According to the latest EPA, the unemployment rate in Catalonia is 8.5%, a lower percentage than that of Spain as a whole (11.8%) and slightly higher than the EU average (5.9%). However, large figures can sometimes hide the realities of vulnerable groups. This is the case of people with autism, whose unemployment rate is estimated at between 76% and 90%, according to data from the Autism Spain Confederation.
The difficulty of this group to access the labor market and the personal relationship with autism was what led Thorkil Sonne to found Specialisterne in Denmark and Francesc Sistach to lead the project in Spain starting in 2013. This social enterprise is based in Sant Cugat and offers human resources services to other companies, with the particularity that all the workers they recruit for their clients have autism or similar diagnoses. The company has had the help of ACCIÓ, the Government agency for business competitiveness, through the strategy coupon line to consolidate its business model and aid for competitiveness reinforcement initiatives for a business cooperation project in the cluster field.
"We started developing projects mainly in the IT and finance sectors because people on the autism spectrum ---which is a term that better reflects the diversity of the group--- are very detail-oriented and in certain tasks in both sectors this is very important," explains Francesc Sistach, CEO of Specialisterne. Currently, the company's specialization continues to be in these activities, but it also carries out other projects in which Specialisterne staff work face-to-face with the public, as is the case of the workers who attend visitors at Casa Batlló.
Specialisterne was founded by Thorkil Sonne in 2004. He was driven by the fact that his son was diagnosed with autism and Sonne, who at the time worked for a technology company, thought that the skills of this group could be very useful in that industry, while also providing a solution for their complicated labor integration.
The model worked and began to expand internationally through a method similar to franchises and, in 2013, it was also established in Spain. Francesc Sistach —whose daughter also has autism— was tasked with studying the project's viability and, finally, it was he who launched it, along with Ramon Bernat, from the founding family of Chupa Chups, and has led it until today.
Currently, the company based in Sant Cugat has absorbed most of Specialisterne's subsidiaries, which is why operations in Italy, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, the United States, and Australia are managed from Catalonia, among other countries. Adding all markets, revenues are 20 million euros, the organization has 200 employees who manage the company and another 300 workers hired by Specialisterne, but who work for one of its clients.
Consolidation and synergies
"The goal for the next year is to consolidate all markets currently managed from Sant Cugat so that we find synergies and start working more coordinately. Later, we want to penetrate new markets that are very interesting due to their size, such as the United Kingdom or Germany," says Sistach.
Specialisterne's client portfolio in Spain is made up of large financial companies such as CaixaBank, Sabadell, BBVA, and Santander, and, globally, it also collaborates with technology giants such as IBM and SAP. "In part, they bet on us to promote CSR, but, above all, because the workers we provide are very well prepared, are eager to do well, and have a very low turnover rate in sectors where most employees change jobs very often," indicates Sistach.
Specialisterne also participates in the Catalunya Clústers program of ACCIÓ, as members of the Mental Health Cluster, through which the project "creation of digital talent within neurodiversity" has been promoted. Specialisterne and other entities such as Esade Creapolis, Worsley, Acceleralia and Gentis, coordinated by the Digital Cluster, have participated in this initiative, and its objective is to make known the value that neurodivergent people (autism, Asperger's syndrome, ADD/ADHD, dyslexia, etc.) can bring to tasks related to the digital world, as well as to develop the necessary mechanisms to effectively incorporate them into organizations, thus providing an extra boost in competitiveness.