Creating Employment Opportunities for Special Needs Individuals
The problem statement posed to the students centred around how the company can use Iron Supper Club / Iron Nori as a platform to increase awareness regarding employing individuals with special needs, a cause the company has been advocating.
The collaboration was an inaugural interaction facilitated by Company of Good between Iron Nori and SMU. SMU students worked in 6 groups of 7 to 8 students each to develop ideas for the company. Other than the faculty member, student teams were also mentored and guided by the company executives. The process involved the students studying and understanding the operations of the company, interviewing crew members and special needs beneficiaries to understand their standpoints etc., before proposing ideas and presenting them to the client team at the end of the course.
In the end, students proposed creative and holistic ideas to help increase patronage to the special needs restaurant. The end goal was to increase the awareness of the social cause, and surface the challenges of special needs individuals at work.
Iron Nori began implementing some of these ideas, such as the need to increase the use of videos and animations on social media platforms. The company also started marketing efforts on Telegram chat groups. The proposed ideas from the students were opportune, as the company stepped into the COVID-19 circuit breaker phase, right after the students’ presentation. Marketing efforts became crucial, in order to ensure survival of the special needs restaurant. Unknown to all prior to the collaboration, the proposals helped to preserve the mere existence of this special needs brand before the restaurant re-opening in June 2020 during COVID-19 Phase 2.
“We saw the partnership as a first opportunity to share the challenges of special needs employment with the tertiary crowd. It was an excellent chance to create awareness of the special needs community… We were particularly impressed when we found out that the student teams made an effort to visit the 116/118 Tanjong Pagar restaurant incognito. Furthermore, the teams also took their initiative to interview crew members to better understand their experiences. Empathy is key to design thinking, and we certainly witnessed this trait in the undergraduates.” - Bernard Chan, Operations Consultant at Iron Nori.
