About This Prize

XPRIZE

COVID-19 will have massive economic ramifications. In the United States alone, 20+ million jobs have been lost in just two months.

But some occupations are, or probably will be, in higher demand: health-care and elderly-care work, teaching (especially online), sanitation.

Our prize designers and sponsors are adapting the idea of a Workforce Prize to:

• Provide an affordable, customizable, and scalable learning tool;
• Help vulnerable populations learn new occupational skills and find work;
• Assist individuals to rapidly enter new, emerging fields; and
• Place low/underpaid individuals into more gainful positions.

Incorporating elements from other ideas for prize competitions, the winning team in this prize will:

• Rapidly train 500 low-skill, low-education individuals at no entry cost to the individual. The team will achieve at least a 50% reduction in standard training time for the chosen occupation. Training must be conducted in 60 days or less. The occupation must be one that provides a living wage and is growing faster than the national average.
• Place as many as possible of its cohort into jobs in the chosen occupation within the following 60 days.
• Support the workers to ensure job retention of at least 90 days.
• Demonstrate exponential adoption by deploying the training solutions for two other occupations in different industries, and placing 5,000 individuals into relevant jobs (same conditions for occupations, individuals and training time) in 10 months.

Please share your feedback on the overall prize idea here, or answer our specific questions in the discussion sub-category.

NickOttens

More on the expected job losses:

Goldman Sachs predicts that more than 2 million Americans will file for unemployment claims by next week, pointing to "an unprecedented surge in layoffs this week."

NickOttens

The latest version of our prize design would challenge competing teams to recruit and train at least 1,000 workers in a given profession, cut the usual training time for those professions in half, and place trained workers in a job for at least 100 days.

We'd like to hear from you:

• Is the 1,000 trainees goal audacious enough, too audacious, or just right?
• Should competing teams be able to screen out candidates for their programs based on parameters such as educational attainment and income?

Please also feel free to share other feedback here.

NickOttens

Thank you for all your feedback as we continue to develop this prize design!

Our latest thinking is to challenge teams in this competition to develop and deploy a scalable training, job placement, and retention solution to:

• Train 500 workers in 30 days for an occupation that provides a living wage and is growing faster than the national average.
• Place those 500 workers into new occupations with 60 days.
• Retain those workers in their new jobs for at least 90 days.

Please let us know:

• Is training 500 workers enough for teams to prove their solution is scalable?
• What are the barriers to rapidly upskilling workers?

ramdhanyk

I think training 500 workers is a good place to start to test the scalability. The challenge really is the <$100/- price point around this effort. Still need to see what are the jobs that they will be trained for. Especially in COVID situation, if the training is more around training in work from home jobs, then there is cost of technology infrastructure that will add up.

jordangiali

Thank you for your feedback @ramdhanyk

What kinds of tech costs do you recommend we keep in mind? Are you referring to devices like VR headsets? Thanks!

ramdhanyk

I am thinking about the cost of a computers/laptops, good internet connection and any cloud infrastructure that is required to provide the learning. VR headsets could be part of the consideration depending on the training needs.

NickOttens

I've updated the opening post. We've landed on the following challenge for teams competing in this prize:

• Rapidly train 500 low-skill, low-education individuals at no entry cost to the individual. The team will achieve at least a 50% reduction in standard training time for the chosen occupation. Training must be conducted in 60 days or less. The occupation must be one that provides a living wage and is growing faster than the national average.
• Place as many as possible of its cohort into jobs in the chosen occupation within the following 60 days.
• Support the workers to ensure job retention of at least 90 days.
• Demonstrate exponential adoption by deploying the training solutions for two other occupations in different industries, and placing 5,000 individuals into relevant jobs (same conditions for occupations, individuals and training time) in 10 months.

Thank you all for your feedback, which helped us arrive at these figures and conditions!