Torus Foundation is the charitable arm of the North West based housing association, Torus. With a rise in unemployment across the Cheshire and Warrington area, it secured funding from The European Social Fund to develop a new initiative to increase support for those who have recently found themselves out of work. Springboard Cheshire is a new employment and skills programme providing 1:1 information, advice and guidance, skill transfer support, training, mental health support, money advice and support to increase digital skills. There is also a short-term wage subsidy budget for local SMEs to employ a percentage of the participants on the programme to gain valuable experience and potentially lead to fulltime employment/a long term career. The programme is fast-paced in order to help participants bounce back into work quickly. We were tasked with providing the strategy for Springboard Cheshire to launch the programme effectively to potential participants and partner
organisations within a small fixed budget.

Using the first of two strategic sprint sessions we pulled together the knowledge and insight held within the Springboard Cheshire team to over lay onto our research and understanding of the Cheshire and Warrington labour market. This produced an interactive map to clearly define the area Springboard Cheshire will operate in, highlight areas of deprivation and universal credit claimant data, high densities of social housing stock and the coverage maps for relevant online, offline and broadcast media in order to highly target suggested campaign activity. Our second strategic sprint focused on persona mapping for the four target audience groups and developing the messaging matrix and hierarchy using COM-B and EAST models. This analysis and refinement honed the core messaging to be used across all channels to maximise reach, raise awareness and engage recently unemployed people across the region to enquire and enrol
onto the programme. Our social media audience report gave us valuable insights into the online habits of people who are looking for a job. From which a tailored
set of recommendations were made for each target audience group for the internal team at Springboard Cheshire to implement. A key element of the strategy was to utilise the partner network to amplify the messaging and drive inward referrals to the programme. A communications toolkit of assets including copy, an animation and graphics for social media and web pages, templates for newsletters, advertising, POS and boiler plate press release templates was shared with partners for use on their channels. Supporting all internal and partner activity we also engaged local and regional media (online, offline and broadcast) and implemented a paid display press advertising campaign targeting job seeker audiences across the region to drive awareness
of the new support programme launch.

In the first three months (October to December) 46 unemployed people enrolled onto the Springboard Cheshire programme. Of those 46 people, 11 have found long term employment.