Next mission: inclusion

Description

In Italy the law about work inclusion foresees that each company that have more than 15 employees has to hire several disadvantaged workers proportionally to the total number of employees. Nevertheless, in Italy 93% of the companies have less than 15 employees; for these companies is very complicated include disadvantaged people, although they are not in obligation. For this reason, in 2003 it has been approved a law (D Lgs 276/2003) that permits companies to buy services and goods from social cooperatives instead of observing the duty of hiring disadvantaged people. In this way social cooperatives hire new disadvantaged workers to respond to new purchases from the companies.
Today the problem is that some social enterprises include new workers without a reliable program of work inclusion.
This is a serious limitation for the development of the work inclusion. Social enterprises need instruments and methodologies to plan and manage a right inclusion pathway for the disadvantaged workers and, furthermore, they need a system to give evidence of their social impact. In fact, more and more companies are interested to receive information about the social impact of their purchase.
For these reasons, Spazio Aperto wants to support solutions to develop the work inclusion of disadvantaged group through the collaboration between companies (in particular SMEs) and social enterprises (in particular social cooperatives).

Target

The challenge is located in the Municipality of Milan, where SPAZIO APERTO operates since 1984. SPAZIO APERTO provides services to companies that have the duty of work inclusion. With this challenge we would like to improve the social cooperatives capacity in defining pathway of work inclusion of disadvantaged group and sustain their action to give evidence of the social value of these processes.
In Milan Province there are about 18.500 companies with more than 10 employees, which could need buying goods and services to absolve the obligation of the law (L 68/99) and 102 social cooperatives which operate in the field of work inclusion with the article 14 of the law DLgs 276/2003.
SPAZIO APERTO is a local benchmark in the field of work inclusion with a tested method to accompany disadvantaged workers; SPAZIO APERTO would like to improve this method, through new tools and methodologies.

Competencies

SPAZIO APERTO operates in private market, providing services to companies that have the obligation of work inclusion based on the law L68/99. To do this, SPAZIO APERTO offers solutions foreseen by the law DLgs 276/03; the article n. 14 states that companies with 15 or more employees can absolve the duty of work inclusion through the purchase of goods and service from social enterprises. Since 1984, SPAZIO APERTO provides services to big companies, and SMEs.
SPAZIO APERTO would like to formalize their own best practice in work inclusion pathways and identify a system to give evidence of the social value of its work, so that this will be assumed as a benchmark and example for other social enterprises which provide same services.
The staff of SPAZIO APERTO will support the subjects which will take in charge the challenge giving them information and support to well understand the topic. In particular, SPAZIO APERTO will give concrete support to analyze 1 specific case.

Innovation

We haven’t index and indicators about the impact of the activities nor elements to give the evidence that our approach is better that the other ones. We would like to demonstrate that an accompaniment of disadvantaged people to the work is import for the work inclusion. In this manner, we will be able to invite the other social enterprises to adopt accompaniment pathways for work inclusion.
The range of possible solutions in order to deal with the challenge is:
(1) systems to give evidence of social value;
(2) systems and models for the accompaniment pathways of disadvantaged people;
(3) communication models to educate the social enterprises to certify the inclusion capacity
(4) tools to inform companies about the importance of the accompaniment pathways for disadvantaged groups.

Commitment

SPAZIO APERTO will support the selected solution providers with:

A) information and data already acquired;
B) connection with its clients or other stakeholders;
C) pilot action to test the identified solutions.

SPAZIO APERTO will provide also information about its system to accompany disadvantaged workers in the process of work inclusion.

Compliance

The challenge complies 100% to the ethical standards.