During our conversation, it came out that there are two different layers to this problem:
- Layer 1: According to the municipality, the poverty group consists of people who don’t have jobs, education and life opportunities. There are many services provided to this group, but these services are not being used by them. This problem occurs in a large scale in the whole city.
- Layer 2: The people who were part of the poverty group and used the services given by the municipality, and thanks to that received education are not being recognised by potential work givers. It is estimated that the reason to this is because companies have a specific expectation to what their employees should look like and behave.
Considering these two layers, the questions that arise are:
- Are the services at the municipality provides sufficient?
- Why do the companies prefer to hire employees outside of Zuidoost?
It is also suggested that the potential in Zuidoost is being recognised by the large companies, however, they prefer to look for easier opportunities; hiring an employee directly is easier than consulting an employment agency (uitzendingbureau). This can be a ‘just-in-time’ problem.
This problem has to be looked into from dimension and location perspective. It can be interesting to compare where the employer and the employee are, or the work/not work to location. Also interesting to explore the role of Zuidoost district in the creation of the problem.