ManpowerGroup presents Ready for Work Award at JA Europe Company of the Year Competition 2020
Brussels, 24 July 2020
ManpowerGroup, leading global workforce solutions company and gold partner of JA Europe, supported hundreds of secondary school students across Europe to nurture their learnability and get ready for work at the JA Europe Company of the Year Competition 2020, hosted virtually by JA Portugal on 22-24 July 2020.
The ManpowerGroup “Ready for Work” Award is one of eight signature awards offered to the Company of the Year finalists, awarded annually to the student teams that best demonstrated work-readiness skills such as collaboration, leadership and learnability – the desire and ability to continually learn and develop new skills – during the competition.
The ManpowerGroup jury, comprised of Laura d’Amico, Head of Learnability Europe for ManpowerGroup Europe, and Michel Debruyne, Managing Consultant at Talent Solutions, awarded the 2020 Ready for Work Award to Echooo from Belgium. Echooo’s business model to use data to help consumers transform their personal waste management and develop responsible, sustainable consumption habits for the future, combined with the team’s display of learnability and work-readiness skills – including self-reflection, action-based learning and digital skills development – embodied the spirit of the Ready For Work Award.
The students from Belgium commented on winning the Ready For Work Award: “We are delighted to see our efforts of almost one year paying off with the recognition of such an important organization as ManpowerGroup. Despite the difficulty of adapting to a new teamwork reality during the pandemic, the importance of being agile and be ready to pivot, we are proud to have lived up to this challenge. We believe the “Ready for Work” award from ManpowerGroup shows our resilience, our passion and our creativity towards a project inspired by the values and progress of a key subject such as environment and company’s waste.”
The award ceremony marks the fourth of a six-year-long partnership between Junior Achievement Europe (on global level is +10 years) and ManpowerGroup, spanning 40 countries in Europe. Each year, the Ready For Work Award recognizes entrepreneurship and different aspects of work readiness displayed by students during the competition. The award is part of JA Europe’s flagship Company of the Year Competition, which encourages young people to develop business skills by setting up and running a mini-company for a year. In 2019-2020, 355,000 students from across Europe participated in the programme.
As the winners of the 2020 Ready for Work Award, the Echoo team will receive a one year mentorship program delivered via RightCoach, ManpowerGroup’s on-demand, virtual coaching program that delivers high-impact custom coaching sessions. The team will be paired with ManpowerGroup’s expert coaches to guide them on their personal and professional journey to better understand their skills, develop new ones, and become even more ready for work.
Raúl Grijalba, Regional Managing Director Mediterranean Region, “These young entrepreneurs demonstrated to have the skills needed for the Future of Work. In this fast-changing world where new skills emerge as fast as others become obsolete and digitization continues at pace, leaders have the responsibility to help young people become work ready by nurturing their learnability and developing strengths like leadership or creativity. That is why, I am proud of the commitment and dedication of all our teams through all this years of collaboration with Junior Achievement in order to keep promoting young talents and shape the leaders of the future.”
“Young Europeans deserve all the support they can get to make them Ready for Work in an increasingly complex world”, said Salvatore Nigro, CEO of JA Europe, and added: “JA Europe is grateful to ManpowerGroup for their continuous support on this journey as we are building the workforce of the future together.”
Read more about ManpowerGroup’s partnership with JA Europe here.
About ManpowerGroup
ManpowerGroup® (NYSE: MAN), the leading global workforce solutions company, helps organizations transform in a fast changing world of work by sourcing, assessing, developing and managing the talent that enables them to win. We develop innovative solutions for hundreds of thousands of organizations every year, providing them with skilled talent while finding meaningful, sustainable employment for millions of people across a wide range of industries and skills. Our expert family of brands – Manpower, Experis and Talent Solutions – creates substantial value for candidates and clients across 80 countries and territories and has done so for over 70 years. We are recognized consistently for our diversity – as a best place to work for Women, Inclusion, Equality and Disability and in 2020 ManpowerGroup was named one of the World’s Most Ethical Companies for the eleventh year – all confirming our position as the brand of choice for in demand talent.
About JA Europe
Junior Achievement (JA) Europe is the largest non-profit in Europe dedicated to preparing young people for employment and entrepreneurship. JA Europe is a member of JA Worldwide® which has delivered hands on, experiential learning in entrepreneurship, work readiness and financial literacy for 100 years. JA creates pathways for employability, job creation and financial success.
Last school year, the JA network in Europe reached more than 4 million young people across 40 countries with the support of 140,000 business volunteers and 130,000 teachers/educators.
JA Europe press contact:
Minna Melleri
Email: (minna@jaeurope.org)
Telephone: +32-470180934
