Our Success Comes From Your Success

It’s that time again! Time to take a moment to shine a light on some of the amazing clients with whom we’ve had the opportunity to work and some of the unique ways in which we’ve helped them accomplish their goals. Allow us to put our client, OnwardCA, in that spotlight.

Our clients come from a variety of industries. From agriculture and real estate to legal and education, we’ve covered it all. We’ve developed mobile applications, dynamic websites and even large-scale enterprise applications within those industries. In this particular instance, the industry is human resources.

The COVID-19 Pandemic Hits Families Hard with Soaring Unemployment

The Kapor Center and Bitwise Industries immediately realized the trajectory of unemployment numbers as Covid-19 continued to take a foothold across the country. Together, they, along with a coalition of other companies, had the foresight to band together to make a difference. With the support and leadership of Governor Gavin Newsom, OnwardCA was put into action to match unemployed Californians with needed work and essential life services.

With nearly 200,000 Californians filing for unemployment in March of 2020 alone, this movement could not happen fast enough. For many people across the State, this meant food on the table and a roof over their head was in jeopardy. OnwardCA had to act fast because this problem wasn’t isolated to California. It was nationwide, just like the virus. Unemployment was spreading fast and easy answers were not available. But Shift3 Technologies was … and a practical solution was on the horizon.

The Problem

In March 2020, as Covid-19 spread across the globe, country after country was faced with the dilemma of keeping people safe at home versus keeping people from going to work. As positive cases and the virus’ death toll began to rise, it was apparent that closing non-essential businesses was necessary. What would become of the millions of people who went from having a job to being unemployed overnight? These suddenly out-of-work people had no income and no idea for how long they would need to survive without either. Shelter-in-place was the rallying cry to flatten the curve of Covid-19 and save lives. But at what cost?

The State of California was not immune or different than anywhere else during the onset of the pandemic. There was an immediate impact to those industries deemed non-essential with one-in-four workers becoming unemployed. It wasn’t just that Americans were out of work, they were out of basic living essentials for food, childcare and their mortgage or rent.

To fill this need for Californians, OnwardCA required an easily accessible digital platform with the ability to pair people in need with the right resource to get them back on their feet. But how do you distill the volume of information garnered from 500 data entry professionals spread across the country into one usable space for someone to easily search?

OnwardCA had to unify the overwhelming needs of Californians with a dynamic online solution … and quickly.

The Solution

When OnwardCA approached Shift3 Technologies, the burden for a single State was becoming a heavy heart for an entire Nation. Every day that elapsed meant someone in the community was getting further behind in life. Shift3 Technologies, using the expansive power of Salesforce, went on the offensive to deliver the much needed assets to a California in need.

In coordination with Governor Gavin Newsom’s office, Shift3 deployed an online clearinghouse at OnwardCA.org that paired people seeking employment with open positions within the geography that they currently lived in. In addition, this website showed people where to find much needed resources for food, shelter, and childcare, as well as retraining opportunities to move between industries if necessary. The dynamic digital tool that Shift3 built gave hope to all of the site’s visitors who had become displaced because of Covid-19.

How easy is it for a site visitor to be paired with Life Essential Resources, Training or a Job?
      1.Log on to OnwardCA.org and click “Get matched to Resources and Jobs.”
      2.Enter first and last name, contact info, family size and desired hours, salary and schooling.
      3.Browse through a customized list of available resources, training and jobs based on the user’s given criteria.

OnwardCA makes finding new job opportunities as easy as the above three steps. And it takes a visitor less than five minutes to complete. This process should appear simple because Shift3 did an extensive amount of work within Salesforce to create future-focused architecture using standard and custom objects to maximize efficiency and accuracy while minimizing the technical build. Shift3 integrated a Salesforce Community with custom actions to allow users to enter Resources and Jobs while using Geolocation API on custom objects to pinpoint job opportunities.

“OnwardCA is an example of private and public sectors working together to meet a challenge by using the best and the brightest across the State to support all Californians in their time of need.”

Gavin Newsom – Governer of California

Lasting Impact

Although we have ways of accurately measuring the impact Covid-19 has had on unemployment, we’ll never truly be able to grasp the magnitude this pandemic has had on our lives, our economy and our nation. The pandemic has only magnified a weak spot. As Covid-19 falls from the headlines, unemployment at some level will remain. As long as it does, OnwardCA will work tirelessly to fight for better outcomes for unemployed people in California and elsewhere. This initiative to help one state quickly became the catalyst for OnwardUS, a national-based platform built on the same Salesforce engine that tailors the website to the specific needs of each state in the United States.

You Bring the Vision, We’ll Do the Rest

Does your business need to distill large volumes of information into workable, automated systems within your Salesforce org? We want to hear about it. Our team of certified Salesforce administrators can configure and customize a solution to help take control of your Salesforce org—and not the other way around. Let’s discuss your workflow, and see what’s possible together. You bring the vision, we’ll do the rest. Give us a call at 559 560 3300 or email us at inf[email protected] if you need help bringing that vision to light.

This post was written by Celeste A. Barron, Content Development Manager. You can find her eating and tweeting about steak.

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