Our Theory of Change
Make the working world work for everyone
At Clu, a carefully developed Theory of Change drives our commitment to reshaping talent acquisition and management.
This theory is the blueprint for our strategic approach to managing change and achieving our goal of adding one million socially mobile individuals to the workforce in the next decade.
The time is now
Talent retention is at a crisis point. You're now as likely to leave a job in 18 months as you are to stay, and 70% of the millennial and Gen Z workforce are planning to leave their jobs this year. (Linkedin, 2023).
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Advertising-based models of recruitment favour credentials over potential, resulting in over 70% of people not having the right skills for their jobs (Gartner, 2018).
Twenty years ago, being employed was enough for most people - but times have changed, and younger generations are demanding more from a significantly broader world of work. By getting skills alignment right, you don't only shift effectiveness in developing, engaging and nurturing talent. You also create psychologically safe and empowering processes consistently proven to engage better and reduce churn of the younger generations of the workforce.
Evolving the experience-based model into a skills-based one is the only clear route out of the retention crisis.
Making the working world work for everyone
A new paradigm
Our team are experts in behavioural psychology, AI and technology, and diversity and inclusion.
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Whilst researching Clu, we discovered two fundamental realities in current talent acquisition and management processes that explain why such little development has happened outside of digitisation and automation throughout the market's boom.
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Firstly, salespeople, not psychologists, designed recruitment as a process, and the methodology most commonly used today anchors to prioritisation metrics developed over 50 years ago.
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Secondly, neither job seekers nor hiring teams know at a granular level what it takes to do a job well.
Inclusive talent
intelligence
Clu is redefining talent acquisition and management processes by increasing skills-based literacy for individuals and employers.
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Our inclusive talent intelligence platform is universally designed with built-in safeguarding measures. Our vision is that our new processes will fix employee retention by setting up all individuals for success in careers aligned with their skills and values while simultaneously addressing systemic and costly inefficiencies for employers.
This serves to create a broader, more skilled and mobile workforce where previously insurmountable barriers to entry are removed. And we can finally focus on the value of what someone can do, no longer favouring where they learnt to do it.
Creating a universal language of skills
When you get inclusion right, diversity will follow. But this does not work in reverse.
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By broadening the focus from just your experience to the skills your experiences develop, we redefine the understanding of what it takes to do a job well and who is capable of doing it.
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Building this literacy around a new universal language of skills enables individuals to better understand, showcase and develop their value, removing previously insurmountable barriers to the job market for people from the most overlooked and underutilised diverse talent communities. It also ushers a new paradigm for success in building diverse, engaged and high-performance working environments.
Nurturing behaviour change
We know behaviour change isn't easy, so we adopt principles of behavioural psychology, specifically Self-Determination Theory, to incentivise Employer preference for our socially impactful outcomes.
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Self-determination theory underscores the innate human needs for autonomy, mastery, and purpose. By tapping into these intrinsic motivators, we transform outcomes into engaging challenges through features like Clu'd Up. This creates an environment where the most inclusive results build the highest-performing teams.
The gamified approach propels adoption. For example, hiring managers using Clu are motivated to build higher-performing teams, and can do so autonomously using Clu's toolkits. This helps them achieve better results whilst also improving diversity, enabling a sense of purpose in their contribution.
Building an ecosystem of change
Instead of using job boards to find talent, Clu connects directly to communities to ensure opportunities reach the broadest talent pools.
The Clu Partner Network is made up of hundreds of organisations with a specific focus on education, empowerment, or employability. This partnership cultivates trust, drives change from the grassroots, and can ensure our new way of finding meaningful employment reaches those who face the deepest systemic barriers.
Our Partners are incentivised with SLAs for engagement and retention, meaning their value is reciprocated when they contribute to the ecosystem.
Clu aims to invest over £10 million in the Clu Partner Network over the next decade.
Measuring
Impact
People from diverse groups finding meaningful work and those people developing and retaining are short-term measures we will use to track scale and sustainability. But our long-term success will be achieved when:
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Employers have the tools they need to navigate the transition to skills-based talent management confidently.
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All individuals can confidently articulate their value, and that value is universally recognised in jobs they'll enjoy in companies that can set them up for success.
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"Top talent" is defined by capability, not experience or educational background and years of experience and qualifications add context to someone's skills instead of qualifying them in or out of a process.
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"Recruitment advertising" is retired in favour of more accurate and psychologically safe skills-based models where people see opportunities they are right for over opportunities with the largest recruitment budget.
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Clu has added 1 Million socially mobile job seekers to the working world.