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 othersfor
example, single parents claiming Income Supportinvolvement
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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