Global Flipchart #11

By Miriam Ndambuki

As an independent facilitator, I often get to work in interesting places with interesting teams. Some of my most treasured jobs involve tackling challenges faced by young people in my country, Kenya. One prominent issue is our rising unemployment rate.

35% of Kenya’s population is aged between 15 and 35. 67% of these are unemployed.

A report by the Ministry of Education last year showed a mismatch between knowledge, skills and competencies required in the job market and what the universities offer. Many graduates possess the right academic papers, but in today’s competitive environment, employers are looking for so much more.

So what does it take to ensure that our graduates get the job - and retain it.

I recently had an opportunity to facilitate a vibrant three-day design sprint for a local NGO that aims to play its part in resolving this issue.

A design sprint is a structured, time-boxed approach to solving a problem and building the right solution – usually within a week. Companies use design sprints to build new products, improve existing products and test ideas in a risk-free environment.

The Client:  A not-for-profit enterprise that runs employability skills programmes for university graduates in Kenya. This particular enterprise model combines a one-month accelerator training programme with a four-month internship placement in a reputable company, with the possibility of full-term employment thereafter.

The Challenge: The client’s retention rate for graduate interns in their programme was less than 60%. A significant number of entry level graduates were not being retained by employers beyond the standard four-month internship period.

The Method: We used design sprint facilitation to lead the client team on a three-day workshop to come up with viable solutions for the challenge.

Day 1 - visualising the issues and solutions

We had a team of six, including an intern which was really a bonus! After a fun introductory ice-breaker, I split the team into two and we ran through the challenge. The client had already done a deep dive with the various stakeholders, so we had a lot of data to draw from. We delved deeper into understanding the issues by mapping out the graduate’s journey from their final year in university to the employability programme and to the employer. Here we were able to uncover several gaps, including a lack of adequate workplace preparation from the university and the low level of employer commitment in creating training and experience opportunities for the new intern. Each team then sketched the journey, making it possible to have a clear visual representation of the pain points that exist for all the key players across this journey. We discussed these at length, after which each team then embarked on sketching the new journey with the solutions discussed. Everyone wanted increased intern retention, so we aimed for a retention rate of 80% up from 60%.

Day 2 - Analysing and refining solutions

The teams presented their new solution journeys, which were really insightful. We then looked at some assumptions - one insight was that many employers did not feel that one month of employability skills training was sufficient to have enough impact on a fresh graduate who has been in university for four years. Once we started working on the story boards, the teams were then able to dissect their programme and see where they fell short.

The solution:

• Support ongoing, on-the-job training throughout  the four-month internship.
• Build  stronger employer relationships and trust. 
• Establish ways to see the employer more as a partner than just a job provider.

I then assigned tasks to different individuals to prepare for the day three session - the prototype!

Day 3 - protoyping and testing

The teams spent the morning sessions prototyping their ideas. After discussing the prototypes, we held four in-depth stakeholder interviews in the afternoon to test our solutions. We interviewed two key employers - a seasoned HR practitioner and a university career expert.

It was wonderful to validate our ideas and understand the issues better from these experts’ point of view. An interesting discovery was the broken linkages between employers and training institutions. The  gap between these two interdependent entities really frustrates the absorption rate of graduates in the job market.

Evaluation

This was a truly inspiring facilitation assignment. What I love about design sprint facilitation is the art therapy! As a visual person, I love it when I can see teams sketch out their problems, ideas and solutions right before my eyes. I believe this is what makes the process so fast and effective.

We are now working on an improved product and service for this enterprise - I’m excited to see the impact of our new solutions over the next six months.