In the aftermath of the 2007 Global Financial Crisis, construction giant Multiplex began working on school infrastructure projects in western Sydney. Determined to make a difference, they started trialling ways to provide jobs for long-term unemployed people in the surrounding local communities.
The initiative went on to help more than 100 young, Indigenous or long-term unemployed jobseekers with the skills and support to get a start in the construction industry.
“The issue of disadvantage and finding jobs for unemployed people wasn’t going away. The system at the time, and as it is now, was fragmented and struggling. We could see the need for a new approach to improve the situation,” says Multiplex Employee Relations Manager, Dave Higgon.
“An obvious response to dealing with fragmentation and disconnect was to get all the players in the same room at the same time.”
“We brought together disadvantaged jobseekers, employers throughout the supply chain, training organisations, government agencies and not-for-profits.to explore how to do things better.”
- Dave Higgon, Multiplex Employee Relations Manager
With this, the idea of a Connectivity Centre was born.
The general concept of addressing a fragmented system by putting people together and building collaboration may seem obvious. But being successful requires constant innovation and a deep understanding of the operating environment.
The start of this understanding was provided by the current project manager of the Connectivity Centres who had an employment services background.
Connectivity Centres “joined the dots” for organisations that were dealing with the same issues but weren’t in contact.
Since the highly successful results from the original Connectivity Centre experiment, Multiplex has since gone on to establish 14 of them on major infrastructure projects across Australia including Newcastle’s John Hunter Hospital, Stockland’s Shellharbour project Westmead Hospital and now at Western Sydney Airport.
“The majority of Centre participants come from backgrounds with high levels of disadvantage including long-term unemployed ex-offenders and migrants and refugees. Many candidates need high levels of support to achieve and sustain employment,” Dave says.
“That’s what the Connectivity Centres do. They work with communities and agencies, identify local job seekers, train them up to get them work-ready, help them into a job with us or in the supply chain with a subcontractor and then support them to stay in that job.”
Pricing in positive change
“The success of these initiatives lies in collaboration. Our number 1 rule is we work with good people who do what they say they do and have an appetite for making the system better. It’s through them and their insights that Multiplex has been able to deliver,” Dave says.
Distinguished Professor Martin Loosemore. Photo Toby Burrows.
One of the people who Multiplex has been working with to evaluate and refine the connectivity centre model is Distinguished Professor Martin Loosemore, from the UTS Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building.
He’s the world’s most highly cited researcher into social procurement, an emerging practice where organisations use their buying power to create social value.
“When a company or agency has something to build or a service to deliver, social procurement involves them asking the supply chain to give something back to the community in which they're building or delivering a service,” Martin says.
“In other words, it’s about asking contractors like Multiplex and their supply chain of subcontractors, consultants and other providers to invest in the places where they have projects.”
More and more, delivering social value is a requirement for doing business with government agencies and corporations who have a strong focus on their social license.
“There’s an estimated $230 billion infrastructure pipeline being built across Australia at the present moment. If 30 per cent of that can be tapped for local communities, that adds up to more than $70 billion worth of extra help that could be given back,” Martin says.
“This social value can be leveraged at very little extra cost by just simply using social procurement on those projects.”
Connecting the dots
Most recently, Professor Loosemore worked with Multiplex, researchers from four other universities, and a range of stakeholders on a major three-year Australian Research Council Linkage project exploring how connectivity centres help reduce unemployment and in a wider sense deliver social value.
“We were looking at the centres as an innovative way of meeting social procurement requirements, and how they could be expanded out across the whole industry and internationally,” he says.
“Multiplex are a great company to work with on this. We have collaborated on three Australian Research Council projects over 15 years in areas relating to social procurement, cultural and gender diversity.
“They’ve been delivering social value voluntarily for 20 years, way before it was a client requirement. So, they’re already a long way ahead of the game and have developed what is now a highly refined model.”
Dave Higgon (centre) and Martin Loosemore (right) at the Western Sydney Airport Connectivity Centre.
Since the inception of the Connectivity Centres, they have been researched deeply. The latest research project involved interviews with hundreds of people including connectivity centre participants, young jobseekers, contractors, subcontractors, government and community organisations.
“We found the connectivity centres can be seen as an innovative project-based intermediary: they’re great connectors of people and organisations,” Martin says.
“Their cross-sector collaborations are uniquely able to respond to social procurement requirements and in so doing actually provide people with high levels of disadvantage with sustainable, long term and meaningful employment.”
The research is playing an important role in generating international interest in the connectivity centre model by publishing in high-quality academic journals and importantly:
“We’ve been able to measure the impact of the centres, describe how they work, and provide evidence to inform Multiplex’s thinking about how the centres can work even better. I like to think we’ve helped shape the conversation about them.”
I hope our research has communicated a best practice model to the rest of the world. Because Multiplex have been very generous in opening it up.
- Distinguished Professor Martin Loosemore
The connection and ongoing dialogue between the diverse stakeholders, Martin, Dave Jo Osborne (who project manages the Centres) and others at Multiplex who want to make a positive difference has helped make this possible.
“The issues we’re dealing with are profound their resolution requires deep expertise, genuine collaboration and commitment,” Dave Higgon says
Martin has been part of our journey for a long time, he provides access to the best thinking and research in the world. He brings access to the resources of the university. He’s interested, passionate and shares our appetite for creative solutions.”
It’s a partnership that is building solutions to big social problems and changing lives in the process.
