Flourish

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The growth in green jobs presents a strategic opportunity for UK regions, but current skills shortages are creating bottlenecks for achieving the government's industrial ambitions. Working with funding from UfI's VocTech Trust, and deploying groundbreaking research from our Pissarides Review, the Flourish platform seeks to address these challenges.

It is aimed at resolving issues faced by three different stakeholder groups:

• Job Seekers and Learners, who face struggles to navigate online resources to find, understand, and pursue local entry-level positions with vocational training.
• Employers and Training Providers, who face difficulties attracting, engaging and retaining local job seekers who possess the right mix of qualifications, aptitude, and motivation.
• Regional Stakeholders, where government and policymakers lack clear visibility of programmes in their areas that align with green industry goals, and can struggle to coordinate effectively between training centres, providers, and employers.

What are we aiming to do?

Focusing initially on Cornwall and Lincolnshire, Flourish will increase the number of individuals in green training and work, by helping them to envision and map their own future of work within the green transition. By identifying talent pathways, vocational learning courses and employment opportunities, we will increase people’s ability to find, train and apply for green jobs within their region.

How are we aiming to do it?

We are developing the Flourish software system based on IFOW’s multidisciplinary research into skills and capability distribution across the country. In particular, we are utilising groundbreaking new analysis into skills transferability between occupations, based on an analysis of 65 million UK jobs adverts. This proprietary dataset is in the form of a 'matrix', in which every identified skill has an 'association score' with every other skill. This data and technology form the backbone of Flourish’s capabilities, which combined with AI Large Language Model (LLM) approaches, will enable the platform to: 

• Identify skills that the user may want to develop based on the skills they probably already have, and their priorities related to work
• Identify clusters of skills related to different occupations (i.e. transferable and complimentary skills)
• Highlight the geographic distribution and changes to skills, supporting people to create pathways into and within jobs
• Surface regional growth sectors and target marketing and outreach for green vocational training courses, such as how they can lead to better opportunities
• Help people to identify suitable roles in the green economy and vocational skills pathway courses (at level 2-3)  

Flourish will integrate this advanced, multi-dimensional matching technology and data analysis in the form of a full-stack software platform deployed as a web-application.

What work has been done so far?

User Research

We have been conducting in-depth workshops and interviews to identify user needs and better understand systemic issues related to green skills pathways. This will help with the development and testing of the platform with users and stakeholders in each region. This will help us develop a deep understanding of the complexities and lived realities of priority cohorts in each region related to pathways into green jobs, including young people, those who are 'NEET', potential ‘job switchers’, and people who are currently ‘economically inactive’. Our approach will involve empathy, participatory engagement at a community-level, ethnographic methods (e.g. at job centres and job clubs), user interviews, and user testing.

Stakeholder Engagement

Alongside user research, we have also been undertaking a comprehensive programme of stakeholder engagement, talking to businesses, training providers and other key stakeholders in each region, such as Job Centre and local councils. This will enable us to identify product requirements for businesses and contribute to our commercial objectives related to sustainability. Our stakeholder engagement approach also involves partnership working, leveraging existing regional forums such as Chambers of Commerce and university-led skills networks.

UX Design

As we develop our understanding of users' needs and the product features needed to attract businesses, training providers and other stakeholders, we have been undertaking an ongoing UX (user experience) process through design-thinking workshops.

To find out more about this work, email the team.