June 29, 2022

GetSetUp Announces a Comprehensive Job Assistance Program for Governments

GetSetUp Announces a Comprehensive Job Assistance Program for Governments
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GetSetUp has a history of creating economic opportunities for older adults, from training older workers on job skills to hiring these workers. Now, with the success of our Startup Accelerator program for people 55+, ongoing partnerships with Senior Community Service Employment Programs (SCSEP), and more, GetSetUp is preparing for a potential upcoming recession with a comprehensive job assistance program for governments and partners to help offer economic opportunities to their older adults.

New Job Services Through GetSetUp

GetSetUp is taking its jobs program one step further by announcing its ability to work with both private and public partners to help bring economic opportunities to older adults.

GetSetUp has a longstanding tradition of creating economic opportunities for older adults and helping other communities do the same. GetSetUp hires retired teachers and experts in their fields to share their skills and knowledge virtually with their peers.

When the global pandemic began, GetSetUp focused first on ensuring teachers had the resources they needed to teach digitally from one day to the next. GetSetUp prepared a 3-day rapid response GetSetUp Academy to reskill its Guides to become experts in the tools essential for public school teachers who needed to teach remotely. Over the course of a week, GetSetUp provided over 300 hours of live onboarding and training to educators so teachers felt self-sufficient and confident in the tools and technology they needed to start teaching students remotely.

Teachers weren’t the only ones who needed reskilling and upskilling on remote tools. Therefore, GetSetUp expanded its job reskilling to include any older adult in need. Our job skills surveys have found that we have helped hundreds of workers gain the skills they needed to succeed. According to one survey, 68% of GetSetUp learners learned a skill they could use for a job, and 94% had access to learning opportunities they wouldn’t normally have. Technology and job skills training on our platform are helping older adults better understand the digital tools and resources available to help them reskill and upskill for current and upcoming jobs.

Key Areas of Skill Development

Our surveys show four key areas of skills that learners have been able to obtain in classes:

  • Professional and Technical Skills: This includes skills around email management, new software, computers/technology, and marketing skills, to name a few.
  • Confidence Skills: This includes confidence in using today’s technology, public speaking, communicating effectively, using second or third languages, and more.
  • Personal Development Skills: This includes skills related to improved memory, goal setting, time management, organizational skills, and virtual networking with a diverse community.
  • Health and Well-being Skills: This includes skills around stress management, mindfulness, eating healthy, and fitness so they can show up to their next position feeling well holistically.

One such learner, MaryBeth, a registered dietitian, gained confidence and felt supported by GetSetUp when her organization changed its email systems.

“I took a Gmail class as my company had just moved over to Gmail, and it armed me with the skills to utilize that system to its fullest potential. GetSetUp is an amazing resource, where you learn about all the capabilities to make a day job so much easier. I also took the Google Docs class. I have a lot of document sharing in my role, and I was frustrated when others couldn’t open the documents I sent, but this class is incredibly accessible. Trying to learn on my own was hard, but now I feel totally proficient.”

We know that older adults want to keep working. Many of them are creating their own businesses to solve problems their demographic faces, like those who participated in our first startup accelerator program. Variations of the startup accelerator classes are available for budding entrepreneurs in our How to Start Your Business series and can help prepare interested participants for our next Startup Accelerator.

Jobs Assistance Program for Governments

Since we are all living longer, sometimes even decades longer than in the past, we need to prepare for these extra years. That means factoring in inflation, health, and well-being through a sense of purpose, and economic opportunities well past retirement age.

That’s why GetSetUp is stepping up to the plate to enhance our job assistance program. Leading this new endeavor will be Judy Stelling, the first employee of GetSetUp, who helped build GetSetUp’s Guide program. Since January of 2021, GetSetUp has invested $1.3 million in our platform creators, all of whom are 50-plus, and teaching their peers. Stelling, who herself is an older adult, led the Guide initiative and will now lead this new and important jobs assistance program.

Stelling will be working directly with governments and private companies to help create more economic opportunities for older adults. This will include a variety of services with customizable service combinations, such as:

  1. Grant Alignment Job Skills Training: These customized job skills training programs align to meet the needs of government funding resources for veteran services and SCSEP.
  2. Customized Reskilling and Upskilling Programs: These classes can focus on the needs of a particular community or subset of the community to ensure they have the skills they need to continue adding value in their current roles as well as jobs of the future.
  3. Skillset Coaching: These coaching sessions will offer more personalized programs aimed at helping with a variety of skills around goal setting, effective communication, creative problem-solving, entrepreneurship, and more.
  4. One-on-One Career Counseling Services: These services will help older adults connect the dots between their life and career experiences with today's job opportunities, showing them how their skills transfer into new market categories.
  5. Train to Hire Services: GetSetUp will work directly with businesses and companies to create customized programs to supply these organizations with older adult employees who already have, or have been trained to have, the skills needed to succeed in the position.

Our SCSEP partnerships, in conjunction with EasterSeals and the National Indian Council on Aging, were the first of these endeavors to get underway about three months ago and are showing much promise as participants are utilizing skills learned through GetSetUp’s customized training.

GetSetUp is committed to our mission to empower people who are 55-plus to learn new skills and pursue their passions in order to live healthier and happier lives—and now we are adding services so they have the resources they need to be more financially secure.

If you would like to bring economic opportunities to older adults in your community, contact us at jobs@getsetup.io.