Create Your Own Future is a brand new tool from unionlearn aimed at workers at risk of redundancy or looking to change career. With its help, they can map out an action plan and stay motivated to reach their goals.

Learners, especially those at risk of redundancy, can plan their route from the job they have now to the work they want to do in future with the help of unionlearn’s cutting-edge new digital tool, Create Your Own Future.

With a virtual mentor by their side throughout their journey, they can identify what motivates them and pinpoint how to improve their career adaptability through learning.

Create Your Own Future also uses nudges, notifications and game mechanics to help keep learners engaged and motivated and they can also review their progress at any time, either by themselves of with the help of their union learning rep (ULR).

Learners can work their way through the programme independently, particularly if they already feel confident using digital tools – and if they don’t, there are digital skills courses within the programme to help get them up to speed.

But ULRs can also lead learners through the new resource in one-to-one sessions or in groups, whether that’s face to face (when that becomes possible again) or online.

Create Your Own Future was developed for unionlearn last year by learning technology provider Saffron Interactive, after a successful bid to the CareerTech Challenge Fund.

The fund is an innovation programme jointly run by the Department for Education (DfE) and the independent innovation agency Nesta, which was originally launched as the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts in the same year as the Union Learning Fund (ULF), 1998.

Saffron was so passionate about the project that it was able to deliver the brand new tool within just eight months of the announcement of the funding, despite inevitable delays caused by the pandemic.

Saffron CEO Noorie Sazen said:

When Covid happened, what dawned on us at the time was that this was an amazing opportunity to really make a difference.”

So that made us raise our aspirations even further, as we knew this was not going to be a one-off programme but it would probably be needed for some time.”

With a focus on motivation in all its projects, Saffron dug deep into how and why people move from one role to another, one job to another or one career to another.

Getting to grips with what motivates us to make a change at work is becoming increasingly important as the fourth industrial revolution rolls on.

With the job for life looking ever-more unusual as the twenty first century advances, forecasters are now predicting we can expect to try 10 different careers over a working lifetime. Since the evolution of work makes career adaptability ever-more essential, the project team based its approach on the six ‘C’s of a flexible mindset:

• concern: are learners concerned about their future?

• control: do learners look ahead and plan for what might come next?

• curiosity: do learners imagine and explore different scenarios that could open up new possibilities? • confidence: do learners believe in themselves and their ability to pursue their goals?

• commitment: are learners committed to the programme since adapting to change is hard?

• capability: do learners have the resources to be career-flexible?

The first four ‘C’s were originally identified by career construction theorist Mark Savicaks; the fifth by Professor Jenny Bimrose of the University of Warwick; and the sixth by the Saffron project team.

As Noorie says, ULRs are already using this kind of approach, even if they wouldn’t necessarily call it that.

In all of our discussions with learners, with ULRs, with unionlearn and with the many charities that we spoke to, all of them were practising this in any case.”

The new tool uses a four-stage journey:

• meet your mentor

• assess your skills

• look at the results

• draw up an action plan.

First, learners choose one of four different virtual mentors, videobots that mimic the interactive conversations they might have with a ULR or other union rep, rather than animated guides through the programme.

Project Manager Ben Broadribb said:

These characters came out of the research we did with the focus groups and ULRs to find the kinds of characters that will really give that human connection to the learners.”

This gives them someone who’s not just a presenter or delivering instructions throughout the course but somebody they can feel a connection with in the way they would if they were speaking to somebody face to face.”

That means they can have interactive conversations about their development at their own convenience, in addition to the support they can ask for outside the programme from their union learning representative (ULR).

The virtual mentors are not intended to supplant the key role of the ULR in learners’ development, Ben adds.

The idea is that the mentor is somebody there to help them within the programme but also directing them to seek support elsewhere from ULRs or from the NCS: signposting is included in the course all the way through and encouraging them to get support from friends and family – whoever they have.”

Brought to life by actors (all of them Equity members, of course), the videobots are characters with their own individual back-stories that Saffron crafted through research with the focus groups of ULRs that helped with every step of the development of the new tool:

• Mike Green is a 29-year-old community transport worker who has experienced redundancy and wants to secure his family’s financial future.

• Susan Smith, 52, who had been working as an admin assistant but wanted a new challenge and is now working as a project manager.

• Javed Khan, Jay to his friends, is currently working as a security consultant and aged 55 is focused on being able to enjoy a comfortable retirement with his grandchildren.

• 27-year-old single parent Alisha Bailey wanted to secure a stable career to support her young son, so progressed from working in a food factory to training as a nurse.

Once you’ve chosen your mentor, you talk to them about your current situation and what you’ve been thinking about in terms of next steps to take. While the mentor speaks in pre-recorded video segments that are all captioned, you can reply by typing or recording an audio or video response. You then move on to the next stage of the journey – your skills assessment.

This is a set of 36 cards to help you assess where you are in a range of areas that will be familiar to anyone who has used unionlearn’s popular Value My Skills cards or the digital tool. For each card, you mark your skills in that area (eg money-management, following instructions) as undeveloped, adequate, competent or very competent (as with Value My Skills).

You can ask for support from your mentor at any time during the assessment. Or you can take a break and get in touch with your ULR. Once the assessment is completed, you progress to the next stage: looking at your results in full.

The personalised results match your strengths to more than 1,500 job profiles on the National Careers Service (NCS) website, as well as to the learning resources that may be appropriate for your development. One massive plus about the programme is that the tool can suggest career options matching your skills that you may never have considered yourself.

That’s what unionlearn National Projects Officer Jane Warwick discovered when she worked her way through the programme in order to familiarise herself with all the different aspects of the new tool.

Jane’s personalised results matched her familiarity with employment law and interest in people’s development to a possible career in human resources, something she’d not thought about before but which made perfect sense.

More surprisingly, the programme also suggested she could look into becoming a funeral director, an option she’d never dreamed of but which, on reflection, also suited both her organisational abilities and her people skills.

To move on to the next stage, you choose at least two roles and two courses to contribute to your action plan. You can come back to change your mind later and choose more or different roles or courses. You then move on to the final stage – the action plan.

This is not set in stone: it’s a working document that learners can return to as often as they need to update it as their circumstances change, their skills develop or they identify new opportunities.

You’re then taken to the dashboard, which is where everything comes together – your action plan, your notes, your pinned careers and any milestones you reach.

Because the tool has been designed to help keep learners motivated, it schedules an evaluation conversation with your mentor that happens 12 weeks after the initial registration or once a set number of action plan points have been reached.

The conversation looks at what you have been focussing on in your journey but also returns to the questions you raised at the beginning.

Unionlearn Service Team Manager Ian Borkett is delighted with the way the tool has turned out.

Ian said:

This exciting and innovative programme will be an invaluable resource for union learning reps’ work in supporting workplace learners and an enormous help to workers looking to retrain or change career.”

As more workers become unemployed or at risk of redundancy due to the economic downturn, never has there been a more crucial time for this kind of career adaptability tool.”

The Saffron team is equally happy to have brought the project out into the world at a time when so many workers can benefit from its support in helping them reframe their ideas about where they could work next.

Noorie said:

Our fundamental mission was to utilise the most cutting-edge technology to create a solution that was effective at providing a life-like conversation with a mentor, but could be applied at scale, given the current economic climate.”

We’re thrilled that users can now access the platform and that Create Your Own Future can be a positive force for change in so many lives.”

Create Your Own Future is free on the unionlearn website.

On Feb 23rd unionlearn will be holding a briefing that will go through the online tool.

This article first appeared in the Spring 2021 edition of the Learning Rep.