The innovative work-integrated learning program was created as part of the student work placement program back in budget 2019. The student work placement program is an employer incentive to encourage more employers to hire students for traditional internships and co-op opportunities.
We found that while those programs are incredibly valuable, many of the smallest businesses and micro-businesses found that they had too much paperwork. There was too much paperwork and too much friction. The infrastructure wasn't there. They couldn't get access to the right talent.
We proposed a model that would create more flexible opportunities. Rather than hiring learners or emerging talent for a full-time position, you would make it more flexible. These could be scoped into 10-hour, 20-hour, 40-hour, 60-hour, 120-hour or 240-hour projects that have a specific goal in mind. In this case, the proposal for this stream would be digital adoption and AI adoption.
What's really important, when you come to the small and micro-businesses, is that they need infrastructure. They need to be able to connect to the right talent and trust that the talent has the right skills based on their portfolio of previous work that's been vetted by previous employers. They need payments to be facilitated through this infrastructure.
We act as an intermediary, as the employer of record, with an independent contractor relationship with every learner. The learners technically work with us. We T4A them. We report to CRA. We remove all of that friction and all of that red tape for the small businesses. Now they can participate in a very frictionless way and get all of these projects done without having to deal with paperwork.
That implementation layer—which helps them scope the projects, helps manage the learners through the projects, helps with reflection and feedback, and helps create a project portfolio of real evidence for the learner to show off to other employers—helps the businesses become more productive and create new jobs. It also makes sure the learners have a portfolio that can help them with their future careers.