Conclusions and recommendations
1. The Department for Work and Pensions faces
the difficult task of assisting more than 1 million people on
benefit into work, many of whom are lone parents, older workers
out of the job market for many years and people on Incapacity
Benefit. To meet this
challenge, Jobcentre Plus should regularly segment its hard to
help customers so that it has reliable up-to-date information
on their specific requirements. Combined with good knowledge of
employers' short and medium term skill needs and available training
opportunities, it should then be better placed to provide advice
and support that is likely to be effective. The tax and benefit
system should be neutral in terms of giving mothers a choice to
stay at home or work.
2. Compared with other organisations offering
similar services, advisers within Jobcentre Plus spend an average
of around 20% less time face-to-face with customers.
It is currently aiming to increase customer facing time from around
52% to 65% by increasing the average number of interviews a week
from 28 to 35 per adviser wherever possible. To do so while maintaining
the quality of the contact and without putting advisers under
pressure to reduce the average length of an interview, Jobcentre
Plus should: take care to protect advisers from unnecessary administrative
work; keep interruptions to interviews to a minimum by protecting
privacy within the open plan office environment; and allow more
discretion and flexibility to advisers on how they handle individual
cases.
3. Considerable amounts of repetitious, time-consuming
paperwork reduce the amount of time Personal Advisers can spend
with customers. Jobcentre Plus should
reduce the current paperwork used by Personal Advisers in the
same way that the Department for Work and Pensions has recently
reviewed and rationalised its suite of leaflets after National
Audit Office scrutiny. Specifically, it could reduce the need
to write customer details on many forms by having a way of capturing
them just once; using coversheets showing a change in date or
time and so replacing the need to complete a whole new set of
paperwork; and by amalgamating similar forms.
4. The new Diary/Administrative Support Officers
will free up advisers from administrative work but administrative
support is often the first casualty of attempts to reduce costs
or staff numbers. It would be counterproductive
not to treat the Support Officers as essential to front line delivery
in any consideration of job reductions, given the benefits in
having support staff to manage diaries, remind customers of their
appointments and complete necessary paperwork. Any consideration
of changes amongst these staff should take into account the significant
gains derived from freeing up personal advisers, including the
savings in benefit secured by helping people into work.
5. In 2005-06,
customers failed to attend around 1.8 million scheduled interviews,
whilst customers turned up late on average for around one in six
interviews. Non-attendance at interviews costs £16 million
and together with late attendance wastes personal adviser time.
Jobcentre Plus could do more to remind customers of their responsibilities
and take practical steps to secure timely attendance or early
notification of non-attendance. In particular, it could schedule
appointments for non-Jobseeker's Allowance customers at appropriate
times (for example, avoiding school hours for parents) and take
account of the availability of local transport for rural customers;
highlight better the key appointment details on letters (for example,
with different coloured paper); use text messages and phone calls
to remind customers of impending appointments; and keep records
of those who arrive late for appointments and targeting them for
remedial action, particularly those who may lead disordered lives.
6. The productivity of Personal Advisers is
affected by slow or problematic IT, with nearly half of advisers
experiencing delays daily. Many of the
shortcomings in the IT system are simple but nevertheless irritating
for staff and reduce their efficiency, for example, by requiring
them to rekey identical information for every new customer or
by making it hard to print out information they need. Changing
IT systems can be costly but given what the Department pays its
supplier for IT support it should press for simple improvements
in order to help save adviser time.
7. Nearly two-thirds of advisers surveyed
said that recent reforms within Jobcentre Plus had not made their
jobs easier. It would be unreasonable
to expect advisers to be protected from all changes elsewhere
in the organisation, but the business cases for significant organisational
reforms within the agency should include a robust assessment of
the impact on Personal Advisers, who, by helping people to find
work, and thus helping reduce benefit dependency, can make a significant
contribution to saving public money.
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