Randstad and Entourage partner to promote homeless employment in France

The Randstad Institute for Sustainable Returns to Employment is partnering with Entourage, a major player in the fight against the exclusion of people in great need, to promote their reintegration through employment. The Entourage association createda social network of solidarity and linking homeless people with residents of their neighborhood in 2018, and today has more than 60,000 active members on its application who have created more than 5,000 solidarity actions towards the homeless. 

Convinced that reintegration into society means a gradual return to employment, Entourage and the Randstad Institute join forces under the Entourage Job initiative. It aims to support homeless people in their job search efforts and will rely on a digital platform to help people return to work, which should be launched in November 2019. Entourage will call on its community, invited to open his address book, to help them realize their professional project. 

Through its Institute, the Randstad group is committed to two levels with the association. First in the technical support for the design of the platform. The group, a global specialist in human resources, will also use the skills of its employees to coach and guide people in precarious situations in their job search. The common goal is to support around 20 of them in 2019 to test the system. 

"Great precariousness and exclusion are a vicious circle from which it is difficult to escape. With Entourage, we share the conviction that employment is the most effective lever to break this cycle and reintegrate into society. But for that, it is imperative that employers, and beyond, the general public, change their perspective on the homeless," commented Laurent Morestain, Secretary General of the Randstad Group in France and President of the Randstad Institute. "Precariousness does not exclude talent or the desire to succeed. Entourage Job helps to break down prejudices and give homeless people access to a valuable lever to find a job: the network of the Entourage community members."

Entourage Job, a social network to get you back to work

The Entourage job initiative already supports several homeless people in their return to work process. The association relied on its community to create a resume model adapted to these profiles. It builds on their history before their skills and highlights the professional project of each and their assets to achieve it. Above all, each of them has the support and the backing of a sponsor who supports his approach and acts as a guarantor to employers.

The Randstad Institute, which in 2019 reoriented its action towards the excluded to promote their sustainable return to employment, shares a common vision with Entourage and naturally wished to support its approach.

As a partner, the Randstad Institute will bring its expertise to the association to grow the initiative in two stages:

• As a first step, the Institute will use Randstad's employees, on a voluntary basis, to provide its precocious employees with HR expertise. The homeless people will be accompanied and oriented in their job search through CV writing workshops and job interview simulations. The Randstad group will put its knowledge of the labor market expertise at the service of Entourage and accompany it in the creation of HR tools to strengthen the robustness of applications, through the implementation of skills diagnostics and of business tests.
• In tandem, the Randstad Institute will make available its expertise in the digitization of human resources for the design and technical implementation of the Entourage Job digital platform. It should be released in November 2019.

Entourage Job is thought of as a toolbox for homeless people and the Entourage community who want to help them find a job. They will find an online database to easily create a resume, educational booklets and tips on how to apply. Above all, it will be integrated into the Entourage social network, which the community can use to make contact with its contacts to facilitate contact with employers.

Through its institute, the Randstad group is committed to benefiting Entourage from its network of agencies and, on business that goes beyond its field of expertise, to raise awareness among its partners.

The Entourage Job initiative aims to get 20 homeless people back into work by the end of 2019. This pilot phase should allow the partners to fully deploy the system and to scale it up by 2020.

Jean-Marc Potdevin, President of the Entourage association, discussing the company's trajectory: "For the past three years, our Entourage association has been enabling citizens to take concrete action to recreate the social bond around homeless people. Today, we want to go further, with the crucial support of Randstad: to give them access to the world of work by mobilizing networks of neighbors to motivate, disseminate and accompany the return to employment. We believe that the impetus for reintegration is the articulation of the social bond and employment!"

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