A chunky update from the team this week. We did so much this week including testing our product in front of employers, exciting and scary stuff!
Problem Statement: How can we help businesses in the horticulture and viticulture industries find enough suitable seasonal workers when they need them?
Suitable workers as defined by employers are workers who are motivated, reliable and capable of doing the job. Often workers who have come from Work and Income New Zealand are not suitable.
The key factors contributing to the problem space are: current suitability matching systems do a poor job; there are not enough suitable people available in the labour market for some regions; there are suitable workers in the labour market but they are not being placed into employment; there is a lack of visibility of employee’s skills, experience, availability and it is hard for existing systems to communicate with each other.
Our solution is a digital platform which focuses on matching suitable workers from Work and Income New Zealand to responsible employers faster by highlighting the workers who are motivated, reliable and capable. Our solution is consistent with the government’s objective of employing New Zealanders first.
Hypothesis 1): If we can highlight the workers who are motivated, reliable and capable, then businesses in the horticulture and viticulture industries will be able to employ these workers more efficiently
Hypothesis 2): If we verify the suitability of seasonal workers in the horticulture and viticulture industries, then business can engage more effectively with the total pool of suitable seasonal workers.
Hypothesis 3): If we can increase the pool of suitable seasonal workers, then businesses will find enough suitable seasonal workers when they need them and they will be more productive and profitable.
Hypothesis 4): If we can increase the pool of suitable seasonal workers and make it easy for businesses to employ them, then businesses will not look for non-compliant workarounds.
Hypothesis 5): If we map the hotspots of regional seasonal work and workers at key times, then businesses in those regions can better plan to have a reliable source of suitable seasonal workers when they need them.
Week 5 – Week ending Friday 22 May 2015
The Good
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Tested the wireframes we have developed with actual employers and gained honest feedback. Thank you for your time!
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Tested our solution concept with our first WINZ client who said “That sounds awesome! I’d definitely use it”.
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Talked to more people in government to understand their pain points and priorities, and where relevant, share wireframes, including with:
MBIE Tourism policy team
MBIE Labour Inspectorate.
IRD Customer Services.
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Have a good understanding of the labour market test that employers need to go through when they employ a migrant worker.
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Had brilliant mentoring sessions with Geoff Nixon and Glenn Andert, who challenged us to go more specific on our problem statement and directed us to think about how our solution is solving the problem for all the players in the seasonal worker market.
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A shout out to Paul Nalder, who is willing to help with our data analysis and building our value proposition.
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We’ve learnt that Hospitality NZ has developed a similar tool to our planned solution for employers in the Hospitality industry to easily hire migrant workers.
The Bad
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We are waiting to hear back from our main MSD contact.
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We need to test our solution concept with Work and Income workbrokers and more clients FAST.
The Ugly
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The employers we have talked to so far said they may not use our product because it doesn’t add much value to what they have got already. This means we need to find our sweet spot, solving problems for people who have a problem. This is THE UGLY TURNING INTO THE BEST NEWS 😀
Questions top of mind
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What do employers in the horticulture and viticulture industries think about our solution? Will they use it?
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What do seasonal workers think about our solution? Will they use it?
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What do Work and Income New Zealand think about our solution? Will they support it?
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How do we develop a proxy for motivation, reliability and punctuality?
Quotes of the week
Julian – “Getting something real in front of customers for feedback was a huge success… and failure. Validated learning at its very best.”
Victoria – “It’s great having these opportunities to learn by getting feedback on our prototype from business and employees – we’re still looking for that sweet spot.”
Suki – “It is quite scary to know that our product might fail but at the same time, this is brilliant news! Fail fast, learn fast is the motto :).”
YAY weekend, rest is needed.
easypeasycompliance 