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Section 2: The Current Situation
The importance of employability has been reinforced as registered unemployment has fallen. Falling unemployment has created tight labour markets, and led to employers looking to other sources for their new employees including migrant workers. This has exposed the scale and significance of those on benefits such as Income Support and Incapacity Benefit. The significance of this group, which in Scotland now number nearly five times more than the Jobseekers group, is not just to do with labour market health and economic activity, but is also to do with employment and the earnings, connections and rewards that it can bring.
We have learnt a lot about why people remain out of work, and the main risks which prevent them working towards employment. These include health and disability, low or no qualifications, parenting or other caring responsibilities, age and length of time unemployed, substance abuse problems, ethnicity, offending/re-offending, homelessness and geographical locality. Each workless individual faces a unique combination of barriers. These are set out in Annex 3 which details the findings of the workless client group workstream.
Employability services find it hard to reach many of these people as they make few demands on these types of services, despite their needs being higher than average. In part this is because they face multiple barriers that may require specialist (and sometimes long term) support from a variety of specialist services who may not understand their role, individually or collectively, in helping clients make progress into work.
The concept of employability involves the connection of all these specialist services and employment services in a coherent framework which promotes long term progression by individuals into and through employment.
The good news is that we do have many of the components that are needed to create an "employability service". In Glasgow, the "Welfare to Work Forum" and "Equal Access to Employment" models have been successful in helping to reduce the number of people claiming key benefits by 16,000 since May 2003. There is evidence that this type of service is being developed further by other partnerships - "Joined up for Jobs" in Edinburgh and "Routes to Inclusion" in Lanarkshire are also examples of good developing models.
However, in Scotland, we do not have an "employability service" as such. What we appear to have is a competitive free-for-all which, although individually can provide a good service, is disjointed and complicated. Funders of these services therefore may not receive the best value for their money.
The services needed to enable someone facing multiple barriers to working to get a job and stay in employment are many and varied. We have employment services which work with individuals and employers enabling people to find a job (and, sometimes, to stay in employment). And we have specialist services which provide the support and assistance clients need to tackle their specific obstacles to employment. These can include mental health, physical disabilities, learning disabilities, homelessness, drug and alcohol dependency, childcare, literacy and numeracy and career planning. The Workstreams identified a lack of common in-depth assessment approaches and also a lack of the systems and intelligence needed to manage clients' progress through this array of services.
Table 2 below attempts to set out in relatively straightforward terms who does what inside this 'industry' providing services for Scotland's jobless people.
Table 2
| Employability Process | Description | Delivery by | Funded by |
|---|
Positive Activity | Providing activities to help jobless people with more severe barriers to stabilise their lives and develop their confidence. | Statutory services, voluntary sector, social economy, community - based and specialist services. | Mainstream Local Authority budgets, NHSS, Communities Scotland, Scottish Executive, EU, Scottish Prison Service. |
Engagement and Progression | Getting jobless people on board employability projects or services. Developing career aspirations, providing skills, removing barriers. | Jobcentre Plus, Careers Scotland, FE and HE Institutions, Local Authority, social economy, voluntary sector and private providers, Volunteer Centre Network, Project Scotland. | EU, Jobcentre Plus, Scottish Executive, Enterprise Networks, Careers Scotland, Scottish Funding Council, learndirect scotland. |
Employment - including Self Employment | Helping people to move into employment and self employment. | Local Authority, private, voluntary and social economy sector providers sector, Jobcentre Plus, FE and HE Institutions, Princes Trust. | Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise, EU, DWP/Jobcentre Plus, Local Authorities, Scottish Funding Council. |
Sustained Employment and Self Employment | Helping people to sustain their employment, and move to more rewarding employment. | Employers, Careers Scotland, learndirect scotland, Local Authority, private, voluntary and social economy sector providers, Jobcentre Plus, FE and HE Institutions. | Employers, DWP/Jobcentre Plus, Enterprise Networks, Careers Scotland, Scottish Executive, Scottish Funding Council, EU, Communities Scotland. |
What clients say
In various evaluations, clients consistently offer positive comments on the role played by personal advisers and key workers. They like a number of things about this way of working:
- Having access to the same adviser/key worker over time so that they can build a relationship with them;
- Being able to spend time with these advisers rather than being processed through a volume programme; and
- The support provided by advisers/key workers who they feel are on their side.
Additionally, however, clients note that, while they are very happy with the way their advisers treat them, they place less value on the practical assistance the advisers provide in moving them towards work.
Clients respond positively to services which they see as meeting their needs as an individual. Many clients have experienced a number of employability programmes through their working life. The customised approaches stand in contrast to the highly standardised delivery traditionally associated with national employment programmes.
Clients value the opportunity to make choices about how they will move towards and into work. They are generally positive about action planning processes which take account of personal objectives and have pathways which are discussed and agreed between client and adviser.
The Labour Market
Futureskills Scotland's Labour Market Demand to 2008 Report estimates that there will be approximately 500,000 job opportunities to 2008, including an estimated 40,000 new jobs being created. With the working age population remaining fairly static up to 2008, this indicates the opportunity to move people into work, while the labour market is stable. These job opportunities will be across all sectors, from construction to agriculture and fishing, but with the greatest demand in services, especially health, education, business services and retail. Many vacancies will be as a result of retirements, especially those in health and education. More than half of the estimated vacancies will require higher levels of skills.
Most of these jobs will be filled by the normal movement of workers into and out of jobs, including new entrants to the labour market. Population projections to 2008 predict a slight fall but there will be little change in the working age population during this time. In fact the number of people active in the labour force has grown since 1981 as more women have become economically active.
According to Futureskills Scotland's Employers Skills Survey 2004 there were 73,400 vacancies in Scotland and, of these, 33,500 (46%) were considered "hard-to-fill" by employers. Of these 18,300 related to skills shortages ( i.e. there were no candidates with the necessary skills, qualifications and experience for the post). Skills gaps were most common in jobs requiring lower levels of skills and qualifications; however, this affected just 5% of organisations surveyed.
The impact of hard-to-fill vacancies can be severe, causing difficulties in meeting customer service objectives and delays in developing new products and services. Most employers take steps to address hard-to-fill vacancies by changing recruitment practices and/or changing the job specification.
Current Investment in Enhancing Employability
The Interventions Workstream conducted research into the major funders of employability programmes and how much is invested in Scotland. Table 3 provides estimated amounts which each major funder contributes, both through their main programmes and from funding various initiatives.
The Workstream focused on the overall level of funding rather than the volumes of service delivery because much of the service delivery is funded from more than one source. This means a danger of double (or even triple) counting and points to the need to improve the way funding streams are allocated.
Table 3
Funding Agency | Programmes | Funding per Annum (£ million) |
|---|
DWP/Jobcentre Plus |
| The New Deal programmes and Pathways to Work are just some of the programmes available | £70 |
| This is mainly staff through their Jobcentre Network and includes jobsearch, personal advisors and employer engagement | £169 |
European Commission | Significant contribution to a variety of programmes - via ESF | £94 |
Scottish Executive | Significant contribution to a variety of programmes, such as Cities Growth Fund, Homelessness, Adult Literacy and Numeracy, Working for Families, Individual Learning Account Scotland, Healthy Working Lives, Lone Parent Mentoring, Full Employment Areas Initiative, Criminal Justice Social Work Services, LEAD Scotland, Beattie Funding and Scottish Skills Fund | £83 |
The Enterprise Networks | Substantial contribution to employment focused mainstream interventions - including Get Ready for Work and Training for Work (inclusive of training allowances) | £41 |
Local Authorities | An understated amount - a response was received from 24 out of 32 LAs only. A significant provider of employability services both using their own funds and drawing down other funding streams | £20 |
Communities Scotland | This is based on 15% from the Communities Regeneration Fund - and is likely to rise | £16 |
Careers Scotland | A significant contribution through their inclusiveness projects and all-age guidance | £10 |
Lottery | This is an increasingly important funder of employment related projects for more disadvantaged groups | £5 |
Scottish Prison Service | This is for enhancing employability of ex-offenders (includes staff costs) | £4 |
NHSS | This figure is based on funding for the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives, the employability programme of Scotland Against Drugs and 4 responses from 15 NHS Boards. This figure will almost certainly rise over the next few years, both in funding and manpower terms as the Scottish Centre for Healthy Working Lives improves the co-ordination of NHS services in this area | £3 |
Further and Higher Education | Colleges play a key role in developing skills, knowledge and attributes and draws funding from Europe and various national employment programmes. We have not included a figure for this activity | |
The total figure of £515,000,000 is very much an estimate of annual funding for employability services mainly based on 2003/04 or 2004/05 financial year, not including the welfare benefits (including housing benefit) paid to eligible people. It excludes substantial funding for Lifelong Learning - over £1.1 billion a year - where it is difficult to separate out the specific activities which fully support employability. Most of the money in the table is provided by a small number of major players and this raises questions as to how we can work together to improve procurement of effective employability services. In addition, it is not possible to quantify some other funding streams - such as that provided by the voluntary sector.
The exact funding for Scotland from ESF has not yet been agreed for 2007 to 2013. We propose that Employability will be one of three key elements/priorities in the new Programmes. The funding under this priority will be clearly linked to the aims and targets of this Employability Framework in the future.
The Interventions Workstream report includes a summary of recent evaluation evidence on the percentage of clients from various programmes who move into employment. What this shows is that there is considerable variation in the proportion of clients finding work across programmes - and significantly there had been no instance of a programme achieving more than 50% of clients into work.
Taking account of this information the Interventions Workstream identified a number of key concerns about current interventions. These were:
- widespread concern that the relevant agencies and other organisations are not linking together as effectively as they might;
- a wide, fragmented range of funding streams and short term funding of projects and initiatives;
- the landscape of employability services is unnecessarily complex and confusing;
- services are inflexible, preventing them from being tailored to a client's needs; and
- there is no co-ordinated, proactive approach to engagement with employers.
Just as the funding and service landscape is complex, the delivery of these services is also characterised by a very large number of players. For example, a recently completed mapping exercise for Glasgow identified 125 organisations and 325 individual programmes, projects and services involved in the delivery of employability services to jobless people.
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