Client Tracking
Submitted by gazzelle on Tue, 10/03/2009 - 7:27pm
I read on this forum about anti fruad measures that have been addressed recently. i have found that claiming actual outcomes has been the bain of my life.
I have found that the one way information sharing platform of training providers informing JC of outcomes is often not reciprocated. I have spent hours chasing good leads on clients who have gone awol and getting no outcome payment. I doubt the iformation from tax office tracking will be shared with sub's. often on tracking i have come across not signing no info on lms.
Anyone want to share good tracking methods please post
Thanks
Gazelle
I remember the JOT pilots going national and the performance issues they caused for providers then. Using tax records makes a lot of sense, but it's been made clear that FND will rely on providers tracking their own outcomes, with JOT only used as confirmation. This means the system will continue to be one-way unless something very different happens.
I suspect the best tracking mechanism is building and maintaining a good, long-term relationship with each customer, and actually delivering the high-quality aftercare that everyone always promises. Other than that, all the usual approaches still get used - rewarding customers for proof of job entry, chasing them by letter/email/text/phone call, setting up reunions or other support events, using in-house employer relationships, and agreeing some kind of information sharing with LEPs are all obvious methods.
Also, I raised the JOT point with Richard Johnson of Serco a while back, and he claimed it was a non-issue, as any good provider should track what's happening with their customers anyway. While I partly agree, it absolutely does impact on payments - if you're a sensationally good provider, you may track say four-fifths of customers out of provision (normally this is closer to half).
JCP research has found that the proportions who find work are roughly the same in the tracked and untracked customer base. So if you get 50% outcomes from the four-fifths that you've managed to track, you'll get a total job entry rate of 40%. The actual job entry rate would be 50% though, and JOT would show this.
Of course, all this supposes that people aren't going into the grey or black economy. There's been some interesting work lately around the informal economy actually being an important way of overcoming bureaucratic obstacles to people lifting themselves out of poverty and moving into paid, full-time work. Maybe one for another day. Apologies for length!
no apolgies needed, i agree on the grey / black economy point, the falling from welfare support to full time employment is a far to lomg drop for some, the months run on of housing benefit is hit and miss at best.
Wonder if a period of non income tax payment would be valuable incentive to new deal clients.
On a lighter note, id like to share this conversation i had on a trackig evening with you
"Hi john it's Garry from *** are you working or have you worked since leaving ***"
"Hiya Gaz yea im on a boat"
"sorry , your on a boat ....why "
"im going to work"
"Thats brilliant welldone where you working and who for"
"dunno but im on the boat to ireland"
Claim that one if you can
I've moved this from a Star Ratings article I've been writing, as it's more suited to this discussion:
Tracked job outcomes vs. actual job outcomes
This is an issue with job outcomes measurement generally. At one time, the way that Jobcentres tracked how many customers had started work was by ringing up people who didn't turn up and asking them whether they'd got a job or not. Since many people aren't terribly excited at being chased by an organisation they'd left behind, there would often be incentives for confirming job entry.
Nowadays, Jobcentres don't track people who leave. Instead, they wait for the tax authorities to collect tax revenues from people who start work, then match NI numbers and send across the job entry summaries for each JCP office.
Providers don't get this information. They still have to track leavers, persuade them and their employer to provide a stamped, signed proof of job entry, and then claim the outcome from the DWP. While there's an argument that keeping in touch with former customers is an important part of the service, this will always reduce the apparent performance of a contract, even the ones like FND where most people only leave delivery if they get a job or they've been there a year. Jobcentre research indicates that the same proportion of people find work in the untracked leavers as in the successfully tracked ones.
Apart from messing up performance comparisons between Jobcentre Plus and providers (hello Pathways to Work!), this means that providers often offer vouchers, free mobile phones, or other goodies to customers in return for handing over job entry details. There's a question over whether this is the best use of the delivery budget.