Two sizes, one organization

In the social economy or in a customized employment company, you work for two target groups and goals at the same time. You work for the employee who is distant from the labor market, and you work for the customer who expects a product or service. Those two are not the same, do not expect the same thing, and do not have the same needs. If I see something going wrong, it is often because the organization does not sufficiently acknowledge that difference and is not organized around it.
 

It appears in almost every mission statement: creating jobs for people at a distance from the labor market, and within that also making room for their growth. Closer to the regular labor market if that is possible, but at the very least stronger in the work they do today. Two assignments, and they get in each other’s way if you do not think about them consciously. Because one follows an economic logic of customer demand, production, supply, efficiency, and the other requires follow-up, human evaluation, time and space to experiment or slow down.

In the role of the team coach, you usually feel that balancing act most clearly. The organization asks you to look from the customer’s perspective at production, efficiency and numbers. From the social service department, the focus is on guidance: the employee’s well-being, their growth prospects, what is needed if their capacities decline. Those two forces push in opposite directions, and the team coach absorbs the tension. 

The divide is inherent to this type of organization, but that does not have to be a problem. In practice, I mainly see an issue when that tension is not consciously managed. The team coach keeps everyone well in their current place, and that works. But the broader picture gets lost. Where will this employee stand in two years’ time? Which pathway fits if their situation changes? When is the work no longer tailored to them? The social service department follows up administratively, but is too far removed from the work floor. Management has not made room for it on the agenda.

Actually, you need to include both responsibilities from the start, from the design of your organization. If you did not do that, but are wondering whether there are risks in your organization as well, you should take a look at your KPIs. If the reporting is only about production hours, euros and turnover, and there is nothing in it about employee evaluations, growth opportunities, progression, then you know enough about where the attention is going. And attention is what counts.

The choice that organizations rarely make explicitly is this: how far do we go? Which employees can we still offer an adapted position, and when is daytime activity actually the better option for someone? That is a difficult conversation, but you have to have it, otherwise it weighs on the organization, on the person and on their environment. Then you delegate the burden downwards. The custom work coach then carries something they cannot carry, and apart from good intentions: they do not have the time, the tools or the mandate for it.

The organizations that do this well have made it a management or executive decision. They have built structure: fixed evaluation moments with the target-group employee and their coach, a support pathway that looks beyond the here and now, and a mix of services broad enough to follow people as their situation changes. They have placed the social service and the operational side alongside each other, as collaborating parties.

Have the conversation before it becomes urgent. The complexity is inherent to the sector; you cannot deny that, but it also means you have been warned. The risks are clear, and so are the solutions.