Directorates
·	Director General's Office
·	Data Development
·	Strategic Evaluations
·	Partnership and Continuous Evaluations
Publications
·	Evaluation Reports
·	Evaluation Briefs
·	Labour Market Development Agreement Series
·	Lessons Learned Series
·	Evaluation Tool Kit Series
·	Evaluation Forum Newsletter
·	From Theory To Practice

• Introduction
• Project Description
• Evaluation Approach
• Key Findings
• Success
• Conclusion

Introduction

This brief summarizes the findings from a process evaluation of Success Nova Scotia 2000, a Strategic Initiative funded jointly by the governments of Canada and Nova Scotia. The evaluation was managed by a Federal-Provincial Committee with representation from Human Resources Development Canada and the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Culture.

Project Description

The Strategic Initiatives Program, announced in the Federal Budget of February 1994, is a five-year Federal-Provincial cost-shared program to test innovative ideas about social security reform. Pilots considered for funding include those that are designed to test new options for reform in training, income security and social services, and learning; to explore ways to help people move from welfare to work; and to find more cost-effective approaches to labour market programs.

Success Nova Scotia 2000 (SNS 2000) is funded through a federal-provincial cooperation agreement between Human Resources Development Canada and the Nova Scotia Department of Education and Culture. A project budget of $13.8 million over five fiscal years (1994-1999) has been designated to provide assistance for an estimated 3000 clients.

SNS 2000 is intended to facilitate labour market entry for post-secondary students. SNS 2000 is also intended to assist employers to better understand the direct relationship between their investment in human resources and lifelong learning and their business success.

SNS 2000 has the following formal objectives:

• to establish partnerships between the educational sector and the private sector;
• to enable students to gain work experience relevant to their career goals;
• to assist the private sector to benefit from the information and new ideas that students bring;
• to assist students in obtaining the necessary financial resources to continue in post-secondary education;
• to encourage self-sufficiency by defining the role of entrepreneurship and life-long learning in career/life planning; and
• to facilitate work-based training opportunities for young women, visible minorities, aboriginal peoples and persons with disabilities.

SNS 2000 comprises the following two components:

1. Nova Scotia Links Program: NS Links is designed to facilitate labour market entry for post-secondary students through career-related work placements. Employers hire students and receive a wage subsidy of 75 per cent of hourly wage in year 1 which declines to zero over the life of the project. Internship placements are for 12 to 18 weeks in three semesters: January-April; May-August; and September-December.

   In its first year ended September 1995, NS Links completed two work terms with 310 students and 220 employers taking part. Total funding for the program to the time of the evaluation was $1.63 million in wage subsidies provided by the public sector sponsors and $0.54 million contributed by employers.

2. Training Culture Communications Strategy: The TCCS component consists of a communications strategy delivered through an awareness campaign that emphasizes creating a learning culture within the private sector. The Communications Strategy is presently in the implementation stage and is not included in this evaluation.

Evaluation Approach

The process evaluation reviews the first year of implementation of SNS 2000 and examined issues related to program design and delivery as well as preliminary outcomes. Information sources included: a review of the literature, interviews with stakeholders, focus groups with program stakeholders, case studies on the implementation of NS Links within the First Nations and African Nova Scotian communities, and a survey of 100 student participants and 36 employer participants.

Key Findings

Project Design
The innovative features of NS Links include training modules for students and a strong emphasis on facilitating the development of a learning culture for employers and students in Nova Scotia. The Links training modules element is the main feature that differentiates the program from other similar work-placement programs. The three modules link the student's work experience with career planning and goals, entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency. Nearly 60 percent of participants viewed the entrepreneurship component as the most useful in guiding their career.

NS Links participants with experience working in both large and small companies reported being given greater responsibility and a greater variety of tasks in the small business. Interestingly, close to 90 percent of employers who have never hired students before participating in NS Links have less than five employees. A focus on marketing the program to small business employers would encourage this group to hire post-secondary students for the first time.

The Links program has been flexible and adaptable in its eligibility criteria for employers. This flexibility is shown in the shift from focusing placements in emerging sectors to community-based placements which respond to the needs of those regions with few companies in the emerging economy. Such an approach may be necessary if Links is to be applicable throughout the province. Nevertheless, an account of the long-term potential of industries may be necessary to ensure students obtain the skills required in the labour market in the future.

The NS Links initiative is meant to provide access to the job market for students not enrolled in a co-operative education program. However, the early awareness of Links amongst co-op coordinators, the coincident timing of the initial Links work terms with co-op work terms, and the strong networking capabilities of post-secondary co-op programs resulted in co-op students getting 40 percent of the work placements in the 1995 work terms. Many co-op students indicated in both the focus groups and the survey that they felt they would have found career-related work placements without Links financial assistance.

Partnership Building
Partnerships are a key element in the organizational structure of the NS Links initiative. Regional Working Groups consisting of representatives from local business and industry, relevant government departments, community and student organizations and educational institutions are being established across the province to develop and administer NS Links within their specific region. A Provincial Steering Committee has been set up to provide advice and guidance regarding the development and implementation of the program.

In the initial implementation, Regional Working Groups questioned the policy of identifying appropriate sectors for the Halifax region and applying this to the province. It was believed that decisions on the appropriateness of businesses and industries for internships should be made in reference to each region's economic and community development plans. Subsequently key government agencies such as the Regional Development Authorities were included as part of the Regional Working Groups to assist in ensuring an appropriate community development response.

NS Links is committed to ensuring that students from equity groups can benefit from the Links Program. This commitment is built into the NS Links Agreement and reflected in the Links Multicultural Facilitation Program established as a pilot under Links. The strengths of this pilot are twofold: it is driven by the needs of the First Nations (Mi'kmaq) community, and; it is administered by Mi'kmaq educators. This agreement sets a valuable precedent in terms of administrative flexibility while respecting the integrity of the Links philosophy and intent. Comprehensive strategies remain to be developed to ensure all equity group students have an opportunity to benefit from Links.

Success

Student Impacts
NS Links participants viewed the program as a valuable addition to their knowledge base. The opportunity to practice skills learned in class while working alongside experienced colleagues was cited as perhaps the single most important benefit of the internship. Nearly 75 percent of participants surveyed rated the linkage between career goals and skills and experience developed in the internship as "strong" or "very strong".

For the non co-op students, NS Links provided "the edge" required to obtain employment in their field of study. Non co-op students indicated that prior to the establishment of NS Links, they had not been able to find summer employment in their field of study. As well, all the non co-op students interviewed in the focus group agreed that the work experience acquired through NS Links will assist them in obtaining permanent work in their field in the future.

After completing their placements, 95 percent of the co-op and 52 percent of non co-op students returned to school. Of the non co-op students that did not return to school after their placement --37 percent had a career-related job; 7 percent a job not related to career plans; and 5 percent were unemployed. Overall, two-thirds of the 34 co-op and non co-op students who found a job after their placement were hired by their NS Links employer. Close to nine out of 10 of the Links students who were working had career-related jobs.

Employer Impacts
NS Links has made progress in reaching employers that may not have considered hiring students in the past. The evaluation "employer survey" asked 36 randomly selected employers from the 1995 summer term about the frequency of their student hiring. The results showed that NS Links succeeded in attracting new employers to the program 25 percent of the time; some 17 percent of these employers represented new companies. Two thirds of the employers-- mainly larger firms--already had a long term commitment to hiring students, either on a "frequent" or "always" basis.

Employer attitudes towards learning were not strongly affected. Some 51 percent of employers indicated they were already committed to "learning" and; 55 percent of employers reported they were already involved with the postsecondary education system in Nova Scotia. Some 61 percent reported that their Links experience will not cause them to increase their involvement with the post-secondary system, while 36 percent reported they will increase their involvement.

In addition to the evaluation survey, information based on evaluation forms completed by employers after the summer workterm showed very positive results in terms of satisfaction with the process, the student and the benefits of the program for their organization. About 88 percent of the 80 employers who completed an Evaluation Form reported they would hire the student for a full-time job if one were available.

The employer evaluation asked employers about the level of commitment to hiring students based on varying subsidy rates. Support for hiring begins to decline after the subsidy rate drops below 50 percent. At this point, employers feel that costs of employing a student outweigh the benefits. This situation is more likely true for small companies than large--the employer survey indicates many employers have hired co-op students for years without wage subsidies. Large companies were more likely to "always" hire than small companies.

Conclusion

NS Links is doing a good job in helping Nova Scotia students to obtain career-related work experience. Non co-op students, many of whom had completed their studies, especially benefited from the program by obtaining career-related employment following their work placement. Focusing the program on non co-op students is recommended and would be expected over the longer-term to produce larger incremental benefits to NS Links.

Employers are generally pleased with the program and support its goals of student development. The program has encouraged some employers, particularly smaller companies, to hire students where they would not have done so in the past. Greater emphasis should be given to encouraging small business to participate in NS Links. This would increase commitment to the adoption of a learning culture and recognize the importance of internships. It would also enhance the learning objectives of students and lend support to the NS Links entrepreneurial objectives.