Our United for Ukraine initiative is making a difference to people’s lives
- Tuesday, November 1, 2022
- Posted By The Growth Company
Blog post by Tim Jeffrey, Partnership and Integration Manager - The Growth Company
Through our United for Ukraine initiative, we're currently supporting over 90 employers and have posted 250 vacancies on our website’s jobs board - at no cost to the businesses. These employers are willing to offer-up job opportunities to support Ukrainians who’ve arrived in the UK because of the ongoing conflict. There’s still much work to do and we’re encouraging even more businesses to partner with us and join our Employer Information Session on 9th November to find out how they can help.
I’d like to share my journey from leading this initiative with you. I work in the Partnerships team and I was asked to help develop and launch the United for Ukraine initiative.
If I’m honest, in the early planning stages it was quite difficult to see in which direction it was going to go. We didn’t know if it was something which was going to be needed, valued and used for the next three months – or for the next three years, so we had to future proof our service for a number of outcomes. In our heart of hearts, we obviously wanted to see the conflict end as soon as possible, so that there’d be no need for the initiative.
We also needed to make sure the service we offered was both true to our organisation’s values and our core strengths. We’re experts in working with employers and helping people get jobs - and the fact that we could easily tap into the skills and expertise that we’ve built up over the last few decades is just amazing. Everyone needs to do their bit to support Ukraine in what every way they can – and this is our way of making our contribution.
For me, the past six months have been a time where I’ve really reflected on the Growth Company’s purpose and why we’re here. One of the best things about being a social enterprise is that, when events happen like the conflict in Ukraine, we’re in a position to respond and find ways where we can step in and support. I think the fact we’re able to do this is in such a practical and timely way is one of the best things about our organisation.
We’ve worked with business leaders across the North of England to get the initiative set up and live in a relatively short amount of time which has been a challenge, but one I feel we’ve risen to as a business.
In the first few weeks and months after we committed to set up the initiative, my role was to help design the service and our United for Ukraine website – essentially getting the actual product up and running – which we had to do very quickly. Within 3-4 weeks of the conflict starting we had the site live, which is pretty good going. And this was before we started to see the larger numbers of Ukrainian evacuees arrive in the UK.
I also pulled together a small team of two key workers, both from Ukraine, to support the day-to day-running of the service and to provide a crucial point of contact to help listen to and support queries which come through the website and from our attendance at recruitment events. Their commitment and sheer determination is the hub and sense check that what we’ve designed as a tailored employment support service actually works in practice and continues to deliver and continuously improve.
Since the launch, what I’ve enjoyed and I’m proud of most is seeing the results. The fact we know that more than 600 people have either called or emailed us to get more support and information is fantastic. We know that around 50 people have now successfully found employment through the initiative. Seeing these results and knowing that what we’ve put into place works is important to me.
We have a jobs board as part of the website where businesses can post jobs for Unkranian’s looking for work in the Greater Manchester and the North of England. It’s kind of like a ‘chicken and egg’ scenario – initially in the early stages we had lots of jobs advertised on the board and not a huge amount of visits to the website – and sometimes we’ve had the reverse situation with not as many jobs on the site and lots of people visiting the site eagerly looking for employment. It’s definitely a challenge to get it right and we’re working hard to better align the balance.
We need the jobs to be provided by employers and by attending the local recruitment events we’re making sure that we’re spreading the word about the initiative and the website into the community. Sometimes my support team will attend an event in a local city and meet lots of Ukrainian’s there and it’s just the case that unfortunately we don’t have many jobs available in that area - and it can also be the other way around, where an area has lots of jobs advertised on the board, but there aren’t many Ukrainian’s living there and looking for work.
There have been a few misconceptions we’ve had to help dispel along the way. For employers, there’s sometimes an assumption that a refugee would be looking for an ‘entry level’ vacancy – such as warehouse and retail roles. The reality is that, many of the people coming over from Ukraine that we’re helping to find roles are very highly educated and have considerable skills and experience to offer businesses.
My support team are vital in making sure the initiative and services we offer stay in people’s minds - from employer networks, through to social media and attending recruitment events.
Like with many initiatives, there’s always a bit of response fatigue after a while. Initially there’s a huge rush from everybody to support, with lots of people wanting to help – but this can very quickly drop off as time moves on and priorities change. This is why my team are so important.
We’ve noticed that, whilst the initiative was pulled together as a digital resource – a website that people would access, what people are finding most benefit from is phoning up and talking with the support team.
The awareness of the site and the service we offer is basically spreading by word of mouth through the Ukrainian community, and in many ways we’ve found we’ve not actually had to promote the site to them because it’s being organically shared via social media. It’s something that’s evolved that we weren’t expecting. The work my team have done and continue to do to support this, as just a team of two, has been tremendous.
What’s been most surprising to me is the resilience of the people who’ve come over from Ukraine – and how quickly they want to look for employment. We talk to people who’ve literally just arrived from Kharkiv in the last ten days who immediately want to start work in Manchester. Sometimes I feel like you need to encourage people to slow down a little and get their bearings first.
When you see and hear some of the human stories - the impact of what we’re doing through the initiative really starts to hit home. I was at a jobs fair in Sheffield a few months ago where people from Ukraine were arriving and talking to the team – and it was interesting just to see their body language change, things like seeing their shoulders relax just at the opportunity to be able to talk to somebody who also speaks Ukrainian for the first time since they arrived here.
I remember thinking wow… you see things on the news about the conflict and the refugee crisis, but when you see it in real life and somebody is stood in front of you that’s fled a war zone – and we’re able to help them, it does make you feel like you’re adding value and at the same time quite daunted at the scope of what’s still to be done.
The most important decision we’ve had to make as a team since the initiative launched is around being clear on what services United for Ukraine should provide. There’s always a temptation for ‘scope creep’ to come into play and straying into areas of support we’re not the experts in, or best placed to give advice – areas such as mental health and housing. So we’ve needed to be quite strong and stay in our lane of expertise and be clear that we’re here to support with jobs, employment advice, creating CVs and help with interviews.
I’d say the biggest challenge I’ve encountered since we launched the initiative is, as a team, not having enough hours in the day to help everyone. We’ve seen around 4,000 unique visits to the site and we’ve only had the opportunity to speak to about 600 Ukrainians – but there are 130,000 people who’ve arrived in the UK since the start of the conflict. The number of enquires that we’re getting is going up and up each week, so there’s definitely more we need to do in this space.
It's quite difficult for people coming over from Ukraine to get access to the ESOL qualification (English for Speakers of other Languages). One of benefits of my support team being Ukrainian is that it removes any language barrier from the service and they can offer support in Ukrainian. Our United for Ukraine website is also translated into Ukrainian, so that really helps too. There’s not a barrier with us being able to communicate with the people we’re helping, the challenges come in making sure the participants have the opportunity to learn English to the required level – and there’s little support out there at the moment.
If you want to hear more about how you or your business can get involved in the initiative – then, we'd love to invite you to our Employer Information Session on 9th November – click here for more details.
We'll tell you about the work we've been doing and the support that we've offered to some of the people who arrived in the UK from the Ukraine...and how you can help.