"CONTEXT/BACKGROUND Erasmus+ Program has set the objective of fighting unemployment through training and education, stating that “EU businesses need to become more competitive through talent and innovation” (see Part A of the GUIDE). The project SOCS aims to address this goal by improving learning provisions tailored to the specific needs of organisations or people who have HR and organizational development tasks. SMEs (especially social enterprises), Start-Ups or young entrepreneurs are very often low budgeted and therefore do not have the financial means to develop and install tools and trainings to further develop their business and the competencies of their teams. It is usually impossible for them to hire an external counsellor to support them in their strategical plan. OBJECTIVESThus, the objective of the SOCS project is to improve empreneurial practice by improving the skills of the responsible staff, especially those in charge in small organizations by the approach of symbol work. During the two years project period, partners aim to intentify the areas of interventions most needed by the targets, by finding the existing tools most adequate for use, adapt them if needed or to develop new tools based on symbol work, especially for the final download versions or online versions of the tools for free use. RESULTS:Regarding the specific Intellectual Outputs Partners aim to focus on the different intervention areas of business counselling: IO1 - Symbol - Toolset for Strategical Organizational DevelopmentIO2 - Symbol - Toolset for Team DevelopmentIO3 - Symbol - Toolset for efficient Communication and Conflict InterventionsIO4 - Symbol - Toolset for Work Place - Quality Check and Evaluation of Staff Satisfactionand to ensure their multiplication and mainstreaming, via an effective dissemination and exploitation strategy.METHOD & INNOVATION The specific approach with symbol work will lead to empowerment of the targets, to self-activation, taking self-responsible decision for their business, build their capacities in problem identification and developing effective action plans to solve problems. Visualisation will be used as a very precious technique to create new responses instead of only dealing and being pushed by day to day business. Symbols help to express preconscious attitudes and mental barriers, even blind spots and get more clearness about future actions. 3 out of the 5 Partners learned the power of working with Symbols in two previous Erasmus+ projects ""SymfoS, Symbols for Success"" (developed for professional orientators/counsellors working with the target group of young people on their professional orientation and integration"" and SymfoS for Youth Care"" (developed for youth workers dealing with young people in youth care system to overcome their problems). Both projects proved the impact of symbol work in regard to self-activation of the users in assessing and solving their problems and the potential of making aware new resources. Therefore, the partners decided that they want to further develop the tools being effective in individual intervention measures to the field of their original activities - business counselling - as they see a huge potential in this method. PARTICIPANTSOrganisational counsellors, Consultants, Business owners, Entrepreneurs, especially young entrepreneurs, organizational and human resources managers, organizational and human resources management students, technicians for organisational development and HR decisions in organisations, start-up founders.DESCRIPTION OF ACTIVITIESThe results will be developed in a 5 steps process:Step 1: Transnational screening with at least 6 interviews per country Step 2: Draft Symbol - Toolset (Tool creation, validation with 25 targets, Training-Guidelines)Step 3: Testing of Training Version & transfer to online version (test with 125 targets)Step 4: EvaluationStep 5: Dissemination and MainstreamingIMPACT• SOCS fosters the recognition of own strengths, skills and resources and goals which needed to be set• SOCS provides low but effective threshold service compared to text-based methods• SOCS develops an entire counselling process, containing clearing, design of pathways and creation of action plans. • SOCS works as it provides a holistic systemic approach The long-term impact on the target groups will be that SOCS will improve their skills in the following ways:- help them to apply strategies for development which suit to their business- Develop their innovation management and innovation skill and help them to adopt innovation as part of their day-to-day work- drive economic growth, through innovation and adaption in their work- improve their overall economic situation, by creating new opportunities for themselves and their staff members- come up with solutions for problems as processes and change will be accelerated or shortcut- improve company culture and working climate by more efficient team development."