The Cooperative Start-Up: A New Kind Of Agency

To elaborate on my last comment about helping the adult unemployed, here are a few thoughts of mine, as to how we should help. A lot of people are about to lose their jobs. Some are in the process of being cut even as I write. So right here and right now, those of us in full time work need to take decisive action to help them, while we still have jobs of our own. And here is one way that we can do it.

I propose that we create a free agency that anyone can join, for people wanting to start a business or to be part of one. While innovative agencies like Staff Bay are now offering new ways for applicants to connect with employers; the difference is that in this case, is the applicants are the employer.

The start-up agency could work like this this: anyone who wants to start a new business signs onto the new online agency, and can then select any of the other members to work with. The applicants, in effect,  becomes the recruiters. It is they who decide who to hire, and who connect with whom. They will have a wide selection of many laid off, resigned and long term unemployed members; among whom there will be those from all walks of life, who can come together to form new companies.

Again, this differs from an employer's online resource; by allowing people at ground level to use it: anyone who becomes part of the agency can come together to form companies, without preference. The agency itself could be a Co-operative: an enterprise owned and run by all participants for the mutual benefit of all. As with online forums, we could group the users together by area of interest: those with technical interests could be put together, as could those with sporting ones, to form the kind of companies they like. It is true that schemes and agencies like the one I propose do exist in some form already. Linkedin itself can be said to be a vehicle for this kind of start-up networking.

But, in the face of mounting redundancies, we need to redouble our efforts, because a lot more people will lose their jobs if we don't/. We can adjust and modify existing networks to do this, but no punches should be pulled in the drive to get capable people out of work to start businesses of their own. Many such people helped me out when I was down, and I'm sure that other professionals could say the same. It is time for us to return the favour, and give those who are facing challenges a chance to overcome them.

The challenge to this is of course, industry itself. What would these new companies work with? Well as I have argued elsewhere on these blogs, there are many new innovations from the universities and colleges that they could use to make new products or to provide new services. Think of the Industrial Revolution. Did the entrepreneurs here in Britain have social media, cellphones or cars to assist them? No. They had sound business sense, and the insight to apply it. From the mineworkers, to the weavers to the farmers, people worked the land and refined their resources, to build our industry. I believe that we can do this again.