Select Committee on Public Accounts Fifty-Sixth Report


1  Using Personal Advisers effectively

1. The 9,300 Personal Advisers employed by Jobcentre Plus operate from the newly created network of nearly 900 Jobcentre Plus offices and, in 2005-06, carried out 10.8 million interviews at a salary cost of £238 million. As a key element of the Government's Welfare to Work policies, advisers help people find work by diagnosing barriers to employment such as lack of skills, and assisting them to overcome these barriers by advising, for example, on making job applications and preparing for work. They also have a responsibility as a "gatekeeper" to the benefits system by ensuring that those who are required to do so are actively seeking work as a condition of receiving benefit.[2] Independent research, including from the OECD, suggests that assistance of the kind provided by Personal Advisers is linked with improvements in unemployment levels.[3]

2. Advisers assess the level of help that each customer needs, which will vary depending on the customer's situation and benefit status (Figure 2).[4] All jobseekers are required by statute to confirm every two weeks that they are actively seeking work and certain categories of people (such as those aged 18-24 who have been unemployed for six months) are required to take part in the New Deal programmes, involving job-search activities or training. For others—for example, single parents claiming Income Support—involvement on a New Deal is voluntary.

Figure 2: Jobcentre Plus offers different levels of support tailored to different needs
Customer situation and benefit status
Customer job-search approach
Interaction with Personal Adviser
Customers with significant barriers to employment e.g. illness/lack of childcare. Claiming either Income Support (IS) or Incapacity Benefit (IB) Find it difficult to look for a job until after underlying barriers to employment are addressed e.g. healthcare or childcare provision. Mandatory interviews at certain key times. Customer may volunteer to take part in more regular interviews.
Customers with poor employment history: either long-term unemployed or series of short Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA) claims alternating with short-term jobs. Likely reliance on Jobcentre Plus channels and New Deal provision for finding a job, particularly adviser job-searches. Likely to need to help to improve jobseeking skills. Mandatory interviews at certain key times. Must join New Deal programme at 18 months (six months for under 25s). Early entry to New Deal is available if appropriate.
Customers with good employment history, out of labour market for a while, e.g. parents returning to work. Claiming either JSA, IS or IB. Job search using a mixture of Jobcentre Plus and external channels, including jobpoints, Jobseeker Direct, newspapers and websites. May need training to update skills. A mixture of mandatory and voluntary help from the Personal Adviser, depending on benefits claimed and customer need.
Customers who have worked recently, e.g. made redundant. Short-term claimants of JSA. Typically follow up job vacancy adverts from Jobcentre Plus and externally, including newspapers, websites and Jobseeker Direct. Initial New Claim Interview. Advisers are encouraged to refer customers to external channels.
People already working who wish to change jobs, e.g. professionally qualified individuals. Not on benefit Typically use networking, private recruitment agencies, third party websites and trade journals to find a new job. None.

Source: Comptroller and Auditor General's Report

3. The amount of time that Personal Advisers spend advising customers and the quality of this contact is crucial to their effectiveness. Currently, around 52% of adviser time is spent interviewing customers.[5] Other time is spent in training, performance monitoring and completing paperwork. The percentage of customer-facing time that Personal Advisers spend with customers is lower than for benchmarked organisations abroad and in the private and voluntary sectors, some of which report customer interaction times of up to 80%.[6] While it may be true that Jobcentre Plus advisers carry out additional functions or work with a more challenging spectrum of customers, which makes comparisons difficult, there is clearly room to improve processes towards benchmark levels.

4. Personal Advisers' efficiency and effectiveness are constrained by a wide range of minor obstacles which can occur many times a week. These include customers failing to turn up or coming late (paragraph 10), but also include having to correct errors such as wrongly booked appointments made by contact centres, and diary management and IT problems. For example, advisers reported to the National Audit Office that on average the IT system ran slowly 10 times a week. Advisers also spend time completing paperwork and retyping information that cannot be copied from place to place because of limitations in the IT systems. Jobcentre Plus confirmed that its systems were undergoing a technology refresh to provide a more user-friendly system. They have also commissioned work which allows for the transfer of certain data across IT systems and are exploring further areas where duplication of input can be avoided.[7]

5. Jobcentre Plus acknowledges that the current average of 28 interviews per adviser per week may not be optimal and is working towards increasing it to 35 interviews a week, or approximately 65% of customer-facing time.[8] Measures include the introduction of 1,300 officers to provide support in managing diaries and take on some of the administrative burden. There will also be experienced adviser managers to help improve the quality of interviews and general staff management. Early indications are that these moves are leading to enhanced productivity.[9] Jobcentre Plus has to balance the drive to increase the number of people interviewed with the need to maintain a high quality service to help people move into work.[10]

6. The Welfare Reform Bill and the further roll out of the Pathways to Work approach to helping people off Incapacity Benefit through job advice and rehabilitation assistance are likely to increase the demand for adviser time,[11] but Jobcentre Plus was unable to say whether they would meet this demand by recruiting new staff, shortening interviews or outsourcing work, although their current plans do not include recruiting more staff. Radically shortening the length of interviews (which currently average 41 minutes) is also unlikely since these must remain effective in helping people find work, although the exact pattern or duration of interviews has not yet been decided.[12]

7. Ensuring that properly trained advisers are available to help customers with a range of needs is key to providing a good service. Around 45% of advisers had more than five year's experience and they are encouraged to obtain qualifications in advice and guidance. A system of quality assessments is now in place for advisers.[13] At the time of the Comptroller and Auditor General's report, Jobcentre Plus did not have accurate data on the numbers, location and specialism of its advisers.[14] Since then, the agency said the problem had been rectified and the effect of introducing a new Activity Based Management System was that for 2007-08 it had a more effective way of tracking the use of resources, including distinguishing between different grades of staff and incorporating staff costs, volumes and labour market interviews. An analysis of advisers by region suggests they have been deployed broadly to match customer numbers.[15]

8. In order to maintain or improve their quality, Jobcentre Plus must have an effective way of measuring their performance. Changes to the performance targets and monitoring regime mean that Jobcentre Plus will no longer be able to rate advisers' performance by looking at the records of job entries they generate.[16] Under the new regime, the number of people moving off benefits and into work will be measured at district level, but not by individual office or adviser. The Agency feels that monitoring the process and the compliance with interview standards are sufficient to assess performance, and are an acceptable alternative to measurable outcomes at the individual and office level. The number of successful job placements will still be known at the district and regional level, although there will be a time lag of a number of months in the information flow.[17]


2   C&AG's Report para 1, Q 28 Back

3   C&AG's Report para 19 Back

4   C&AG's Report para 6, Figure 5 Back

5   C&AG's Report, para 1, 48 Back

6   C&AG's Report, para 49 Back

7   Qq 61-63, Ev 1 Back

8   C&AG's Report, para 49 Back

9   C&AG's Report, para 46; Q3 Back

10   Q 14, Q 52 Back

11   Qq 3, 5 Back

12   C&AG's Report, para 34; Qq 6, 7, 8 Back

13   C&AG's Report, paras 38, 39; Q15 Back

14   C&AG's Report, para 36 Back

15   Q17; C&AG's Report, para 35; Ev 1 Back

16   Qq 9, 10, 11, 55 Back

17   C&AG's Report, paras 44, 44, 45; Qq 9, 10, 11; Ev 1 Back


 
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Prepared 9 October 2007