Problems and opportunities

More problems over the introduction of the Work Programme have been brought up at a Work and Pensions Committee hearing. A4e's executive director Rob Murdoch is chair of the ERSA, the industry's trade body, and he expressed concern over the 3-month gap between the old contracts ending and the new ones starting. The big companies can cope with this, but the smaller ones can't, and are having to lay off staff. "Social enterprises" are concerned, too, that they are being signed up by the prime contractors simply as window-dressing, because the contracts demand it, rather than with a genuine prospect of involvement. What seemed so simple to the government is rapidly unravelling.

Meanwhile, A4e's Mark Lovell (who is "in charge of A4e", according to the Spectator - but then the company seems to have a number of bosses) says that we're wrong about there being no jobs. In the Spectator interview he assures us that, "We have never been in an economy where there aren’t suitable jobs for the people who walk through our doors." He quotes the ONS figure of 500,000 vacancies in the Jobcentres, and says that this is only one third of the total. This will come as a surprise to those who know that a great many of the vacancies in the Jobcentres are not jobs at all, but spurious "home working opportunities" and adverts by agencies. Still, Lovell is clear about A4e's value. "During a recession you tend to find that employers often do more by word-of-mouth recruitment. The role of brokers who put people in touch with these opportunities is even more important during the recessionary cycle." The writer of the article, Peter Hoskin, doesn't question this, or bring up the embarrassing statistics.

Another of the government's big ideas is that groups of workers in the public sector should turn themselves into "mutual pathfinders", becoming independent co-operatives. Just once, in the election campaign, a spokesman let slip the real agenda - that these mutuals would then be able to bid for contracts. There's nothing of that in the piece on the Thirdsector website. We are not to suspect that this is a prelude to privatisation, when the mutuals will be outbid by the private companies. But there's a small clue in the fact that A4e is one of the organisations which will provide mentors for these new mutuals.

Publicity and gaps

A posting from Emma Harrison on A4e's site says that she now has a daily column in Express newspapers. I can't find it in any paper today so perhaps that's a treat to look forward to tomorrow. You are invited to contribute to "Emmas [sic] Top Employment Tips". It's a great bit of advertising, if not of punctuation.

The Financial Times has pointed out that there will be a gap of several months between when the current contracts end in half the country and the Work Programme begins. About 50,000 people who would have been placed on these programmes will not be - and that's assuming that the new contracts start on time. Labour says that this will mean people staying on benefits for longer, while the DWP says that people will get "enhanced support" from Jobcentre Plus. The ERSA, the trade body for the providers, wants the contracts extended to fill the gap. I suugest that this is an ideal opportunity to judge the value of the whole welfare-to-work industry. Will the DWP have the bottle to compile the stats to show whether it makes any difference to whether people get jobs? I doubt it.

Richard Johnson of Serco has been philosophising again, on the Indus Delta site, on how wrong we are to think that there are limits to the number of jobs available.

"Our Shared Promise on Customer Care"

It's headlined "A shared promise to those participating in welfare-to-work programmes" and can be read on the Jobcentre Plus website. It "was developed by ERSA, the representative body for independent providers of publicly funded welfare-to-work programmes and is supported by the Department for Work and Pensions, including Jobcentre Plus, the Association of Learning Providers (ALP) and the British Association for Supported Employment (BASE)" and was launched by Jim Knight MP. All the providers, including A4e, have signed up to it. "It includes commitments from providers to:

• Listen to customers and provide support based on each customer’s circumstances and needs
• Help customers identify and make the most of their strengths
• Make the best use of the customer’s time, taking account of personal circumstances and by being clear when things need to happen"

and there are equally unexceptionable commitments required from customers. Nothing wrong with that. But I can't help wondering why the providers need to state this, when one would assume that it was required in their contracts.