Kerrie Sheaves has been the CEO of Success Works Partners for a couple of months, but she has hit the ground running. Kerrie has a wealth of experience working with for-profit businesses and running and consulting in purpose-driven organisations for the past 20 years. This breadth of skills will provide an important foundation as Success Works moves into a new and expanding stage of development. Under her direction as CEO she wants to make sure that Success Works Partners’ outcomes-based operating model is efficient and effective, and the service delivery approach matches the needs of the Success Works candidates and employers. As she says,
“Let’s make sure we’re clear about where we play in this space, and who we need to partner with. Knowing what comes before us, and after us in this ecosystem, and who runs beside us is essential to us focusing on we can be really good at, and what we do best. We need to get that working really well. [It’s] really important now to get all those foundations right, so, we can grow on top of that.”
While she sees that profit and purpose-driven businesses can have similarities, with purpose-driven businesses “you’re often doing a lot more work in an advocacy capacity than you would normally do in a for profit business because you’re dealing with social services, you’re dealing with government policy and obviously around funding policies, that’s a little bit different to what you do in a for profit business. But most other functions and strategies are the same.”
Some of the most important advocacy work undertaken by Success Works includes educating employers and Kerrie’s message for Employers is to remove any pre-existing assumptions organisations may have about people with a criminal record as they may in fact be an ideal employment candidate for their business. Kerrie fears that if employers fail to review these assumptions they will be:
“…missing out on some amazing people who can add a huge amount of value to your business. Everybody you employ is going to have some sort of baggage they carry with them. There’s no such thing as a perfect person who won’t have some sort of challenge to overcome to be effective and productive in your business.”
As with many of our candidates, Kerrie’s key choices around her own working life are to focus on finding purpose in the work she undertakes. Also, guiding her daily working life is the strong belief, “there’s always an opportunity to reinvent yourself and try again.” Success Works fits her personal and ethical values because:
“…it is focused on helping people find purpose and in particular to allow them to move from a position where they probably don’t have a lot of hope and a lot of aspiration for the future, to giving them useful skills, empowering them and equipping them and giving them confidence to try again.”
Kerrie recognises the important role that employment plays in reducing recidivism and in helping women feel empowered to find purpose and direction in their lives:
“I think for anybody, regardless of who they are, what their experience is, work often gives people a sense of purpose. It gives them a sense of security financially. But for many people also having a job they can go to where there’s some level of consistency, some level of continuity when the rest of their life might not have that stability is an important part of managing their mental health. It also gives them access to key things like being able to get custody of their children, being able to have financial independence where they may never have had financial independence.”
Along with significant benefits to families and financial wellbeing, Kerrie sees the Success Works program helps women to,
“…find something which they are good at, and that people are encouraging them in and [in that way] they feel like they can earn a living that helps them to contribute to society rather than take from society, it changes the way they see themselves and it changes the way others see them and their sense of belief in what they can achieve. … It also has a massive positive effect on their mental health.”
As Kerrie points out the Success Works program is not just about ticking the box to get the candidates work, there are bigger ideals:
“…. our job is to help someone discover what their career could be, what things they could do. Help them find the pathway to that job so that when they do that job, they love doing it and they grow in that job. When they know it’s the right fit for them and they are doing things that they enjoy, they stay, and they are productive for that business. If they do something they have an interest or a passion for or natural capabilities in, they will be open to learn and get more training in to develop further. So, they’ll stay in the job, they’ll value to that business, they’ll create a career … that’s really what our job pathway program is about is at the end of the day.”
Currently Success Works operates only in NSW but Kerrie says given the uniqueness of the program there is a definite need beyond state level, “I do think this is an organisation that could very easily grow nationally…. I think there’s a need for it. I think the models right, it’s just about refining it so that it’s easy to scale up and replicate.”
One gets the feeling that Kerrie Sheaves may have the energy, determination and skills to make that happen. Welcome aboard Kerrie. Everyone at Success Works is excited that you share our belief in empowering women with a criminal record, and we are sure your determination and passion will lead to our collective success.
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