Abstract:

Context of the research:
Hashtag Objectif Pro (HOP!) is a program financed by the Caisse des Dépôts via the Plan d'Investissement dans les Compétences (PIC) of the French Ministry of Labor. The project proposes a contribution to the sustainable professional inclusion of people who are far from employment and live in the Priority Urban Neighborhoods (French QPV) in a context of precariousness, difficulties in socio-professional integration, and distance from a world of work. Its objective is to mobilize participants toward employment in the QPVs of the three French regions. One objective of the program is to bring the public closer to the professional world by anticipating the 21st-century skills needed for nowadays jobs. The HOP! project includes various group and individual activities.

Objectives and hypotheses:
The objective of the Hop! project research is to determine whether and under what conditions a program using active pedagogies can develop confidence and “soft skills” in participants. We predict that participants who took part in the HOP! project will significantly develop their Well-Being, Psychological Capital, Self-Esteem, and 21st Century Skills.

Method (participants, material, and procedure):
At mid-term, 322 participants (M=35.9; SD=11.9; 172 women, 128 men) were recruited from three regions in France. Only 38 have finished the program and answered post-tests.
Participants were evaluated at the beginning and at the end of the collective workshops, answering online to a sociodemographic questionnaire, as well as four psychometric questionnaires measuring three constructs: 1) Wellbeing: Satisfaction With Life (SWLS; Diener, Emmons, Larsen, Griffin, 1985), and French Flourishing Scale (VV; Villieux, Sovet, Jung, & Guilbert, L., 2016); 2) A french version of Psychological Capital: Compound Psychological Capital (CPC-12; Lorenz, Beer, Putz, & Heinitz, 2016); 3) Self-Esteem: Multidimensional Self-Esteem Scale (EMES-16; Barbot, ​​Safont-Mottay, & Oubrayrie-Roussel, 2019); And 4) 21st Century Skills: Self-report questionnaire created by our research team.

Results:
Results presented no significant improvement for psychological capital, nor for 21st-century skills. Nevertheless, they showed a significant improvement of both scales measuring participants’ well-being: SWLS (t = - 4.08; p < .001), and VV (t = -2.01; p = .026), as well as a significant increase in one dimension of the self-esteem scale (EMES-16, physical dimension; t = - 2.14; p = .02). Effect sizes measured through Cohen’s delta were moderate, and vary from the Flourishing Scale (d = - 0.33) to the Satisfaction with life scale (d = - 0.66).

Discussion:
The results of well-being indicators are consistent with previous findings in similar reemployment programs (Celume, 2021). The significant augmentation of the physical dimension of self-esteem can be explained either by the self-confidence augmentation expressed by the participants during complementary qualitative evaluation or by the different barriers expressed freely by participants concerning these particular questions. In consequence, results will be further discussed with the audience in these terms. The non-significance of the 21st-century skills can be explained by the fact that the tool is still under construction and model fit hasn't yet been adjusted, and because of the small sample that responded to this particular scale (n = 18).

Keywords:

Reemployment, 21st century skills, wellbeing, self-esteem.