HI “Homeless Inclusive” Future

As founder of Noisy Cricket, my work centers on developing social impact strategies and building diverse and proactive communities around them.  

Mapping the root cause of social issues, redesigning systemic solutions and campaigning to shift cultures, Noisy Cricket’s work involves co-creating social change and building people-powered movements.

Through empowering individuals, communities and cross-sector organisations, in 3.5 years we have created impact in health inequality, gender equality and ethical tech.

Working with Luminate, we established the Greater Manchester Responsible Tech Collective in 2019, and in 12 months, have impacted local policy and business practice through our mission of bringing home the humanity to tech.

Our impact includes co-production being placed central to Manchester’s digital strategy, a pilot initiated for a people-powered SmartCity, plus Co-op using our diagnostic tool to share community data for environmental planning, and Barclays trialing a measurement system to improve racial equality in their tech department. 

Working with businesses, the government and charities, HI Future’s user research has revealed significant cultural and systemic barriers within the private and social sectors which significantly impact homeless people’s ability to attain secure work.

The solution we have co-created with those impacted comprises progressive education opportunities to remove business stigma, disrupts meritocratic recruitment practices and provides a peer-support network to help employers and employees sustain job roles.

Wrapped around our innovative matchmaking platform – where our inclusion filtering technology brings job seekers together with recruiters - we challenge businesses to take responsibility for the barriers they create and match people with roles based on their potential.  

With 88% of people impacted in the U.K. being willing and able to work, our ambition is to run a regional pilot before rolling HI Future out nationally. The technology at its center offers the opportunity to address social mobility employment issues globally too.

With over 320,000 people experiencing homelessness prior to lockdown in the U.K, the anticipated rise in unemployment due to coronavirus will further exacerbate the issue globally. Over 2.8 million people have signed on for welfare in Britain since the pandemic hit, with the U.S. seeing unemployment top 15 million.

Combined with housing affordability issues in both countries, millions of people are becoming increasingly vulnerable to homelessness, which once experienced, sees 57% of those impacted remain out of work for 5 or more years.

Despite 88% of people impacted having worked before in the U.K., cultural beliefs surrounding people’s skills and experience, plus concerns surrounding health issues and willingness to conform all prevent businesses from considering those impacted for roles.

Meritocratic recruitment practices and exclusive employment - where businesses target based on experience alone and require unnecessary documentation, recruit for skills over strengths and pay less than a living wage – also prevent those impacted from finding and successfully interviewing for roles. Prior to lockdown, significant skills gaps in the tech and construction industries were being experienced by businesses across the U.K. As the economy recovers, re-employment In these industries will run alongside emergent demand for retail staff and transportation roles.

The HI Future service is structured to take businesses and people with personal insight into homelessness through education (workshops), advertising (matchmaking platform), recruitment (processes / training) and peer-support (networks).

The technology we are developing aims to intervene in the advertising process, enabling businesses to connect with potential candidates through a targeted matchmaking platform that engages people with personal insight and the support organisations they work with.

Our innovative inclusion filter enables people with insight to filter job opportunities based on their travel requirements, contextualize CV gaps and demonstrate wider skills and strengths. For businesses, suitable candidates can be filtered based on available documentation, work contracts necessitated and required strengths.

Building on the matchmaking functionality which is based on strengths, available documentation and ability to travel – all of which improve chances of recruitment – machine learning will allow us to recommend matches around work availability, salary and location, which will enhance the likelihood of retention.

As a result, HI Future removes the systemic barriers that uphold personal challenges around meritocratic requirements, and in addition to disrupting recruitment practices, we shift cultural beliefs through our progressive education and peer-support offer too. 

HI Future’s beneficiaries include people experiencing hidden homelessness, statutory homelessness or those who are at risk of homelessness and are ready-for-work. Our target market includes businesses in the construction, travel, retail and tech industries where skill gaps and volume challenges exist.

To enable a scalable and sustainable solution, we have collaborated over the past 18-months with businesses, charities and individuals impacted by homelessness to co-create HI Future’s matchmaking platform and wrap around service to pilot across Greater Manchester before rolling out HI Future across the U.K.

Participating in user research (interviews), co-creation (workshops) and testing (observations) of the prototype, we have surfaced core needs for both audiences, and designed a solution which address the issues and creates opportunities for both groups.

For people with insight, we have focused on the issues on removing issues around cultural stigma (e.g. profiling), systemic blockers (e.g. ID) and personal confidence (e.g. identifying strengths). For business, we have reduced HR costs which will help demonstrate social value and improve diversity and inclusion efforts.

Through innovating social mobility recruitment, we help those impacted earn an income, afford a home and reconnect with their community, as businesses drive revenue and improve profitability.  

While our work at its most functional level elevates opportunities for people who are traditionally left behind, its how we do it, through both elevating understanding of and between people, plus amplifying issues and new solutions that makes it possible.

Through understanding the systemic and cultural business barriers to homeless employment, and bringing these organisations together with people impacted by homelessness, our insights have enabled us both shift beliefs around the potential of people with personal insight into the issue, and design an alternative recruitment solution that through its use, businesses can address social mobility through direct action. 

Living in Manchester in 2016, I noticed the steady rise in rough sleeping across the city. Having friends who had experienced homelessness, I was concerned about the impact on fellow citizens.

Being made redundant the same year, I immediately secured work upon founding Noisy Cricket, plus a home with family and support from friends. Recognizing the privilege of my position, I started researching the root causes of the rise in homelessness.

Understanding the systemic causes – lack of affordable housing, work that doesn’t pay alongside welfare changes and local government budget cuts – I started working with the Manchester Homelessness Partnership on bringing businesses into the work to address the issue strategically.

Despite contributing to homelessness – offering zero hours contracts and paying less than a living wage – business efforts were mostly tactical. Seeing the potential for a meaningful response through offering jobs, became obsessed with bridging the gap between those willing to work and the need for new talent across industry.

Working with national businesses and local charities plus a person impacted by homelessness, we did some initial research into business barriers, and working with Hyper Island, ideated 8 homeless employment solutions to build upon. 

Coming from a working-class town in Greater Manchester, where my family thrived as a result of the creation of the NHS, welfare state and the investment in new industries and jobs across the region in the wake of mill industry’s decline, the impact of political and economic shifts on social mobility has highlighted the need to create equitable opportunities for all.

Having been fortunate enough to benefit from my family’s improved social and economic standing – I was the first in my family to obtain a degree – the impact that the lack of social and affordable housing, cuts in housing and personal benefits plus work practices that impoverish people is having on the people I grew up with in unjust, particularly as tax breaks for business and industry profit margins proliferate.

Still living and working in Greater Manchester – a region with a progressive history (e.g the suffragettes) and culture of innovation (e.g. birthplace of the first modern computer) - we have some of the highest levels of poverty, beyond homelessness, across the U.K, bout our unique social and industrial heritage makes us well positioned to work collaboratively to find social and economic solutions that enable everybody to benefit. 

Supported through the insights gathered during the co-creation process and working with our existing HI Future community, the HI Future team are still to be recruited, but will be tasked with commercial development, service delivery and input into the ongoing strategic development and design of HI Future as well as campaigning for homeless employment.

The relationship manager – with expertise in transformation coaching - will focus on developing commercial relationships with the private and public sectors, delivering education, employment & empowerment services to businesses and speaking at events. Influencing public sector policy, contracts and commissioning will also play a part.

The community manager – with lived experience and expertise in co-production - will focus on engaging support relationships with the social sectors, delivering education, employment and empowerment services to people with personal insight and speaking at events. Supporting the relationship manager with delivering education events to businesses will also play a part.

The Noisy Cricket team supporting the HI Future initiative will include our founder as a strategist, providing expertise on homelessness and employment plus co-production and cross-sector engagement. Support will be offered across ongoing model design, commercial growth and team development too.

Noisy Cricket’s designer will also be assigned to work on the ongoing development of the HI Future model, including ongoing amends to the service, the design and development of new features and inclusion of new user groups.  A campaigner will also be engaged on HI Future, supporting with website, social media and email communications plus delivering events.

Due to the clarity of the vision of the project and faith in the co-creation process, we had 2 businesses sponsor HI Future’s user research followed by public body funding for the service design process at the project start.

While we managed to attract national government and charity support, we struggled for local authority backing, where commissioning of local charities led them focus on addressing immediate symptoms over exploring root causes and supporting existing solutions over investing in innovative solutions.  

In addition to political affiliations, we also lost business support due to offering donations to longer established or brand-affiliated charitable organisations, meaning we experienced a 6-month funding gap to start the design of the matchmaking platform.

Using the insights gathered during the user research process and early prototypes of HI Future’s service, we targeted work and skills teams across the region, and utilized our existing business network to speak to other organisations within the industries we were targeting for employment.

Within 3 months, we had 3 new local authorities on board to engage in the co-creation process, plus 2 new business sponsors, which allowed us to develop our matchmaking platform in readiness for launch and place people into employment. 

In delivering the HI Future co-creation process, it was important to us that not only were people with personal insight into homelessness involved in creating the solution, but that we also employed someone with lived experience to consult on the project, and live and breathe our commitment to employing people impacted by the issue.

Underpinned by our user research findings, our lived experience consultant experienced housing and financial stability issues, impacting their ability to focus on the HI Future project from time to time, and in experiencing difficulties with a former employer, had issues conforming to professional practices.

Understanding this was an opportunity to both support someone to sustain an employment opportunity and learn how we might help others through similar challenges, we worked to understand the root causes of the issues being experienced, co-create the solutions to ensure focus and professional conduct and align it with the individual's personal purpose.

As a result, our experiences together have informed the design of 3 wraparound services for HI Future, and having unearthed our lived experience consultant’s underlying potential and purpose in the process, have offered our team member an ongoing role as an advocate and advisor for HI Future.

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The HI Future service is designed to remove business barriers which impact employment opportunity, and is structured to take businesses and people with personal insight into homelessness through 4 phases; education, advertising, recruitment and support.

The state-of-the-art technology we are developing aims to intervene in the advertising process - enabling businesses to find and connect with potential candidates for their organisation through our matchmaking platform - engages people with personal insight and the support organisations they work with.

Our innovative inclusion filter enables people with insight to filter job opportunities based on their travel requirements, contextualize CV gaps and demonstrate wider skills and strengths. For businesses, suitable candidates can be filtered based on available documentation, work contracts necessitated and required skills and strengths.

Throughout the pilot, we intend to enhance the filter through better assessing and displaying suitable roles to people with personal insight. It will also help in identifying, targeting and introducing potential candidates to businesses, encouraging more responsibility through organisations directly inviting impacted people to apply. 

Building on the matchmaking functionality which is based on strengths, available documentation and ability to travel – all of which improve chances of recruitment – investing in machine learning will allow us to recommend matches around work availability, salary and work environment, which will enhance the likelihood of retention.

Current advances in recruitment technology focus on fine-tuning rather than innovating recruitment systems. It also has the potential to exacerbate recruitment barriers through upholding personal challenges around meritocratic requirements instead of challenging them. 

Our theory of change recognizes that while systems underpin most social and economic inequities and inequalities, it is people that create systems, and those people are influenced by cultural beliefs and values. Therefore, through influencing the cultures surrounding issues, you can effect change in people’s attitudes and behaviors, and in doing so, inspire action to change existing political, economic or legal systems or create new models which allow for humanity to achieve equity, equality and fulfillment.

At Noisy Cricket, we will first analyse the root cause of any issue to understand whether it is predominantly cultural, systemic or personal in its make-up. Cultural issues, like trans rights currently, struggle with limited awareness, whereas systemic issues, like those surrounding racial equality, require greater understanding. Once awareness is raised and understanding of an issue is improved, you can then move people into action.

Awareness of homelessness is high due to the visibility of rough sleeping, so the main emphasis of our work with HI Future has been on fostering better understanding of the root causes, and building a community of proactive organisations and individuals willing and able to take action as a result, and enable them to focus on strategic and sustainable efforts (e.g. employment) over tactical and short-term support (e.g. food donations).

Through understanding the needs of engaged businesses (e.g. demonstrating social value), the public sector (e.g. reducing the cost of homelessness), charities and people impacted by homelessness (e.g. living independently), we have been able to rally our cross-sector community around a common purpose of enabling secure and stable futures, and in co-creating HI Future, a solution that serves everybody in a way that is sustainable and impactful for us as an organisation. 

With HI Future due to launch in October 2020, so far we have worked with and compensated 15 people who have experienced homelessness in researching and designing the HI Future platform and service, as well as contracting our lived experience consultant to advise throughout the duration of the co-creation phase.

In our initial 18-month pilot, we aim to place 250 people in roles across Greater Manchester. We will focus on 2 of the 10 boroughs within the region, engaging our HI Future community only in the first 6 months, as we determine the impact of COVID-19 on recruitment and employment and putting in place safety measures with our business and charity partners to care for people’s health.

In the following 12 months, we will move into 2 new boroughs  - covering 4 boroughs in total - in Greater Manchester, and begin engaging new businesses, focusing on industries where we already have relationships, including construction, retail, energy and transport, plus working with new local and authorities to engage people.

In the following year, we will scale the number of placements made in Greater Manchester to 500, as well as roll out to 2 new cities across the U.K., focusing on Liverpool in the North West and Birmingham in the Midlands, to place 1000 people total. In 5 years, we will move into the south, covering Bristol, Birmingham and London, placing a total of 9000 people into roles in 5.5 years. 

HI Future’s vision is to enable secure and stable future for people experiencing homeless, with a mission to create more inclusive and supportive recruitment experienced, and will be measured based on 5 key metrics:

• The shift in perceptions from organisational employees to increase empathy and manage expectations of people experiencing homelessness
• The adaptation of recruitment processes, with advertising, interviewing and sifting changed to allow for recruitment with personal insight across 3 industries
• The amendment of induction processes to enable cross-sector and wrap-around support for people who have experienced homelessness within 6 businesses
• The number of people employed, with 250 people targeted to be placed in the first 18 months pilot across Greater Manchester
• The length of time in the role, aiming to enable people to remain in role for 6+ months

These will scale as we roll out across the U.K., the number of roles placed through HI Future will scale, as will the industries we target, focusing where skills gaps exist and where social value, diversity & inclusion and community investment needs are evident.

We will also be looking for commissioned contracts, working with local enterprise partnerships, regional growth hubs and national government to support in efforts to address social mobility across the U.K.

The innovative technology at the center of HI Future may also be licensed out using a software as a service model, to underpin other social mobility related employment issues or to other recruitment providers looking to improve diversity and inclusion efforts.

As a result of COVID-19, two core risks have emerged. In light of mass redundancies across multiple industries, businesses may be cautious in their approach to recruitment in the coming year. The social sectors may also be hesitant to place vulnerable adults in workplaces where there is a risk of ill health and fatalities through contracting COVID-19.

Broader concerns for HI Future include whether businesses will pay for recruitment services targeting people experiencing homelessness, and whether we will be able to locate potential candidates who are ready-for-work.

In terms of ready-for-work, homelessness will rise as a result of the mass unemployment the pandemic has created. Over 2 million people have signed on for universal credit since lock down, so may experience challenges in placing people who have experienced homelessness for longer periods of time over those who are new to experiencing the issue. 

We are currently working with our partner businesses, Balfour Beatty, Manchester Airport Group and the Co-op to determine the short and medium approach to recruitment, with roles likely to start opening up again in early Autumn 2020. Working with organisations cross-industry has helped mitigate the risk to HI Future too. 

With retail experiencing an increase in recruitment during lock down to provide essential services, and government policy necessitating those who can’t work from home continue on construction sites, business has continued with only minimal interruption. Therefore, recruitment is likely to bounce back sooner in these industries.

Both industries have also put in place protocols around social distancing, contained working groups and rigorous health-and-safety measures, and we will be working with the social sectors upon launch to determine what good looks like when it comes to feeling safe and supported for those we place in roles.

Having received sponsorship for the creation of the HI Future service and technology, we are aware that the Co-op and Balfour Beatty – plus their wider industries – see value in our proposition. We have also sold and delivered education workshops to our partners during the co-creation of the solution, demonstrating ongoing demand.

We are mitigating some of these concerns through our pricing model. Charging a quarterly rate for use of the matchmaking platform plus access to education and recruitment tools, plus a tiered recruitment fee for placements at competitive rates will underpin our operating costs while adding value to our customers.

In researching, designing and developing the HI Future model, we have engaged a cross-sector community of organisations, demonstrating existing demand and increased potential of success upon launch. All organisations have a vested interest in social mobility, a track record of supporting people to become ready-for-work and strong networks across Greater Manchester where we will launch the pilot.

Balfour Beatty, Manchester Airport Group and the Co-op have all provided runway funding for the creation of the HI Future and are committed to employing people who have experienced homelessness upon launch. The Department for Work & Pensions, Stockport Council and the Growth Company have supported us from a public sector perspective, and Bolton at Home, Business in the Community and Groundwork in Greater Manchester in the third sector.

As we roll out, our primary target market includes businesses in the property & construction, transport & travel and retail & hospitality industries, due to existing relationships and ability to establish best practice, the core drivers (of social value, diversity and inclusion and community investment) being most prevalent in these industries and social mobility recruitment having already been trialed.

Our secondary target market includes public sector organisations, focusing on work and skills teams and homelessness teams teams within local authorities, plus regional growth hubs and national government departments who have an interest in businesses becoming better able to recruit and retain people with social mobility challenges into roles.

Our beneficiaries include people who are experiencing hidden homelessness, statutory homelessness or are at risk of homelessness, and are on their journey to becoming ready-for-work. Through HI Future, we support people who want to live independently, and enable people to earn an income which supports long-term health and housing stability plus the opportunity to reintegrate into local communities.

Our market proposition is to help businesses uncover the hidden potential in sourcing new talent, in established recruitment processes and through team performance, with added value offered through empowering their existing staff, shifting organisational culture and educating their organisations.

The core drivers for businesses engaging with HI Future are:

• Demonstrating social value for local authority and government contracts in employing people from disadvantaged backgrounds
• Expanding diversity and inclusion efforts to include social mobility and underpinning improved perspectives, innovation and performance of teams
• Delivering community investment initiatives that empower people, strengthen communities and positively impact the local economy and public purse.

Working with our cross-sector community, the ambition is to enable businesses to take responsibility for their systems (focusing on recruitment processes) and cultures (focusing on value judgement) and empower people to have more choice when it comes to their employment. 

The HI Future service is designed to remove those business barriers which impact employment opportunity and is structured to directly impact businesses through education (workshops), advertising (matchmaking platform), recruitment (tools) and support (peer-to-peer).

People impacted by homelessness indirectly benefit through the scaled number of job opportunities available and sustaining employment opportunities too.

We have aligned our pricing model with traditional advertising and recruitment cost infrastructures, charging for access to advertising space on our matchmaking platform to recruiters and charging a competitive fee for job seekers placed in roles. This allows us to easily integrate into existing recruitment practices and budgets, and inherently question the value placed on people with insight as candidates.

We have developed a tiered service, where recruiters can access the matchmaking platform only, an advertising (matchmaking), education (workshop) and recruitment (tools) package or holistic engagement including in-work support (peer-to-peer), where a quarterly fee is levied to business to encourage an ongoing relationship with HI Future

The tiering also impacts the fee charged for candidate placement, with up to 5 job seekers placed a quarter being charged at a higher fee and more than 6 job seekers a quarter at a lower fee. Working with large businesses across disparate projects or sites will encourage larger numbers of people to be placed.

In addition to sales of the service, we will also sell component products within the service, including education workshops and access to recruitment tools, as well our insights paper developed as a result of the work done during user research and co-creation.

We will also seek additional grant funding to enhance the innovative inclusion filter at that underpins our matchmaking platform, to embed machine learning to and instill consent mechanisms to further empower with people impacted by homelessness in their job search. 

For the co-creation phase of HI Future, we have received $95,000 total in grant funding and $65,000 in business sponsorship.

$12,500 sponsorship was provided from Balfour Beatty and a further $12,500 Manchester Airport Group, both in January 2019, to underpin our user research with business, charities, the public sector and people impacted by homelessness. Paper – a service design studio, were contracted to undertake the research and ongoing service design.

$65,000 in grant funding was provided during December 2019 by The National Lottery Community Fund as a development grant, allowing us to take insights from user research and engage in co-creation and service design activities to shape the HI Future matchmaking platform.

We then received a further $40,000 from The Co-op Group in March 2020, to take the design of the matchmaking platform and develop the technology to run it, as well as create the branding for the platform and service. AND Digital were contracted to develop the platform, and Jane Bowyer Illustration to create the brand design.

We have also received $30,000 in grant funding during June 2020 from The Cadent Foundation to help us further develop the matchmaking platform to include an applications portal, as well as build an interviewer training tool for recruiters. This funding will be utilized during the pilot phase of the project. 

For the first six months of the pilot – aimed to run from October 2020 to March 2021 - we require $125,000 in grant funding to trial within the HI Future community.

The funding will cover staff costs – including a relationship lead (working with business and the public sector) and community lead (working with charities and people impacted by homelessness) – plus operational costs – including ongoing development of the tech platform, support of the tech platform and safeguarding training costs for staff.

Noisy Cricket will also support the pilot, through providing ongoing strategic and people development for our strategist, as well as design capacity to design the registration and payment infrastructure, application platform and in-work support offer.

For the following twelve months of the pilot – aimed to run from April 2021 to March 2022 – we are seeking a further $125,000 in social investment to roll out the platform and service across Greater Manchester.

The investment will again cover staff costs plus operational costs, now covering marketing costs for events and PR, research costs to measure impact and legal costs to protect our code copyright, trademark our brand and patent our approach.

Noisy Cricket will continue to support strategically, as we build our pricing infrastructure and ready HI Future for U.K. roll out, and design work will be required to further improve the service and build in new services and platform features. We will also be utilizing Noisy Cricket’s campaign talent to promote HI Future.  

Our costs for the first six months of the pilot from October 2020 to March 2021 are $125,000 in total, and include:

Staff Costs ($50,000)

• Relationship Lead @ $28,000
• Community Lead @ $22,000

Operational Costs ($54,000)

• Training @ $6,000
• Tech Development @ $23,000
• Tech Support @ $14,000
• Data Compliance @ $6,000
• Team Assets @ $5,000

Development Costs ($21,000)

• Strategic Support @ $8,500
• Design Support @ $12,500

Being awarded The Elevate Prize will help underpin our work financially and help us build internal capacity as we launch the pilot.

Demonstrating the value of people impacted by homelessness in the workplace alongside uncover the latent potential in businesses recruitment practices was always going to be challenging, but with COVID-19 creating mass unemployment and putting more people at risk of homelessness alongside risk averse recruitment practices and limited available opportunities across industries requires additional support.

The first 18 months will require us to refine our service and its delivery, as well as enhance the matchmaking platform to ensure that we are exceeding our clients expectations when it comes to recruitment, beyond social mobility, and engender loyalty and referrals within our clients networks and industries.

Refining our pricing model - ensuring that we break-even in the first 18 months – and building a sustainable model which minimizes costs and maximizes profits will be essential, so that short-term we can finance our roll out across the U.K., and medium-term, generate sufficient profits to reinvest back into the growth of HI Future.

The Elevate Prize will also help bolster our strategic capacity, allowing us to explore and win public sector commissioned contracts for social mobility aligned employment efforts, as well as establish our licensing model, using our technology to launch a software as a service model, to further boost our impact and sustainability.