Intergrom Program: Breaking Barriers to the Labor Market

Addressing the employment of the Roma in Hungary and across CEE by creating a multi-stakeholder consortium

The 750,000 Roma are the largest minority in Hungary’s population of ten million, facing many difficulties: only 20% are active on the labor market, 70% live below the poverty line, and 50% experience discrimination when looking for work. The Integrom Program is a social experiment initiated by The Boston Consulting Group, bringing together the civil and corporate sector to build the missing bridge between Roma job seekers and the corporate labor market. The program supports participants with training and access: providing information about available job opportunities, preparing the applicants for recruitment procedures, offering individual career guidance, and connecting them directly to relevant openings with employers who are ready to give them a first chance. This is achieved through a coalition of leading companies, civil organizations, and various professional firms, coordinated by BCG and the Autonómia Foundation.

The uniqueness of the program lies in being a pro-bono, voluntary coalition of diverse stakeholders, each trusted and credible in their own area of expertise. Initiated in early 2014, Integrom is closing a successful pilot phase, showing mindset-changing examples of Roma who are successful in job roles such as IT service, customer support, or loan administrator. Currently, the program team is working on improving and scaling up the program to multiply the impact in the next few years. However, the core principles of Integrom may already serve as inspiration for similar initiatives in different contexts, being a good example of uniting civil and corporate stakeholders around a common social goal.

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Author: Laszlo Juhasz

Laszlo is leading the Budapest office of the Boston Consulting Group and is also responsible for BCG's activities in the SEE region. He has 17 years of experience in management consulting in Central- and South- Eastern Europe across various industries. Apart from having an extensive experience in managing large-scale transformation and strategic projects, as well as major operational improvement programs with top companies in the region, Laszlo is leading the Budapest office’s social impact activities that address the issues of shared public interest and advance common causes in the areas of public health, development, education, infrastructure and the environment. He is the leading Partner of BCG Budapest’s Integrom program, a partnership between the private sector and civil society organizations aiming to provide qualified Roma applicants with access to corporate careers. Laszlo holds a Master of Economics degree from Budapest University of Economics and also studied law at JATE University in Szeged, Hungary.

Contributor: Agnes Kelemen

Contributor: Agnes Kelemen

Agnes had been educated as a psychologist in Budapest and Bristol and later earned an MA in Nationalism Studies at Central European University. She has been working with Roma communities in Hungary for over a decade.  Presently she is employed at Autonomia Foundation, a leading Hungarian NGO in the field of Roma integration. She has been involved in the planning of various social integration programs, ranging from large scale national programs to local initiatives. Her expertise covers internationally financed development programs, equal opportunities and anti-discrimination issues, community development, grant management, monitoring and evaluation.

She is one of the core partners of Integrom program, contributing to the design and development of the concept and methodology, bringing expertise in Roma integration, insights into the needs and problems of the Roma youth and the network of NGO partners into the program.

Contributor: Adam Kotsis

Contributor: Adam Kotsis

Adam is a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group in Budapest. He has had a key role at first developing and testing the idea of Integrom  and then shaping the program since its inception. He has been actively involved in its operative management and works currently on key tasks and directions for the next 3-5 years. Adam is a core member of BCG's People and Organization Practice area with a wide range of experience of working with organizations across sectors and industries during the last 10 years. As a psychologist by education he is passionate about changing individual and organizational behavior.

Contributor: Orsolya Kovacs

Contributor: Orsolya Kovacs

Orsolya is a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group in Budapest. Her consulting experience includes various projects across CEE and Middle East, focusing on organizational transformation, change management and efficiency improvement; with expertise in financial services, ICT and public sector. Recently, she spent 9 months supporting a public sector transformation initiative in the Middle East, and she was also one of the key contributors of the Integrom Program since 2013.

Previously, she has worked at the World Economic Forum, supporting the development and execution of a world-class leadership programme, the Global Leadership Fellows. She is also a former Global Director of AIESEC International, the world’s largest youth-run organization. In this capacity she designed strategies to develop over 60 000 young people across the world, and supported organizational development in 20 countries. In 2012, Orsolya was selected as a member of the Global Shapers of the World Economic Forum, a group of talented young people committed to make a difference in their communities.

Contributor: László Milutinovits

Contributor: László Milutinovits

László Milutinovits is a trainer and expert in non-formal education. László has been working on the operational management of Integrom since October 2014 and also contributed to the development of the program concept from the very beginning. In his professional life he has been active in the implementation of trainings in EU Youth Programmes since 2002, and took part in Training of Trainers by SALTO and in Training for Trainers in Human Rights Education by the Council of Europe. His specific field of expertise is the inclusion of young people with fewer opportunities, especially young Roma. He is passionate about working with visual aids at trainings and about graphic facilitation. At the moment he is involved in a youth policy review research in Hungary by OSF in 2014. He is dedicated to work with neighboring partner countries of the EU in South-East Europe and in the the countries of the Eastern Partnership and Russia - he also works as a SALTO accreditor of European Voluntary Service organizations in both regions.