Glasgow Futures: Employability Service Re-Design

In early 2023, Glasgow’s Local Employability Partnership Board (LEP) approached The Centre for Civic Innovation (CCI – a citizen-centred design team within Glasgow City Council), to assist with the re-design of employability delivery in Glasgow, using a Service Design approach. Service Design is a workstream within the No One Left Behind delivery plan, the Scottish Government’s national strategy for placing people at the centre of the design and delivery of employability services.

Preliminary work revealed an extremely complex landscape, which was difficult for citizens to navigate and often led to people being unable to access the right service at the right time. It was therefore decided that the key question to ask was: “How might employability provision better join up to improve outcomes for Participants?”

Over the course of 2023, the CCI engaged with key stakeholders, ensuring that appropriate design and research methods were used.

For participants, a suite of methods was utilised to take into consideration the complex barriers and challenges most had experienced, including informal focus groups, printed materials which participants could complete individually or discuss with the group, and informal conversations. Engagement was undertaken with empathy, patience, understanding and always valuing each person’s voice, unique experience and perspective.