2 December 2009
Work Foundation speech
Rt Hon Jim Knight MP
Minister of State for Employment and Welfare Reform
[Check against delivery]
A hundred years ago the first Labour Exchanges were opened around the country. They had four entrances – for men, women, employers and children.
Twenty five years ago, as a young actor, I was signing on. They had two offices – one just like the famous scene from “The Full Monty” – floor to ceiling perspex screens, and everything screwed down; the other known colloquially as the “Joke Shop” where you went to look for work.
Today much has changed.
In 2002 we created Jobcentre Plus – linking the Employment Service and the Benefits Agency. For the first time making the connection between claiming benefits and looking for work. Jobcentres now, are very far from the dreary hopeless places they were in the 80s recession.
We have come a long way, Jobcentres are brighter, more welcoming, and the service has vastly improved in focussing people on getting back into work.
By making those early changes we were able to create a service that, when faced with the biggest global recession for 70 years, was flexible enough to respond to the challenge.
It has been a huge test for the service as the numbers coming through the door have almost doubled; we’ve invested an extra five billion pounds, recruited 16,000 more staff and raised productivity hugely.
And the results speak for themselves.
People continue to receive their benefits on time, despite the rise in numbers.
400,000 fewer people unemployed today than experts were predicting at the Budget, saving the taxpayer around £2 billion.
Over half still come off Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) within three months.
Long-term youth claimant unemployment is an eighteenth of what it was in the early 90s recession.
It is this resilience, this ability to weather the storm, that has created an award winning service. Jobcentre Plus has won three major awards in the last month alone for its response to the recession and I want to add my congratulations and thanks for their fantastic achievements this year.
And I want to say a special thank you to the outgoing Chief Executive Mel Groves for his excellent leadership, his steady hand and his thoughtful management of the service. I also want to welcome and introduce to you to the incoming Chief Executive Darra Singh who will continue some of the really marvellous work Jobcentre Plus is doing, and who I know will lead the agency with enthusiasm and vigour.
But this year has also shown that a service designed for a narrow set of customers who were unemployed when we were close to full employment, is some way from being a universal, personal, 21st century service.
And that is where we need the service to be.
This feels like the right time to take a moment for reflection, to think about the next stage of reform because as we move into recovery the lessons we have learned from the recession need to be acted on.
And this is also the right time to focus on delivery.
Having spent three years as schools minister I am used to more attention on the performance of schools and teachers than on education policy. Yet it feels like this critical service to help people into work gets nowhere near enough attention.
We will soon be publishing a white paper on getting Britain back to work setting out tangible next steps – but we can publish as many documents on welfare reform as we like but they don’t amount to much without good delivery.
And we can hark on about the use of the private sector, and third sector partners but they only serve a fraction of the people who come through the doors of Jobcentre Plus.
Currently 90 per cent of jobseekers go nowhere near our providers because they come off JSA within 12 months thanks to support from Jobcentre Plus.
They are our customers and we must listen to what they say about the service.
Those are fantastic endorsements of what we’ve got right.
But we should also listen to the same customers, as well as our staff and employers, when we are thinking about the future.
The advice and support Jobcentre Plus offers should be available to everyone, whether unemployed or in work, whether claiming benefits or not.
The Jobcentre Plus of the future: a universal employment service, putting customers at the centre, acting as a broker for employers, with expert staff delivering personal advice and support. A service that makes the best use of technology, is part of a new style of public services, and whose success is measured on the numbers getting in to and staying in work.
This is not about big or small government.
Jobcentre Plus currently employs some 83,000 people. By any definition this is big government, but it is doing a great job.
Those that argue for small government don’t believe in this service – it’s as if they want to turn the clock back – to when the majority washed their hands of the poor whose only option was to seek help from charities. That’s not progress.
The future has to be different.
It will be forms of one-to-one government.
It will be a service that runs alongside you, the citizen, enabling you to get on but being there to help when you need it.
I believe that people are best served when they are treated as people, when they are recognised as individuals who are in charge of their own destinies, who are able to make their own choices and manage their own support.
Over the last decade we have been working to make the services we all use are more flexible, more responsive and increasingly able to look at a person as a whole – not as part of a process or a number.
Twelve years ago the Government pledged to fix public services.
We had to do some big things as Government to quickly make a difference.
The literacy and numeracy hours, the New Deal, waiting time targets in the NHS.
The public sector needed investment and it needed a big commitment and push from government to improve.
But then we were able to start to personalise.
Not only have we repaired but we’ve reformed.
We have pushed power out from the centre giving hospitals and schools control over local budgets. We have introduced choice – people don’t just get what they are given from public services any more, in many areas they actively choose what’s best for them.
This change has started in Jobcentre Plus too, there is now a much greater focus on customers – the Jobseeker’s Agreement is all about an individual’s skills, their job search, and their journey back to work. The creation of personal advisers was crucial to the success of New Deal.
We’ve given more freedom to personal advisers to use their discretion and given them access to funding so they can use their expertise to better support customers.
The next stage in the evolution of Jobcentre Plus is to build on this, is to accelerate personalisation and to deliver a meaningful service for everyone.
We are already extending the service to people facing redundancy, to stay at home mums, and carers who are thinking about returning to work – it’s not a huge jump to see it extending the other way too – with the introduction of the Adult Advancement and Careers Service we could see a service that runs alongside people at every stage in their working lives.
So what does this mean for customers, for our staff and for our employers?
For our customers, this means no longer measuring the level of help they need solely by what benefit they are on, or how long they have been claiming it.
Our understanding of what works is now much more sophisticated, we believe if we take the time to get to know someone at the start of their claim then we will be able to identify sooner those people who are going to find it that bit harder to find a job.
So, after a number of sessions with a personal adviser, we will make an assessment with each individual to agree a bespoke plan to overcome their barriers to work.
Everyone will still be required to attend their fortnightly meeting with an adviser – those meetings are the cornerstone of our service, our way of maintaining the face to face contact we know is so crucial.
But every other part of the service should be flexible, designed to meet the needs of our customers, light touch support if that’s what will work best, and with much more intensive support if and when they need it
True personalisation puts the person looking for work in the driving seat – it makes Jobcentre Plus the navigator and with room for a whole range of other services to pile in the back.
But for that to work you need to be able to choose who is on the journey with you. Our service is at its best when our staff get to know the individual well.
So the personal relationship is essential. That is why we will be starting to organise advisers into casework teams, moving to named advisers for customers...and I want customers to be able to change their advisers if the relationship is not working well.
Then we need to give those customers and their advisers flexibility in the things that matter – being able to fast track to specialised support, using skills accounts to access funding for training, extra time with advisers, indeed whatever it takes to make a difference to that individual’s chances of getting a job.
We will offer a menu of options which could include help with childcare, healthcare, and skills. People will work with advisers to identify their own needs, think about their own ambitions and work out a programme to achieve their own goals.
You still won’t get something for nothing.
But with all this flexibility and personalisation doing nothing will not be an option, but doing just any old thing isn’t an option either.
So for customers more choice, more flexibility and more control, but also new tools.
Jobcentres have already made good use of new technology, you can now claim benefits online and over the phone, our vacancies are available 24/7 on the internet, in some areas we text customers to remind them when their next Jobcentre appointment is or where they have to go for an interview.
But I believe there is so much more we can do.
Around 40 per cent of benefit claimants do not have regular access to a computer.
Access to the internet is crucial for low income families. We do not want to live in a society where people are disadvantaged because they don’t have a computer, where the poorest pay more for their bills because they cannot pay online, where some people can’t apply for jobs because they don’t have the facilities to email a CV.
My vision is for every single person to have access to the internet, so they can search and apply for jobs online, so they can improve their computer skills, complete online learning courses and through a completely revamped Jobcentre Plus website get support from advisers, from other jobseekers and more information about their benefits.
I want most people to apply for their benefits on line, look for jobs on line and then re-enter work confident in using the technology that is such an essential part of our lives.
At the very first appointment with a Jobcentre Plus adviser if you don’t have an email address, you will get one.
You can then take that to your nearest UK Online Centre where there will be people available to help you get started. Welfare providers and private recruitment agencies already do something similar for their clients – our service should be at least as good.
Let me show you an example of A4E, one of our Flexible New Deal providers.
Imagine if we create a new Jobcentre Plus portal where you can see what benefits you are entitled to, how much they are worth and when your next pay day is.
When you log on you would be able to see new vacancies that match your search criteria, and apply instantly online. You could see your skills account and which training courses are available. If you see a job you are interested in applying for you could get an instant “Better Off in Work” calculation and when you find work the system could prompt you to apply for tax credits or other in-work support.
You could log on to a Jobcentre Plus group and chat online to people in your area who are looking for work – these groups would be self-defining but could, for example, be groups of mums and dads returning to work, people looking for a job after being off sick, people looking for part-time work – however customers defined themselves – but crucially allowing them mutual support.
Only yesterday I met some jobseekers on the Premier League into Work project at Chelsea. One of the biggest benefits to them was being with others in the same situation – not feeling so isolated but able to support and learn from each other.
The system would be smart enough to register your job search activity and log it with the Jobcentre adviser so when you go in for your next appointment they can see what you have been doing and the conversation can be a more meaningful discussion about what you should do next.
I’d like advisers to use the technology to be proactive, emailing customers links to online learning and sending job opportunities. I’d like every customer with a mobile phone to be sent texts to remind them when their next appointment is, to alert them to a new vacancy that matches their requirements or to reinforce what has been agreed in the last meeting with the adviser.
The initial costs of this do not need to be high, with smart procurement and clever partnerships we can do this reasonably cheaply; but the benefits, the savings to customers, the savings to Government will be vast. And it frees up staff time from processing, to do what they do best: face-to-face advice.
Technology can also help us to provide a more tailored service for employers.
Employers are crucial to our business as they have the vacancies we want to fill – but we should also be crucial to their business.
Employers should be able to post vacancies directly, view potential matches, and manage their recruitment through a personalised website.
Through the Business Link website they can request support and access information about a whole range of services, whether they need help with training and recruitment, submitting tax forms, or even understanding export rules. I will now be working with the Business Department to ensure there is better link up with Jobcentre Plus services through the Business Link website.
Just as with customers this new online support has to be backed by a seamless service on the ground.
Businesses value services that save them time. I have first hand experience of running a small business, I’ve listened to employers in my own constituency, and I’ve heard their views on the national stage – and the one thing I hear over and over again is that the support we offer needs to be simple and easy for employers to access – indeed that is why the Business Department is simplifying this support into Solutions for Business.
And that’s why Local Employment Partnerships have been so successful during this recession because they make it easy for employers.
LEPs save employers time, they take the pain out of recruitment because Jobcentre Plus does all the hard work of sifting applicants, setting up interviews, and training new staff. When I met with Lush, the cosmetics company from Poole, recently they told me how much the LEP meant not least to their bottom line.
These partnerships have been so successful that we reached our target of a quarter of a million people into LEP jobs a year early. In April we extended the target by a further half a million into jobs by the end of next year – and we are already half way there.
LEPs have been great for larger employers, firms like Travelodge, McDonalds, and Tescos. But what about the 4.7 million small and medium sized businesses in the UK?
The future growth of the country will in part be built on the innovation of small businesses. To really make a difference we need to provide that same tailored service from Jobcentre Plus to businesses of every shape and size.
We already have employer engagement teams in every district.
I now want a single point of contact for employers in every Jobcentre Plus office working closely with their local Business Link advisers to offer a coherent package of support.
Much of this vision relies on the skills and knowledge of Jobcentre Plus staff. We already have excellent, dedicated members of staff who get real pleasure out of helping people find work.
Let’s hear from some of them about the pride they take in their work.
I want staff to be empowered to do more of what they do best. I want to give them the skills, training and support to really excel, to be expert recruitment consultants, to be career advisers.
I want to give our staff time to spend with people so they can do their job. I want to give them access to the tools they need so they can find funding for people to do training courses.
We can use the knowledge and talents of our staff more, and with the right support and training, we can empower them to work with people and help them make the right decisions about their journey back to work.
In a Jobcentre where people are encouraged to become experts in employment there should be more opportunities for them to progress. Just as a future Jobcentre Plus service may work with people looking to move on in work so too must we provide opportunities for progression, with properly accredited skills training for staff.
Ultimately better skills development and accreditation of our staff will lead to better career paths for advisers. I also want us to be working with other advisory services like Connexions, housing advice, our private contractors and the CAB so that we better value and develop careers in personal advice in this country.
Of course staff development is also about leadership.
We have some great leaders in our service and I want to trust them more to get on with the job.
Why do we trust the private sector to “do what it takes” and just measure them on how many people get in to and stay in work, but don’t do the same for our own people?
We will therefore be announcing in the forthcoming White Paper those districts that will be allowed the same the sorts of freedoms as we give the private sector in Jobcentre Plus, and properly test how far delegation can and should go.
So new ways of working for staff, better engagement with employers and a service shaped by, for and with customers.
This is not about replacing private recruitment agencies, it’s not about just an alternative, it is about a universal starting point.
A place where you can sit down with someone, like Margaret, and talk through your options, it may be that we then refer you to a specialist recruitment agency – as we have done with professionals in the recession – but as a first port of call everyone should be able to contact the Jobcentre and get something of real value, to them.
This vision won’t come together overnight, it will take time and investment but in the long run we will save money as more people find and keep sustainable jobs.
We will soon publish the first steps [towards this vision] in the “Getting Britain Back to Work” White Paper demonstrating how we see the vision becoming a reality.
By the end of the next Parliament I want to see Jobcentre Plus at the vanguard of bridging the digital divide, improving skills, and returning the UK to the very high levels of employment we built under this Government and are determined to restore.
