London Welfare to Work 2009 - Event Report 2

There were lots of breakout sessions at last week's conference. I made it to three, which gave insights into the relationships between primes and subcontractors, the roll-out of FND, and the efficacy of employer-led delivery. As mentioned previously, the complete presentations are available on the CESI website in PowerPoint format.

Prime contracting and subcontractor relationships in New Deal (Seetec)

Until FND actually rolls out, we won't know what the relationship between primes and subcontractors looks like. However, the New Deals that will be replaced by FND give a glimpse into the challenges and benefits of these relationships. Andrew Emerson, the Ops Director of Seetec, shared the lessons learned in managing seven New Deal subcontractors and keeping all of them on board for the duration of delivery:

• Quick decision making is necessary. If you have to wait two months for a board meeting before you can decide to become a subcontractor, you probably won't get in
• Flexibility is necessary. The situation changes, throughflows aren't guaranteed, profiled payments may move to ad-hoc purchasing, and services such as outreach can become more important
• Performance has to be the driver of delivery. Not sure how this relates to specialist support that isn't immediately employment related?
• The support role of the prime is crucial, e.g. in the two examples below.
• Management Information (MI) posed issues. Regular subcontractors needed to use the same MI system as the prime, which in Seetec's case was more detailed than they were used to
• Quality monitoring and management systems were often far more complex than subcontractors were used to, so the prime had to provide support in these and in processes such as Self Assessment Reporting
• A single point of contact to resolve issues quickly between partners was vital
• The prime may not be the biggest beneficiary - subcontractors often end up with far more of the funding than primes use in managing the contracts

One interesting wrinkle of FND is that many of the potential subcontractors are actually fair-sized providers themselves, as opposed to the small specialist providers that characterised much of New Deal. While this means that they'll already have highly developed quality and MI systems, it also means that there could be a few unfortunate clashes between their own systems and those of the prime. The lack of common standards for data sharing is an area that DWP might usefully have spent more time on, rather than putting together the walled garden of PRaP.

Implementing FND in London (Jobcentre Plus)

Moving from the lessons of New Deal to the roll-out of Flexible New Deal, Jobcentre Plus in London presented on their experience of piloting the Jobcentre-based elements of FND. I'm pretty sure the headline figures included substantial increases in the rates of JSA leaving, job entry and job sustainment. However I can't find them anywhere in the presentation, so I'll update this once I've confirmed it. Other points of note included:

• It appears that FND involves a surprising amount of delivery flexibility at Jobcentre level, which I hadn't picked up on before
• In the trial, they decided to drop better-off calculations from new signing meetings, as new claimants were usually very aware of how much they would be making in a job since they'd just left one!
• They also used a customer segmentation tool to stream new customers into 4 or 7 minute support sessions
• The new ADF will be £10m nationally
• FND Phase 2 districts are apparently still not set for London
• The Programme Centre replacement will be a modular provision during FND Gateway

Large-scale recruitments (Jobcentre Plus, London Employer Accord)

Two different presentations both gave accounts of managing large-scale recruitments, for Asda and Travelodge, as a way of getting priority customers into work. Both talked about the importance of meeting employer needs, but the Employer Accord one also gave some background on the general performance of pre-employment delivery. Rather than cover the actual descriptions of delivery, some other interesting points emerged.

The Employer Accord characterised most pre-employment delivery as 'failing', with an average job outcomes rate of 30%. They were confident that their 'Go Forward' model provided an effective template, with an average conversion rate of 82% to date.
The Go Forward model was very tailored, with a year of initial consultation and two years of piloting. All aspects were managed by a single contact who ensured that delivery was exactly matched to the employer's needs.

By contrast, the Asda programme made use of existing training schemes, whose providers promptly put all of their existing stock through with a very low outcomes rate. The timings were far tighter, with the project from start to finish consuming most of a year for those involved.

Another contrast between the two courses came in the initial sift. A key part of many employer-led recruitments has traditionally been a very careful sift to employer requirements prior to pre-employment training and onward submission. This has the effect of narrowing down the field from all high priority customers to only the most employable for the role being recruited, a form of creaming that makes pre-employment unsuitable for the majority of long-term unemployed customers. While the Asda recruitment followed this approach, with thousands of applications leading to a couple of hundred jobs, Employer Accord (see the comment below) have apparently found a way to train up the vast majority of customers for the role being recruited. I'm going to put together an article on pre-employment at some point; it's a hugely promising approach but one that seems to hit the same barriers time after time.

(Note - this article was edited on 26/2)