Establishing partnerships with
employers
112. Ms Scott of Tomorrow's People emphasised that
the aftercare service offered by Tomorrow's People was one where
they kept in touch with both employee and employer: "You
cannot separate the care you give them both because it is a tripartite
arrangement to keep them in work."[114]
She added:
"The more work we can do with employers
to help them understand [the adjustments former long-term claimants
have to make], so that they do not just write people off because
in the first couple of months they do not show for work for whatever
reason, the more you can do about that, the more you can get them
involved, the better. We have proved that in our aftercare service
and retention rates and feedback from employers".[115]
113. Similarly, the Shaw Trust said that they had
built up an ongoing relationship with employers: "In dealing
with employers generally, we know how to build up the right kind
of approach for the employer to come back to us should there be
any problem and that is what tends to happen...Quite often when
I go round employers I hear them saying that it is a lot better
dealing with us than with the other New Deals where nobody seems
to care".[116]
114. In the US projects we visited, engagement with
employers as part of the post-employment service was a feature
of most of the programmes. In the Seattle Jobs Initiative (SJI),
for example, staff had developed training for companies taking
on SJI 'graduates', designed to improve the 'soft skills' of supervisors
of diverse, entry level workers. Training was offered to provide
supervisors with the practical skills to understand the transition
entry level workers had to make from their home life to a work
setting and to help them implement strategies to get the best
out of their new staff. [117]
Implicit in such work was the development of an ongoing relationship
with employers who were able and willing to take on former benefit
recipients from disadvantaged backgrounds.[118]
115. We recommend that Jobcentre Plus builds up
its relations with employers taking New Deal recruits, encouraging
them to develop induction programmes, and the use of mentors,
and to give feedback and support to assist entry level employees
to progress.
116. One possible concern in encouraging Jobcentre
Plus to pay more attention to the retention and advancement of
former benefit claimants is that staff will inevitably prioritise
those customers who are more likely to produce better results
ie the more job-ready. The emphasis on retention may lead
to the perverse outcome of less attention being paid to the harder
to help. This would clearly defeat the Government's current strategy
of focussing more attention on people disadvantaged in the labour
market. During the course of our previous inquiry into the ONE
pilots (which preceded the introduction of Jobcentre Plus), we
visited the Netherlands, where we were impressed by a grading
system of identifying a person's job readiness (or lack of it)
at an early stage of their claiming benefit. Resources and focussed
employment help then followed, based on the degree of 'distance
from the labour market'.[119]
The advantage of such a system is that, by identifying degrees
of job readiness, staff resources can be targeted accordingly
to ensure that the harder to help groups are not overlooked and,
indeed, are given more intensive assistance. For this to happen,
two steps are needed. Claimants' job-readiness needs to be identified
at an early stage of their claim; and advisers need to be rewarded
for the progress they make in moving people closer to the labour
market.
117. In the UK, the present approach is to increase
the amount and type of help and support to people as the duration
of unemployment or non-employment increases. The Government argued,
in its reply to our report on lessons for Jobcentre Plus from
the ONE pilots, that this approach provided a more accurate measure
of an individual's distance from the labour market and enabled
resources to be properly targeted. People with particular needs
- poor basic skills, ex-offenders, and those with disabilities
were 'fast-tracked' through.[120]
In the American employment projects we visited, there was similarly
a general consensus that the labour market was the best judge
of a person's employability. However, we were impressed by the
approach in Oregon where 'letting the market decide' did not mean
leaving people to take their chances on their own. Welfare claimants
were offered intensive 'workforce development' training in worksearch
techniques, self-presentation, in-work financial support and how
to access the Internet. Thereafter, they attended the equivalent
of Jobcentres on a daily basis where they were offered access
to facilities such as the internet, and telephones to help in
jobsearch. Weekly networking classes were held, with outside speakers,
to encourage people and to share experiences.
118. In the UK, where a wider group of people have
access to benefit, many of whom are job-ready, it is not easy
immediately to replicate this approach. We believe, however, that
there is a case for identifying a claimant's distance from the
labour market at an early stage in order to help those people
who need it by providing intensive support in accessing the labour
market. We repeat our recommendation, made in our report on
lessons from the ONE pilots,[121]
that protocols be developed to assist Personal Advisers to explore,
in a more systematic and consistent manner, a new claimant's work
readiness and the barriers they face.
119. It is also important to give advisers the incentive
actively to engage with harder to help groups in moving them closer
to the labour market. Currently, the Jobcentre Plus performance
targets are focussed on measuring job outcomes. We consider that
the Government should be seeking to develop a new range of targets,
aimed at measuring 'distance travelled' towards labour market
participation by clients who are not immediately job-ready. These
targets would aim to measure improvements in employability achieved
through the intervention of Jobcentre Plus, either alone or through
its network of providers. We are pleased that the DWP has taken
on board the recommendations made in our report on the ONE pilots
and is considering possible measures of 'distance travelled' as
part of the development work for the 2003-04 Performance and Resources
Agreement.[122]
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