Welcome to Part 12, this section dives into your Level UP Employment App.

In Part 10, we introduced the 3 socioeconomic gatekeeper systems that manage almost everyone’s access to the essentials of a sustainable life.

Employment – or more specifically how people qualify for and gain employment, is one such system.

From a poverty perspective, the Level UP Employment App opens work advancement opportunities up to categories of people that are currently excluded or partially excluded. It is also an overdue perspective shift and an overhaul of the current systems – which represent the status quo that profits from poverty.

Employers are more than ready for this change. Our approach is based on how the world has evolved and continues to change. It allows employers to become significantly more successful in recruiting, resulting in lower costs, more diversity, and building a more sustainable company culture.

We already covered the “barriers that people experience” in the field of employment in Part 4. That is related – because this app allows people to bypass these barriers.

Correct – It does precisely that.

Below we will cover some of the many benefits this App generates for the employer, for the applicants, and for our focus on ending poverty in one generation.

OK.

The overall outcome is better-fit employees, a more robust talent pool, company sustainability, and an upgraded company culture that is future-facing and ready to engage in our evolving world.

1. Strengthens existing infrastructure and relationships: It helps companies recruit situationally qualified people to move up from within the ranks or from similar roles elsewhere. These are employees who already have familiarity, cross-department relationships, and expertise that can save the employer time and money.

Can you describe this category further – and how it influences poverty?

Yes.
Many “working poor” people, and remember that’s 45% of the workforce, fall in this category. These are people doing crucial work and often are the glue that holds companies together. Yet they are almost always underpaid and blocked from advancement for arbitrary reasons – such as, but not only because of, lack of specific formal education.

Here’s a story of this situation in real life.

We have a good friend named Mark, who is an early investor in Level Up, and who works in the fish industry. He moved jobs about 5 years ago into an international organization where he inherited a whole department to manage.

He quickly found that a significant amount of the important, what he called “holding everything together” work in his new workplace was being done by people without the “specified education” required to move up the corporate ladder.

During his first three months, for 2 existing employees in the above category, and later others, he increased their salaries from approximately $60,000 to over $100,000/year, without expanding their responsibilities. Subsequently, he had to doggedly fight their case, countering and overcoming senior management objections. Within 2 years, and with close support from these same employees, he had added $2 million to the company’s gross profit. Not surprisingly, Mark has a history of making equitable, win-win business decisions.

In his previous business, of which he was co-founder and plant manager, he decided to distribute the company’s annual bonus in a manner that was once considered radical. He distributed the bonus equally across all workers, labor, sales, and executive teams, including himself. Everyone was literally treated equally. Naturally, this created a real sense of ownership of the mission, not to mention better quality outcomes and loyalty that lasted beyond the job.

Great story. Let’s continue to the other benefits this App delivers.

2. Accuracy: It guides companies to better identify the true requirements for each position - thereby replacing the current practice of seeking the “most qualified” - in place of “best fit” candidates. This radically changes both the candidate pool and the complexity of filling positions - all in favor of the employer’s short and long-term goals.

It seems that an example of this approach might be a “help wanted” sign in a shop window. Those seemed to work well in the olden days.

It’s somewhat like that. Our approach reverses the trend towards inadvertently seeking over-educated, gung-ho candidates for every position – which leads to all sorts of problems for the company down the road, including employee frustration and increased turnover.

This corporate philosophy of “employing winners” is a hangover from the 1980’s. This also gave us other degenerative business strategies such as “Rank and Yank”, “selling assets for a better balance sheet”, “ransack and eliminate pensions”, “break the power of labor”, and similar short-sighted strategies from the “Wolves of Wall Street” and their friends.

Yes – I remember that era of best-selling books from notorious CEOs.

Specifically, this failed strategy of “employing winners” is thoroughly covered by Rodney in our Employment App White Paper where he describes the “Super-Chicken” studies – and its lessons for employers which are fascinating and pertinent.

OK - What’s the next benefit?

3. Broader Candidate Pool: It allows companies to attract and recruit previously out-of-their-box candidates, which not only increases diversity and expands the “idea pool” but also increases sustainability and the health of overall company culture.

Sounds right. I know that in nature diversity is the foundation of the health of every ecosystem. Does the same principle hold true here?

Yes – this was one of the findings in the book “Why Nations Fail” which was an in-depth review of the socioeconomic histories of 17 countries. Diversity of views and diverse groups within the power structure led to economic and social growth for some countries – while their absence led to rapid degeneration in others.

I also have a real-life story to back this point up.

The one I’m to remind you about?

Yes.

Ok - let’s tell that story soon. Maybe in the next section.

Sure – let’s do that. The next benefit is:

4. Diversity Affirming: It allows employers to treat diversity as an asset, thus aligning their business practices with the non-majority society we are rapidly becoming.

I see diversity as an asset not just because of what we talked about in Point 3 above but because diverse employees automatically bring with them diverse life experience, cultural experience, and often more sensitivity and excellent people skills.

I agree – most diverse candidates have had to navigate a more hostile world – which builds acute risk perception and trains communication skills and decision-making to almost superhuman levels.

And I know Rodney also writes about his younger siblings, including Crystal and Joe, in the Employment App White Paper. Both of them excelled in sales in what were traditionally “white” marketplaces. They received multiple state and national awards honoring their chart-topping achievements.

Crystal and Joe’s people skills are in no small part due to their early life experiences where they relied on their wits to defuse often dangerous and volatile situations. This was very much a real-life type of “special forces training” where the outcome of falling short was literally devastating.

Yes – Rodney’s book “Me and Mary” covers quite a few such situations that he and his siblings found themselves in. And I believe this is representative of many people who have had to navigate through poverty and oppression.

Thanks for bringing that up here – as we mentioned earlier – this compelling, mind-opening, life-affirming book is available for download in the resources section.

It’s also short and un-put-down-able.

5. Friendly: The application process is less demeaning and less complicated, which increases employers’ goodwill with all potential candidates.

I think this might be easy to achieve. The normal job application portal requires establishing a “user profile” that’s both time-consuming and somewhat distressing because of the type of personal info requested – and that’s often a compulsory step before accessing the actual job listings.

Yes – we agree. That’s what shows up when we reverse-engineer these old-school employment portals. And these companies have a good reason for collecting applicants’ data. They sell it. This is their business model.

We never exploit personal data; we don’t even collect it. We do allow the applicant to build and store a profile for ease of access later. But iPeerion has no access to that data.

6. Non-intrusive and respects privacy: Our applicants own their own data.

What does that mean?

Well, the data is stored on our blockchain – and because of how it’s designed, it can only be accessed by the owner, the applicant. If they choose to share data – that’s their choice, not ours.

Thanks – what’s the next benefit?

7. Transparency and it upgrades and showcases company culture: The App’s interface experience gives the applicant a more thorough framing of questions. This is an example of transparency which is one of the goals of today’s companies. It helps applicants feel respected. Next, it uses conversational back-and-forth, flow between applicant answers and feedback creating a sense of participation. Between steps, the App makes available “the inside scoop” on the role, the workplace, and company goals. Through these strategies, our App process opens a window into the company’s culture. This is empowering and useful to potential candidates. It helps them to evaluate if the role and workplace are a good fit for them – which is also efficient for the employer because it results in a higher percentage of better-fit candidates.

Sounds great. A positive experience of a company’s workplace culture can do companies a lot of good because of how candidates spread their experiences through social media.

Agreed - a good reputation can pay huge dividends for any employer.

8. Everyone is diverse: The App guides Applicants to create personalized professional profiles that highlight their unique offerings. These include personal traits, preferences, and backgrounds that help candidates stand out in the application review process. These profiles are infused with personality, experience, and skill sets that traditional job application portals often ignore. Applicants can store or download these profiles for ongoing use.

Can you give some examples?

I will give examples of many of these benefits in the real-life story which I will tell in the next section Part 13 - The Benefits of Putting People First.

Sounds good.

9. Integrates Job Flexibility: For the Employer the platform supports options to structure and include on-the-job training, role-sharing, flexible schedules, and other employee-friendly solutions into the job description.

Studies show that such flexibility drives better business outcomes for the company - and is also attractive to the type of candidates most suited to a long-term and significant career contribution, starting in the position offered.

The truth is that there are so many jobs that the right fit person can excel in with no background but appropriate on-the-job training. This approach may have a longer learning curve but can pay big dividends down the road.

I can see that these are types of flexible solutions that make jobs more friendly for people who have other commitments, like elderly parents, children, or even second jobs.

Yes – precisely the people who are struggling to lift themselves and their families up and out of poverty. And notably, also suited to younger often disadvantaged workers who are the workforce of the future.

There are other benefits – but I think we can stop here. The listener will at this point have a sense of the more equitable processes this App enables.

And for a deeper dive, the listener or reader can access the Employment App White Paper in the Resources Section.

True – let’s continue in Part 13