Sociální agentura – příběh neziskovky, která uspěla v tržním prostředí

12/06/2023

| Success stories

Social agency - the story of a non-profit that succeeded in the market environment

For over 20 years, he has been dealing with the employment of people with disabilities and their employment on the labor market. When they also started offering their services as an employee benefit for companies a few years ago, none of them expected that large companies would literally be knocking on their doors. They discovered a hole in the market with their company Help line. And as is often the case, a great opportunity can have its risks. That is why the director of the Ústí non-profit organization Sociální agentura Jaromír Licek and the coordinator of the corporate Help lines Barbora Rychtaříková turned to the Innovation Center of the Ústí Region (ICUK) to use the mentoring services of the Platinn program.

The social agency started in 2001 as an outpatient social service. Even then, it responded to the market, or to a shortage on the part of the state - there was a lack of services for people with disabilities and mental illness who were trying to integrate back into the work process, to return to normal life. "Essentially, we help and advise in solving social issues, debt traps, foreclosures, divorces, pensions, social and legal issues, etc. Furthermore, we can help with employment mediation, finding a tailor-made position, but also with the issue of work rehabilitation, retraining, including the activation and motivation of our clients. In essence, these are also the two non-profit pillars of our services in the social and work area,” explains Barbora Rychtaříková from the Social Agency.

NOT TO BE DEPENDENT ON ONE SOURCE

Subsidies are a significant source of funding for projects in the field of social entrepreneurship. Therefore, if there is a reduction or the end of the programming period of the grant title, these organizations tend to be the first to be threatened. They were very well aware of this fact in the Social Agency, so they started working hard on the next pillar of funding. A pillar that would strengthen their own economic activity and make them at least partially independent of subsidies.

COMPANY HELP LINE – BENEFIT FOR EMPLOYEES, INDEPENDENCE FOR THE AGENCY

The corporate Helpline for employees has become such a pillar for the Social Agency. A commercial service that gradually helped her (and still helps her) not to be dependent on subsidy funding from 100 % and is a great tool for employers to give their employees a useful benefit. A benefit that, for example, AGC Automotive employees chose as the second most useful (right after food stamps). Benefit, which won the HR project of the year prize in the Employer of the Year competition (2017) and was honored in 2022 by the Governor of the Ústí Region when he declared Aperam a socially responsible company. But above all, it is a benefit that really helps employees. And this both proactively (education) and reactively, when an employee ends up in foreclosures, for example.

WE KEEP EMPLOYEES MOTIVATED EVEN WHEN THEY ARE IN TROUBLE

Today, the corporate Helpline is a highly variable service tailored to a specific company. It includes debt counseling, social legal counseling, social health counseling - e.g. when placing family members in a hospice, when procuring compensatory aids, and psychological counseling - professional help during stress or a personal crisis. It is up to each company what exactly they need help with.

"Most often, our corporate Helpline deals with employee debt issues. Solving this problem has two advantages for the company. Firstly, we reduce the administrative burden for the company, as we help reduce the number of employees in foreclosures. And secondly, when an employee actively solves his financial problems, he is still motivated, wants to work and does not fall into the "grey zone", from where the way back is already very difficult," adds Barbora Rychtaříková, coordinator of the company's help lines, and adds: "At some large manufacturing companies there are around 20 % employees in executions. This is already a big burden for the payroll accounting department. If it is possible to reduce this number, even by a few percent, it is a great relief for the entire operation of the company."

QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY

Every company sooner or later comes to a decision whether it wants to maintain the quality of its product and not take on new clients, or whether it wants to expand and strengthen the quantity, but often has to compromise on quality. They also had to answer this question in the Social Agency. "We were afraid of the so-called "startup" overheating. And so we wanted to stop, look around. In short, get out of that tunnel vision. We also wanted our service to be more regionally focused. We are patriots, so we like to help companies from our region. And it is also our advantage, because we build strong ties with partners at our place of business, we know them," describes the director of the Social Agency, Jaromír Licek. "Our Platinn mentor helped us a lot during the meetings. It was thanks to him that we survived this difficult period, and also after these consultations, we decided that we wanted to go deeper in cooperation with companies, so we chose the path of quality, not quantity. Even so, after completing the Platinn program, we managed to increase sales by 20 %," Jaromír adds.

And that the path of quality has paid off is already confirmed by the clients of the Help Line with more than 10,000 employees in several large companies with whom they have been cooperating for many years. The fluctuation of customers is therefore minimal for the given service, and rather the companies themselves come up with other proposals on how to move the entire cooperation further. Thanks to the success of the company's Helpline, the social agency can support its other non-profit activities more.