by Nancy Saengjaeng, DBS II, WRC
The new Job Services Unit has earned national attention for its response to the U.S. Department of Labor's Customer-Centered Design Challenge. The unit has made a concerted effort to “not do business as usual” but rather ask clients—CalWORKs and GR recipients, DSS staff and employers—what they need, and has developed the new Job Services program accordingly. Read on to learn more!
The new Job Services program was spearheaded by Nancy Saengjaeng, who developed expertise by leading the County’s teams to the White House to share their developments in Customer-Centered Design Challenges (CCDC) put out by the Department of Labor (DoL) in 2015 and 2016 (story).
"The premise of customer-centered design is to start with the people you're designing for," Saengjaeng explained. "Through creative problem-solving, you end up with new solutions that are tailored to suit their needs." The process includes developing a deep understanding of clients' needs, brainstoriming solutions, creating prototypes, collecting feedback, and making necessary modifications.
To develop the Job Services program, Saengjaeng collaborated with project manager Frank Mejia and unit supervisor Mark Laurel, met with front-line staff, surveyed employers from over 50 industries, and took into account feedback from public assistance recipients.
The program addresses specifically what employers, job seekers, and career employment specialists need locally, minimizing replication of services and maximizing productivity by targeting assistance. As a result, it has been efficient and effective in servicing an average of 600 clients in the first two months of implementation.
In a follow-up phone interview with the DoL earlier this year, Saengjaeng and Yolanda Salgado-Tovar, the second team’s alternate lead and Job Services Specialist in Santa Barbara, shared how they have built on the learning acquired through their participation in the CCDC. "In the CCDC, we applied our learning to Re-Entry programs, but we found that the concept can be the foundation of any program, and the process can be expanded to large-scale solutions," said Salgado-Tovar.
In validation of the County’s outstanding work, the County was one of only two counties invited to Washington DC on October 17, 2017 to the Customer-Centered Design Learning Exchange and Symposium. The event is a celebration of learning for select workforce leaders from around the country who are new to customer-centered design, and seeks to help people who have just completed the Challenge to visualize what is possible.
It is also an opportunity to share with the DoL and Employment and Training Administration leaders how participation in the Challenges helped grow an experimental pilot project into a customer-centered Job Services program that transforms our way of doing business. Santa Barbara County shows how the customer-centered design approach is the way of the future, in order to assure the greatest impact with limited resources.