2004 C.I.P.A. Winners
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Online Job Site Helps Québec revitalize its Labour MarketEmploi-Québec embarked on a three-year project to enhance the flow and accessibility of information between job seekers and employers, thereby improving customer service and significantly increasing the number of successful job placements. In the past, finding a job tended to be a ‘hit or miss’ exercise. Candidates learned about employment opportunities from newspapers, employment agencies, government manpower departments and by word-of-mouth. Employers communicated their requirements through a variety of sources and waited for candidates with appropriate skill-sets to appear. The process was slow and labour-intensive, with numerous obstacles impeding the connection between jobseeker and employer. The Internet changed all that. By 2001, nearly seven million, or 60 percent of, Canadian households were already online. Given this high penetration rate and the growth of electronic recruiting methods, it wasn’t surprising that increasing numbers of Canadians were turning to the Internet to find employment. At about that time, the potential for Internet-based job placement to positively affect the labour market was beginning to take shape in the entrepreneurial minds of decision makers at Emploi-Québec, an agency of the Ministère de l’Emploi, de la Solidarité sociale et de la Famille. As part of its focus on employment, Emploi-Québec interacts with employed people, job seekers and businesses and provides services that contribute significantly to social and professional integration, labour market stabilization and job creation. Among other things, it offers job placement and labour market information from its more than 150 local employment centres located in 17 administrative regions across Québec. If, by taking a refreshing new approach to job placement, Emploi-Québec could improve the province’s labour market conditions, then it would be pleased to make the requisite investment. Consolidating opportunity The ideal the founders were contemplating was a one-stop, complimentary service to promote universal employment. As a central employment ‘hub,’ the system would provide access to a placement service and links to public and private was also expected to facilitate a better match between job seekers’ attributes and market requirements, and ultimately promote a better balance between labour supply and demand. To ensure its success and the achievement of the overall business objective, the new online service would offer a number of significant improvements over traditional methods:
To develop the technical infrastructure for the Emploi-Québec service, the agency partnered with the LGS Group, AGTI Consulting Services and Microsoft, all of whom would become important contributors to the project’s success. Special considerations As a public service entity, Emploi-Québec needed to pay particular attention to the tight deadlines and budgetary limitations it had set for itself at the onset of the project. Meeting them would ensure the system was accessible to users in time to realize the productivity gains and cost savings it had set out to recoup from the labour market. The sooner the system could be made operational, the faster people could use it to find jobs and leave the unemployment ranks. Self-service job matches would also result in improved customer service, significant savings in administrative costs, and increased productivity. Time was of the essence. "The greatest challenge was to meet the project’s demanding performance requirements," explains Michel Gélinas, Director of Online Employment Services (DGATI) at Emploi-Québec. "We had $11 million with which to develop the entire project. To reduce the risk of delay, we developed the information technology solution using a Rapid Application Development approach which enabled us to actively involve users and receive feedback at every phase of the project. It also allowed us to cut the project development time in half and meet the public’s need for access to the system more quickly." Exacting performance and technical standards also needed to be met. The agency had set out with its strategic partners to develop a ‘premiere application’, one that would be the first of its kind in Canada. To that end, a number of complimentary product enhancements and special features had been specifically developed for the application. Nevertheless, to have a positive and significant impact on the labour market, the system needed to be more than dazzling and feature-rich. It had to be readily adopted by individuals and employers, relevant to their needs, and capable of facilitating job placements. It also had to be thoroughly reliable and completely secure. As part of its mandate to become a one-stop employment hub, the agency formed agreements with numerous other public and private sector partners who were invited to provide job listings and value-added information through links on the Emploi-Québec job site. These alliances and partnerships promote the respective strengths of each organization and generate cost savings for all parties. Innovative use of technology made it possible for Emploi-Québec to provide universal, complimentary access to its one-stop job market and more than 800 online links. Built on a three-tier architecture, a secure site and the Internet, this unique application meets open architecture standards and is accessible to users anywhere in the world. The online job market makes innovative use of electronic service delivery (ESD) concepts and exploits the power of Microsoft Commerce Server‘s developer tools and complimentary features to build a special data entry application that enables users to populate the system’s employment catalogues and job applications without outside involvement, providing direct, confidential communications between job seekers and employers. All of the incredible efficiencies the system generates, along with traffic and other relevant information, are tracked and extracted from a data warehouse that also provides information on labour market statistics. Online system ‘gets the job done’ Self-service functionality has contributed significantly to the achievement of virtually all of the agency’s objectives. During 2003, the online system was responsible for the placement of more than 130,000 positions. Almost 80% of all job applications were registered in self-service mode. This volume, which amounts to more than 150,000 items, would typically be processed by 45 full-time employees. Of particular note is that the total number of job opportunities actually doubled from approximately 150,000 in 2002, to 320,000 in 2003, despite relatively lfat economic conditions . This suggests that the ease of use afforded by Emploi-Québec’s Online Job Site may have provided the incentive for Quebec employers to create more job openings. From the perspective of customer volume and satisfaction, more than 180,000 jobseekers visit the site daily. During 2003, more than 170,000 candidates and 35,000 employers became registered users of the system. Online surveys indicate that 93% of employers who have used it are satisfied with the service and intend to use it to fill future job vacancies. At the same time, more than a thousand letters of gratitude have been received from satisfied jobseekers. A 2004 CIPA Winner! For its exceptional and innovative application of Information Technology to solve real-world business problems and bring greater benefit to all its stakeholders, Emploi-Québec was awarded a 2004 Canadian Information Productivity Award of Excellence in the Customer Care category.
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