the product as a client focused, community owned and managed, Internet based resource servicing the needs of the northern Tasmanian community.

The site is structured to serve the needs of three groups of clients

• career planners and job seekers;

• career planning professionals who include teachers, other educators, and employment professionals; and

• business partners.

Each group registers separately on Spring Aboard, and each accesses different resources prepared specifically for their needs.

Career planners and job seekers go to the career planning wheel (figure 1), which takes them step by step through the process of career planning, and provides them with the resources needed to conduct the entire process using the virtual infrastructure. Some of these resources are a resume builder, links to local and national job advertisements, aptitude and lifestyle preference tests, Spring Aboard e-mail, and a personal portfolio to store and edit their material.

Figure 1 The career planning wheel that is the heart of the career planning process on Spring Aboard

Career planning professionals include educators and those working in the employment industry and in some government support services. Their part of the site gives group forums, a template to create a web page, Spring Aboard e-mail, resource information relating to professional development in career planning, human resource management and the Government regulatory process, and some lesson plans for teachers to use with classes going through Spring Aboard.

The business partners part of the site offers businesses a web page, Spring Aboard e-mail, an induction package for staff, resource information on human resource management, the employment regulatory process, information on wages, safety, award conditions, and general business management information.

Access Spring Aboard at http://www.springaboard.com

Results

Project Management

The concept development was carried forward by an extension of the Tasmanian Community Network, with a large number of individuals and organisations invited to participate in a project Reference Group. This Reference Group effectively owns the project, setting policy and making executive decisions. The Reference group established project management guidelines including appointment of project personnel, reporting structures and financial administration

The Launceston City Council is a member of the project Reference Group. It successfully applied for Networking the Nation funds to develop and run the service for 12 months. The project funded is defined by a deed of agreement between the Commonwealth (Networking the Nation) and the Launceston City Council. The Launceston City Council holds and administers the funds on behalf of the project Reference Group.

Marketing the service

This phase of the project is underway at the moment. The service was launched by the mayor of Launceston at a street party in the Launceston city mall towards the end of June. A circus theme was adopted with street entertainers, and computers connected to the Internet in a big marquee.

This is being followed by a series of regional promotions in the larger country towns. The TAFE has promoted Spring Aboard on Flinders Island alongside its own career program for students on the Island. Further promotions underway in the region. Spring Aboard featured at the recent careers expo held in Launceston.

Educators are going to be a key factor in getting students at school, TAFE and university using the service. Spring Aboard conducted a professional development day for career planning teachers in August with a booklet of lesson plans and notes for teachers. Teachers can download the notes and lesson plans from the site. Teachers provided very positive feedback and suggestions to make the service easier to use when working with groups.

The local business community as regional employers makes their involvement in the service of critical importance. We need to involve them with providing input on their requirements for staff, how they go about recruiting and giving them resources to make them more effective recruiters and human resource managers. The marketing strategy includes promoting the service through local business organisations and some strategic advertising.

Discussion

There are many job sites on the Internet, and many of them provide some resources to support the process of career planning. There are also a lot of sites that support the process of career planning, and some of these are truly excellent.

So why is Spring Aboard necessary? What makes this .com different, and where does it add value?

In many cases, we find that ‘job searching process’, whether on the Internet or not, is geared to serving the needs of employers by locating a person who will be an effective ‘human’ resource for their business. This is not surprising, as employers have an ongoing relationship with the job searching process, and offer the prospect of repeated contacts and business.

However, our primary objective for Spring Aboard, defined by the community consultation process, is different. It is to retain younger members of our community by showing them a way to take control of their own career choices, and showing them where and how to find viable education and occupational choices available in this region.

Here is where Spring Aboard adds value.

Spring Aboard takes to view that career planning is part of a collective process, one that individuals initiate, but one that needs the involvement of many other individuals and organisations in their community to be well informed and effective.

It treats the labour market as a whole, and it covers the region of northern Tasmania. Information from education organisations, businesses and government is specific to this region and is directly relevant to members of this community undertaking the process of career planning.

The concept is inherent in many recent writings about career and lifestyle planning. Many occupational psychologists and career planning professionals have adopted it as the most effective way to manage the career planning process. However, it has been very slow in migrating to the web. This is not surprising as the experience with Spring Aboard shows that creating an integrated service across all segments of the labour market has been difficult and costly.

It is too early to judge the success of Spring Aboard from its impact on the regional economy, however, we are getting very positive feedback from users, and early trend lines show an increasing number of registered users.