Engaging workplaces: A social partners perspective on youth activation

How can workplaces – encompassing employers, employees, and the organisational structures in which they are embedded – be reconfigured to facilitate the successful inclusion of vulnerable youth struggling to enter and retain a position in the labour market? This project seeks to answer this question by expanding the ways in which employment and work inclusion policies are designed. In particular, we seek to import one of the key features of the Norwegian welfare model – namely dialogue between social partners – into the domain of labour market policy design. The project will generate much-needed empirical knowledge of current work inclusion practices nationwide, notably in terms of how such practices manifest in low-income segments of the labour market, and it will pay special attention to the work inclusion of vulnerable young jobseekers. It will then engage social partners in collaborative dialogue geared towards organisational workplace reforms that will substantially improve the recruitment and retainment of vulnerable young jobseekers.

This collaborative project probes the ways in which workplaces – encompassing employers, employees, and the organisational structures in which they are embedded – can be reconfigured to facilitate the successful inclusion of vulnerable youth struggling to enter and retain a position in the labour market. It does so by seeking to align work inclusion interventions with the quintessence of the Norwegian welfare model, namely social dialogue and tripartism, and imports this feature into the domain of labour market policy design. The project will generate much-needed empirical knowledge of current work inclusion practices nationwide, notably in terms of how such practices manifest in low-income segments of the labour market - emphasising work inclusion of vulnerable young jobseekers. It will then engage social partners in collaborative dialogue geared towards organisational workplace reforms that forge both efficient and equitable mechanisms whereby high-quality workplaces become actively engaged in recruiting and retaining vulnerable young jobseekers. By simultaneously probing the key characteristics of individuals, groups, organisations, and their ambient institutional context, the project delineates a novel approach to youth activation in the 21st century.