Among the Best Companies

There's a curious website called the Best Companies Guide which purports to analyse various factors which make A4e a good place to work (although it seems to come out at only 623 in the Best Companies Index). Nowhere on the site can I find just how many of the 3,388 staff were polled on this, but there's some interesting stuff here. "A4e Superstars [which] is an internal recognition programme", for instance. It's an incentive scheme which enables employees to rack up points which they can use to buy things from "a bespoke A4e rewards catalogue". It's an oddly old-fashioned attitude to management which treats employees in this way. The stuff under "My Team" and "Personal Growth" is equally interesting. One would have no clue from it that people are made redundant every time the contracts change.

There's a new contract in Northern Ireland. "A4e (Action for Employment) has been appointed in the Antrim contract area for the Department’s main adult return to work programme, which aims to assist unemployed and economically inactive people into sustained employment." It's not clear whether the Work Programme extends to Northern Ireland.

The Socialist magazine has a piece about A4e's "partnership with Finsbury Park Business Forum to provide wardens for the local tube and overground train and bus stations. These wardens are supplied by A4e from jobseekers who work in exchange for their benefits. They are doing work that had previously been done by Transport for London (TfL) staff." The writer, Neil Cafferky, says that 800 underground staff have been sacked and the unions are very unhappy about the unemployed being used to replace these jobs.