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How can you tell if someone is job ready?
by Daniel on 3 Jun, 2008 in
With the new NDDP contracts and flexible New Deal on the horizon, there's a lively debate going on about creaming and parking. But is it possible to predict who's ready to move into work anyway? Can a formal diagnostic ever be accurate enough to rely on, or are adviser's instincts the best guide?
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I think there are lots of ways to predict job readiness. Pathways to Work doesn't work for people with mental health problems, so they're out. People with major learning disabilities are very difficult to place. People with poor basic skills are often difficult to place. People with lots of children may not be better off in work, especially if they're absent fathers with child support. Alcoholics, drug addicts and homeless people are often no-hopers until their primary issues are dealt with. Come to think of it, I'm predicting job un-readiness here. Cynical, me?
I think that is a bit cynical. Most advisers want to help people. They've got targets to meet, but they're not purely driven by sales-y oneupmanship. If someone really wants to work then we don't ignore them, because wanting to work is a large part of being jobready. If someone has issues like homelessness etc. then we won't push them like we would a person without those issues, and we work with agencies that can help them.
Jo
For Employment Zones, most providers use adviser diagnostics that grade customer employability from 1 to 5, and basically park or signpost the 4s and 5s. I don't see that this will change with flexible New Deal. Also, the whole point of the Work Focused Interview in Pathways to Work is to allow less job ready people to stay on benefit. NDDP also has an initial interview, and is far more focused on outcome payments than previously.
So, basically, all the major programmes will reward providers who can accurately predict which customers can be supported into work.
My own concern is with mental health. People with mental health issues can change their levels of employability frequently and unexpectedly. How will providers predict employability for them? JCP-run Pathways couldn't help them - will providers just park them all?
It is important to retain a macro perspective - there will always be individuals who are going to miss out or slip through any regime of assessment. Trying to absolutely measure job readiness will suffer from Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle because closer and more invasive measurement will impact on a) the ability to deliver the help (resources "wasted" on measurement) and b) ruin the participant's experience (being measured and questioned at every turn).
My take is that a macro-perspective is a reasonable balance: diagnostics are used that on average give a certain % of accurately predicted outcomes. This allows providers to gradually hone their models, but essentially involves creaming and parking as part of the system.
We have a winner! Invoking Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in a welfare-to-work discussion seems a suitable point on which to close this discussion. I suspect that the large providers are looking very closely at the issue as it could form a large part of their competitive advantage in future delivery. An 'easy' method would be to keep complete customer records with details on each potential factor, then correlate the entire data set to job outcomes using multiple regression analysis. If anyone ever wants that done, I know a few professional analysts who could get their teeth into it.
Thanks - what's my prize? ;)
The entire Internet. Or how about full performance data for all New Deal providers in the UK?
Firstly, regarding mental health - the latest PWays evaluation shows that people thus affected are more likely to go back to work. Not only that, if you read the literature you will find that probably most people on PWays have poor mental health - it is endemic to being on IB that'll own a 'reason' for being on IB. And, also, by 2020 depression will be the biggest cause of disability world wide. The numbers of peole affected by mental health problems - which tend to be invisible - far outweigh those affected by physical health problems and the level of mental health disability makes the number of people affected by physical disability seem nominal.
A failure to work appropriately with this sub-population is a failure to work properly with this sub-population.
Secondly, job readiness. There is no definition. Most of the time it is used inappropriately. Job readiness per se can be measured objectively with relative ease and has been for at least 12 years (1996 in the US and recently in Australia). It is all on the web in the public domain except for the weightings. If you google Job Seeker Classification Instrument you will get the Aus. stuff which includes the US criteria. But the weightings do not appear in the public domain - they shoudl not be too difficult to work out though. However, you also need to take subjective measures into account.
Thirdly, predicting 'job outcomes'. This should be relatively straightforward as long as a probability model is used. If the JSCI is used along with the appropriate subjective measures then a reasonale level of accuracy should ensue within acceptable CIs or probability parameters. The biggest difficulty is getting people to complete subjective measures. For an accurate prediction probably around 50 subjective items are required. Additional elements will need to be factored in. So, for example, if the probability is high and the indvidual does not gain employment you would look at the staff engaging with that individual rather than assuming your predictions were incorrect.
There is a further complication. You need to factor in 'type of job'. The bizarre examples of well qualified people being offered third rate jobs and people who cannot lift and who are affected by severe stress being placed in care homes where they have to lift and work 12 hour shifts are mind boggling.
In other words, the prediction will be that person X is likely to go [back to] work in job type A within P amount of time with a probabilty of p. However, if you put person X in job type Q within W amount of time you are probably not doing your job but just attempting to hit targets.
The above matters. There is no evidence that 'work is good for you' per se. (Review by Waddell and Burton). BUT, competitive employment - note the competitive - appears to improve people's well being generally speaking regardless. There are a lot of reports which show the extreme benefits of RtW for all populations from completely physically disabled to extremely mentally ill. However, these reports tend to have three things in common: 1) the person wanted to work; 2) the work was meaningful work, not low quality low skilled work; 3) the medical profession was supportive rather than obstructive.
Regarding my last comment, we still have cases where medical professionals - of all ilks - are making decisions about whether or not someone can go back to work. Yet this profession is not usually in a position to make this sort of decision per se, and the decision often does not take account of the wishes of the individual. Consider for example someone being told in their teenage years being told - you will never work because you have 'agoragphobia'; someone being signed off work for 5 years because they 'talked incessantly'; someone with epilepsy being told they'll never work; someone who wants to go back to work full time being told they are not able to; the list is endless. (Interestingly, GPs are one of the professional groups with the highest levels of stress related ill health but seem to be, in simple terms, to scared to openly admit when they are affected by stress in case they are signed off work! (This seems to be exacerbated by the standards bodies that regulated GP practice.))
The point is, the 'work is good for you' argument is not in really in dispute. But it is worthwhile meaningful work where you are treated properly that is good for you. This sort of work is not always easy to come by, even as a professional.
To really help people regain and retain competitive employment they need to be equiped with good psychsocial skills, strong coping strategies, (both can be achieved in c. 5 working days) and encouraged to develop a career path that takes them beyond the 'job' they are placed in (which is where true IWS comes in as it develops the persons skills whilst they are in job 1 so that they can plan for job 2...and so on).
Of course, this requires an appropriate level of funding and a long term view - say, 7-10 years. It also requires providers to think in terms of very small margins and long term committment to the individuals in the client group.
There are no quick fixes.
The answer is obvious - would you a)employ them? and/or b) work alongside them? We all work with people who we wonder how they ever got a job in the first place.I think we often expect people to match our individual expectations about skills/personality etc. without considering what is realistic given the labour market, wage offer etc.In my experience personal advisers send mixed messages to customers - they expect people to be applying for practically anything ,yet often have lofty ideas themselves about what is job ready.We often talk about "knock out factors" i.e. reasons why someone isn't suitable for the job instead of actively looking for what people can bring to the job.Basically most people are job ready - its just a matter of which job are they ready for??