The ABC Model – Any Job, Better Job, Career – is a simple way to describe our work.
When you come home from prison, you need an immediate job, and not just any job. You need a job that is flexible to allow you to fulfill the various criminal justice mandates of the release. This is the job that RecycleForce supplies. As the criminal justice oversite requirements lessen, you can start taking steps into the larger job market. These steps are often with selected temporary positions, which are the positions that our sister organization, Keys to Work, focuses on.
Both the A and B portions of this model allow for stepped-down public safety oversight while the participants earn an income and stay connected to the training and development activities needed to gain skills to become full employable in the mainstream labor market. This is what we call “developing the work muscle.” These two steps are also important to gain the time for the participant to identify the C, the career they will enter into, a career that can provide the earnings and rewards for a successful life – the type of career that can allow a person to find their place in civil society.
When it comes to building a career, it’s a journey, not just a destination. The ABC model is extremely important because there is a level of stabilization that needs to happen when first starting out. “For a population that has been interfacing with the criminal justice system, private sector employers like to see a level of work history prior to thinking about employing them,” said Angie Carr Klitzsch, President of EmployIndy. “The best place to learn job skills is actually on the job. It’s much better than a classroom, it’s real life examples. In the contained space of transitional jobs, that is delivered daily.”
The labor market is opening up to those with felony records. The ability for a potential employer to know that a worker’s skills have been vetted and validated in a transitional job environment is incredibly valuable. Conflict resolution, decision making and critical thinking are also built into the transitional job program at RecycleForce. The employers who work with RecycleForce and Keys to Work on the A and B portions will see increased success as their investments will be more likely to success in the C portion. There are many good people who have made mistakes in the past. The ABC model is a cost-effective way for employers to identify those committed to taking advantage of their second chance.
“I wish I could say I came up with the ABC model,” said RecycleForce President Gregg Keesling. “All the credit goes to Mayor Joe Hogsett and the leadership at EmployIndy for finding a simple way to describe a complex process.”