The missing half million

Development

Following the research phase, we knew there wouldn’t be a silver bullet or an easy answer for reaching younger workers. 

We had discovered that we need to take this group on a journey towards union membership: going to where they are first, making an individualised offer, then lowering their barriers to organising and reintroducing them to unions to build collectivism and recruit them to unions.

We searched for a concept that would be appealing and relevant to young core workers by meeting their needs, could lower the barriers to collective organising and would fit within trade union values to deliver.

We ran workshops to generate ideas to that brief. Officers from around twenty unions and young core workers participated in separate workshops. Hundreds of ideas were proposed, which were then synthesised and whittled down. We determined which ideas were strongest by testing whether they were viable (it would successfully bring young workers into unions), feasible (it would be delivered at scale) and desirable (it would attract young workers). 

Concept

From the hundreds of ideas generated, we explored five concepts in depth. The strongest of these to meet the brief was an offer around job progression. This finding was backed up by unionlearn research showing that there has been a sharp drop in provision of workplace training and that young workers are particularly affected. 

A job progression offer was particularly appealing to the progress and stop-gap mindsets. Through user testing we determined this would be provided through a collection of content, tools, advice and interactions that are orchestrated through an app. 

Execution

This group wanted to access support and learning on their own terms, to fit around their hectic work and private lives. We fulfilled this by delivering a personalised, mobile-first experience, with bite-size content, that’s ready when they are, in accessible language on an app, called WorkSmart. We used cost-effective platforms and open-source data to allow us to scale cheaply and quickly.

The tone used in the app is friendly but authoritative: young core workers need to feel WorkSmart is approachable but knowledgeable. In designing it we researched and took inspiration from other successful products targeted at this group.

To meet the needs of young core workers and deliver an offer that appeals to them, WorkSmart helps users tackle some of the barriers to progression they’re facing in the workplace. This includes a lack of quality careers advice, poor careers pathways, high training costs and an overwhelming and confusing choice of training options.

Their first interaction is an initial survey exploring attitudes to work and making change. It takes a few minutes but delivers instant value to keep people on the app and help deliver a tailored experience (which is very important to this group).

The first substantive part of the offer is development of coaching experiences. Young core workers begin an experience and return to the app over a number of days for a few minutes at a time, swiping through pages of content (short informative text, reflective questions, GIFs and emojis) in a similar way to Instagram stories. The content is derived from interviews with experts and a synthesis of existing materials and resources. Taking a coaching methodology (supporting young core workers to find their own answers) into the digital realm both ensures the offer is scalable and empowers the group.

The content is a mix of soft skills development issues such as confidence building and having difficult conversations, and quizzes about rights at work. We used quantitative analysis further validated by qualitative testing to choose which topics there was the biggest demand for. Other parts of the offer we hope to develop in the future include listing relevant training courses in a user-friendly way and tracking progress and achievement through digital badges.

From a career development app to trade unionism

WorkSmart is intended to be both a standalone product that supports young core workers to get on in their working lives and a gateway to collective action, which may lead to organising and ultimately trade unionism.

As part of the research phase, we identified barriers to collective organising for this group. To remove those barriers, we must raise expectations of the workplace, build trust between young core workers, give a sense of hope that things can change and then finally reintroduce unions in a new light. To achieve this, WorkSmart offers rights information, presented as top ten lists, in quizzes and as tools – e.g. a salary checker, where young core workers can find out if they’re being paid over or under the average for their role. There are also more subtle mechanisms – e.g. polls, where young core workers can see the aggregate results of how others feel to build a sense that they are not alone.

We will develop a community area where young core workers can connect with each other and get peer support with workplace problems. When WorkSmart presents unions to young core workers, it will do so as a trusted voice and within an ongoing relationship.

Pilot findings

The WorkSmart pilot ran from June 2018 to March 2019. The results were consistently very positive. Feedback from initial users has exceeded our expectations, and many of our hypotheses were validated. 

Every feature and piece of content has been tested and improved, then tested and refined again. We also ran a set of experiments to prove different elements of our case.

Proving we can attract young core workers

Taking a lean approach, the pilot recruited only enough people to prove we could attract young workers – not to achieve scale. Over 3,000 young workers showed an interest by signing up to a mailing list to be the first to hear when the app was ready, the majority from Facebook and Instagram ads. The initial survey was completed by 1,611 people. Over 300 young workers downloaded the app during this period, and a further 100 did for a later experiment. We ran 18 user testing sessions.

Testing consistently showed that WorkSmart hits a real unmet need and is therefore highly attractive to young workers. We heard that participants loved the branding and concept. They told us they didn’t know of anything else like it and that it was valuable to them. People said that even at this stage there is “something for everyone”.

Young core workers are possibly the hardest group for unions to reach. WorkSmart is one key offer in what should be a suite of options to get young workers into unions. In particular, it should sit alongside offers for those who are the closest to taking action. There are similar gains to be made from understanding the expectations of other groups of young workers of taking part in organising campaigns and contributing to collective action.
 

Generating clusters of young core workers by employer, location or sector 

We knew that we needed to be able to segment users by sector, employer and location in order to create clusters for unions to be able to organise more easily. On their own, a lone young worker recruited to a union will benefit less than one who also has union co-workers, and they will be harder for the union to support effectively.

However, young core workers needed to build trust in WorkSmart before giving out this information. We realised that we couldn’t ask for this during the sign-up process, as it would prevent users signing up. Through user testing, we worked out how and when workers might be willing to disclose this information – and we discovered that using tools like the salary checker were vital, as users were more happy to offer the information when they felt as though they were getting something of value.

We know that we also organically attracted young workers at the same employer through the information they shared with us using the salary checker. To further prove we could generate clusters of prospective new members in defined employers, we ran a test targeting young workers at Aldi, Lidl and Iceland. With a small budget, we quickly signed up 40 people working at those companies to the mailing list, 23 of whom downloaded the app. This shows that we can build clusters of workers within WorkSmart, which could provide valuable leads for organising. 

Moving young core workers to action and into unions

We ran a further small experiment to test whether we could move young core workers from using WorkSmart towards taking action (signing a petition) and joining a union.

Of 100 young core workers in this three-week test, 17 per cent signed a petition, 10 per cent were interested to hear more about unions when given a basic description in accessible language, and 7 per cent wanted to join a union after having been told how much it would cost. 

These results are extremely encouraging. Young core workers are typically unwilling to expose themselves at work by taking action and are currently uninterested in unions. Our hypothesis was that young core workers would arrive at the app with varying levels of willingness to take action, and some would need to spend longer being warmed up to action. So we can assume that, over time, we would also see more cautious users following their active counterparts into taking action, after they had been exposed to the career and workers’ rights content for a longer period.

Qualitative findings also validated the final step in the journey. Young core workers were not drawn to union branding and logos when shown them in testing sessions. However, after building a relationship with a brand they like and trust, they were receptive to hearing about unions. Participants who stated they wouldn’t ever join or contact a union at the outset had been moved even during a single testing session to say that if WorkSmart recommended they speak to a union rep they would do it. This shows the effectiveness of a trusted voice that has an ongoing relationship with young workers introducing them to unions.

Where next?

The learning from WorkSmart provides an opportunity to appeal to a new generation of potential trade unionists and a chance to organise young workers at scale. The testing stage provided key lessons which can help inform the future work of the TUC and unions, as outlined in the next section of this report.

The next stage for WorkSmart is to focus on developing the learning and skills offer and to grow the number of users to over 5,000 in a year. 

Concepts like WorkSmart are disruptions to the traditional union offer, but too few are developed from within the movement and in line with our values. The ease with which new digital-first services can be set up mean that there are now many other organisations encroaching on core union ground: offering campaigning support or legal advice but without the protection or collective power of union membership. These organisations offer services to workers that fit well with how young workers instinctively engage, but they don’t have our commitment to building a movement for workers’ power. The union movement is in danger of being overtaken at speed: WorkSmart offers important learning for unions, that can help us ensure a way to get back in the game, and make sure future generations aren’t deprived of the awesome power of collective organising by the core institutions of the working class – trade unions.