Customer charters

Further to the recent article about the launch of ERSA's customer charter, I've taken some time to look at three key charters that have come into force in recent weeks. These are ERSA's, the DWP's, and Edinburgh’s Joined Up For Jobs Partnership (JUFJ).

DWP/ERSA

A quick look at both DWP's and ERSA's shows that these charters were designed alongside each other, with DWP placing the main focus on the governmental responsibilities and expectations of individual job seekers, and ERSA's coming from more of a provider-based stance. Although DWP's was created first, customer research gained from this, alongside that from providers, helped ERSA create theirs. Even the graphics and lay out of the two charters are, intentionally, near-identical, suggesting unison in the priorities of both the government and welfare to work providers. ERSA's charter came about as a result of a DWP Select Committee report, encouraging providers to create a customer charter from their perspective, making their rights and responsibilities clear to customers in an increasingly more tailored, and therefore less rigidly structured, welfare to work industry. Another aim was to enable providers to take the lead in promoting customer care.

In terms of content, ERSA and DWP's focus falls into four categories;

• Right treatment
• Right result
• Your Time (or, “On Time” from DWP), and
• Easy access

Given that both are national schemes, it does make sense to have a collaborative approach. This, taken alongside the fact that any provider, be they a member of ERSA or not, can sign up to the charter only further helps in developing this.

Joined Up for Jobs

Edinburgh’s 'Joined Up for Jobs' partnership charter comes at all this from a very different angle, yet retains most of the same content. The partnership has arisen as a result of the government's 'City Strategy Pathfinder' scheme, which focuses on increasing employment through local collaboration in the 15 areas of the UK which currently have the lowest employment figures. There's more information on this overall scheme here.

Differences

There are, however, a few key differences between the Joined Up for Jobs customer charter and ERSA and DWP's. Firstly, JUFJ just focuses on the responsibility of the provider, and doesn't mention anything at all about the customer's input. They do not feel this is productive or necessary in order to deliver for individuals. Secondly, they award their charters almost as a “Quality Standard” as a result of a panel assessment, in contrast to the ERSA/DWP charters, which are much more a set standard to adhere to, as opposed to an award for good practice. Additionally, ERSA hope that any assessment (e.g. Star Rating, Ofsted) will be able to draw from their charter as an expected standard when looking at providers work.

JUFJ's charter was developed in close consultation with service providers and meets the following criteria:

• Short, simple and a close match to what the service providers do
• Applicable to the range of organisations in JUFJ
• Encompass work with employers as well as with jobseekers
• Not about contract compliance/value for money/performance against target”

Localism

JUFJ is very much a local effort, which involves different organisations and providers having a directory from which they can refer individuals to other organisations, if they feel they could best serve their needs. It will be interesting to see if and how this altruistic approach works in practice. A point worth noting is that FUFJ constructed their charter without knowing that DWP and ERSA were working on one, and so do not see theirs as being in any way in conflict with the national approach, as they are coming from a different, local stance with different, local aims.

ERSA see local approaches as a good way to create a strong, community effort in terms of helping people back into work, and even their most recent conference 'Pulling together for the customer' signals the industry moving closer together in an attempt to learn and grow together. In fact, they feel that even the construction of their charter helped open up dialogue on a number of other topics, with so many providers alongside Jobcentre Plus and DWP working from the same point. In a sense, the charter is a place from which other useful industry conversations can be had.

Overlap

However, in saying that, there is of course a lot of overlap in terms of the content of JUFJ's charter and DWP/ERSA's, as they are still addressing the same customers in the same industry, with the overall same aim of helping people back into work.

This can be seen below from JUFJ's commitments to customers:

• We will ensure that our service is accessible to all eligible jobseekers.
• We will provide a professional and responsive service to employers.
• We will ensure that customers have up to date and relevant information.
• We will provide the most appropriate services to each customer’s needs.
• If we cannot provide a service that customers need, we will refer them to a service that can.
• We will engage with customers to ensure that our services are high standard and meet customer needs.
• We will respect customers’ right to privacy.

Their fifth promise is the one surrounding the idea of being flexible and willing to recommend other organisations best placed to help people with specific needs, instead of just keeping them on your books if they would benefit more elsewhere, as such. However, the majority of the other commitments are also shared by ERSA/DWP's charter, such as the protection of personal information, and delivering useful, up to date information.

In practice

Providers do not need to be members of ERSA to sign up to their charter, and so in theory all of the organisations signed up to JUFJ's could also sign up to ERSA's in order to look at their delivery on a more national scale, for example, Working Links have been awarded JUFJ's charter in Edinburgh, and are also a founding signatory of the ERSA charter. Whilst much of the overlap will not have any real impact, the more flexible approach to switching providers in Edinburgh, as opposed to having customers placed solely with you elsewhere (e.g. FND tailored by one provider around the needs, as opposed to moving customers between providers to meet these needs) could be interesting for organisations signed up to both.