̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - ThinkLab

Innovative recruitment platform wins KPMG future of work hackathon

skbf2 — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 16:55:02 +0000

Job-placement platform ' ̽��ֱ��Good Job Tool', developed by a Cambridge MBA student at Cambridge Judge Business School and KPMG consultants, was named winner of the ‘Digital Future of Work’ hackathon at KPMG’s Ignition Centre in London.

̽��ֱ��Good Job Tool is an AI-driven platform which helps employers and organisations rethink and customise jobs and job descriptions to better take account of the needs of a rapidly changing workforce. ̽��ֱ��platform also aims to generate clearer insights into how employees can best build and leverage their skills and experience to plan out their future careers by taking a data-driven approach to career trajectories across various industries.

Cambridge MBA student and member of the winning team, Irufan Ahmed, explains the thinking behind their idea: “As a team we listed down a number of bad experiences we’ve had in the past, and then how we can convert them into what a good job would look like”.

̽��ֱ��two-day hackathon focused on the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goal of ‘Decent work and economic growth’, which promotes full and productive employment and sustained, inclusive economic growth. ̽��ֱ��event involved participants from around the world, working in multidisciplinary teams across different organisations. Each team pitched their idea to a panel of judges from KPMG, Microsoft, BP plc and the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge’s ThinkLab co-created and helped run the hackathon with ThinkLab Manager, Tyler Shores, on the judging panel.

̽��ֱ��winning team will receive investment and support from KPMG’s global innovation team to help develop and scale the idea.

Tyler Shores said, " ̽��ֱ��future of work hackathon was a wonderfully unique collaboration opportunity that showed how much innovative thinking and creativity can come from researchers, industry leaders and professionals coming together to work on shared big picture challenges. ̽��ֱ��ideas that came from this event have the potential to create a lot of meaningful change in the near future and we can't wait to see what comes next."

Roni Michael, Global Head of Innovation for KPMG International, said, “the businesses of today are adapting the way they work to a completely new environment. ̽��ֱ��way we all work is changing – and so are the reasons why. We developed this hackathon because we saw it as a great opportunity to bring multi-disciplinary teams together to re-consider what work means to each of us, redefine it and see how we can get more out of it, as employees, as employers and as a society.”

Of the Good Job Tool platform, Michael says in a video posted by KPMG: “It gave a solution into a problem that we all care about so much. It blew our mind. It’s just rethinking the whole recruiting process”.

Cambridge and KPMG recently announced a new five-year partnership looking at the future of work which will start by addressing mental wellbeing in the workplace.

Adapted from an article that first appeared on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge's ThinkLab helped design and run a KPMG 'Future of Work' hackathon to find promising new ideas that will help transform the world of work. ̽��ֱ��winning team, including a Cambridge MBA student, will receive funding and support from KPMG to put the idea into practice.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Supporting neurodiversity in the workplace: an insider’s perspective on a ThinkLab project

skbf2 — Thu, 01 Jul 2021 15:08:22 +0000

Only 16% of autistic individuals are employed in full-time positions and 51% of employed autistic people possess skills higher than those required for their job.

Last year, Aviva, a leading general insurer in the UK and one of the ̽��ֱ��’s strategic partners, asked Cambridge for help with an important issue: how could it cultivate a more neurodiverse workforce? And, specifically, how could it develop a data science placement programme that would attract and retain more neurodiverse employees?

This is not a straightforward task. Some neurodiverse individuals find aspects of a conventional recruitment process challenging, from the way advertisements are phrased to the questions that are asked in interviews. Once in the workplace, navigating the new environment and connecting with colleagues can be fraught with difficulty. For example, noisy, open-plan workspaces and large meetings can be problematic for people with sensory sensitivities. Many of the cultural and social norms that neurotypical employees take for granted, such as when to take breaks, may need to be made explicit. Aviva asked Cambridge to help it understand the latest research in this area, review best practice from around the world, and seek input from neurodiverse individuals, both within and outside Aviva. From this work, they sought to devise a practical plan for implementation.

ThinkLab, as part of the ̽��ֱ��’s Strategic Partnerships Office, was the perfect fit for the task. ThinkLab is a programme that brings together Cambridge doctoral students from different backgrounds and disciplines to solve a societal challenge that needs urgent action. I am an engineer working in energy research; as a ThinkLab participant, I was working alongside PhD students specialising in fields ranging from neuroscience, sociology and medicine to chemistry, bioinformatics, and geology. We all brought different skills, knowledge and experience to the project, but the one thing we had in common was a desire to have a direct impact on a real-world problem.

Tapping into global expertise

We were fortunate to receive mentoring from two leading neurodiversity experts: Dr Temple Grandin, a global spokesperson in the field of autism and Professor Amanda Kirby, an academic and CEO of a company that helps organisations adopt a person-centred approach to recruitment. To establish the factors influencing employment of neurodiverse individuals, we met with the ̽��ֱ��’s Careers Service and Auticon, a multinational IT consultancy that exclusively employs adults on the autism spectrum. Critically, we also sought direct input from neurodiverse individuals to help us understand the kinds of unique challenges they face in their work and to identify any blind spots we might have missed on our own.

ThinkLab in action

We were initially split into teams to brainstorm, collect data and explore best practice principles in neuroinclusive workplaces. During this period, we had regular meetings with Aviva decisionmakers and the teams that would facilitate the placement programme. These interactions were vital for helping us frame practical solutions that would work in the real world.

Having laid the groundwork, we entered the ‘storming’ phase. During the process of close discussion and collaboration with our Aviva partners, it became apparent that the information compiled by the three teams overlapped considerably. This forced us to think critically about our respective contributions to the brief. ̽��ֱ��ThinkLab model emphasises flexibility so halfway through the process, we decided to redefine the core tenets of the project around the key actions Aviva would need to take in order to implement its new neurodiversity internship programme:

Recruiting neurodiverse individuals
Supporting neurodiverse individuals
Educating the colleagues of neurodiverse individuals.

This pivot equipped us with clear objectives, enabling us to shift from divergent brainstorming to convergent problem solving. In turn, Aviva was better able to understand how our recommendations could be enacted in practice.

This ability to refocus is central to the ThinkLab approach, which demands adaptability and agility from its participants. A ThinkLab project sets out to transform a quite abstract brief into concrete deliverables. It does so by treating project goals as organic, evolving entities which come into sharper relief as the project develops. From an insider’s perspective, I found this both exciting and nerve-racking – akin to laying tracks for a hurtling train!

Change of any kind in a large organisation is challenging and complex, requiring input from many stakeholders. ThinkLab carefully balanced input and challenges from Aviva stakeholders along with the research and best practice we had unearthed along the way. ̽��ֱ��programme culminated in a discussion of our findings with partners and directors of Aviva’s global data science practice, Aviva Quantum. This was a rewarding experience in presenting our research to the people that would put our recommendations to fruition.

A rewarding experience

Overall, I gained a great deal from my experience with ThinkLab. It was a privilege to be able work on a project which, we hope, will make a real difference to people who are neurodiverse, both those who are able to take advantage of Aviva’s placement scheme directly and those who might benefit from greater awareness and wider changes as a result of Aviva’s approach.

On a personal level, I benefitted enormously from participating in this ThinkLab project and collaborating with researchers from such diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise. ̽��ֱ��experience exemplified the impact of interdisciplinary collaboration in aid of societal challenges.

Find out more about ThinkLab.

Dante McGrath, Department of Engineering
October 2021

Photo by NordWood Themes on Unsplash

Hands clasped together on a computer keyboard

Is Social Media Changing Your Life?

jg533 — Tue, 16 Mar 2021 08:12:07 +0000

Social media: lifeline, or source of mental health problems? With its effects still not fully understood, Cambridge researchers discuss the best approach to take.