Later today we will probably hear who has won contracts to deliver the new government flagship welfare to work scheme, Work Programme. A lot depends on the result. Already a number of companies have placed their employees on redundancy notice in a pessimistic anticipation they will not succeed in winning any bids.
The contracting vehicle for the Work Programme, called the Framework Agreement, divided the Work Programme into eleven geographic ‘lots’, comprising England’s nine regions and Scotland and Wales.
DWP has said it expects around eight organisations - likely to be large services companies, such as Serco, A4e, CDG, G4S and Maximus - to be allocated to each ‘lot’. These prime contractors will then subcontract the Work Programme to smaller jobs brokers across their contract area as they see fit.
According to the DWP, bidders needed to be “larger organisations” that have the financial capacity to handle contracts of between £10 and £50m, as well as the necessary cash flow to finance contracts where funding is provided on the basis of results, as well as the “ability to deliver across the whole of a geographical lot”.
So why did these companies bid for this contract? Because the overall purse is worth no less than £5bn
According to reports, successful companies will earn anything up to £14,000 for each client they successfully place in paid employment.
Talk about money breeding money!
Now you would hope staff working in the sector would see some benefit from all of this. You would perhaps assume the personnel would be given good salaries, decent pensions, nice working accommodation, good holiday entitlements and a high standard of continuing professional education.
Unfortunately, this is far from the case. Take this advert offering a vacancy as a job broker for a salary of
“As well as having experience in supporting employers to recruit and develop unemployed individuals, you ideally should also have experience of working with those unemployed individuals to ensure a smooth transition from benefit to employment. You should have the ability to build relationships with key employers, as well as possess excellent negotiating and mentoring skills. You must have, or be willing to work towards NVQ Level 3 in Advice and Guidance.”
Now, by the time you add on employer contributions and the cost of a little in-house training, you can expect total labour costs for hiring this person to be approximately £26 -28,000. In other words, as long as they get two people a year into a job, they are paying their way.
The reality is that many of these staff are extremely talented and dedicated people who genuinely want to help those who are jobless. They didn’t come into the sector to earn big bucks – because the flashy salaries don’t exist for frontline workers. Nor did they join the welfare to work sector because of some kudos associated with their work.
As far as the media and a large part of the public are concerned, frontline staff are a ‘welfare police’ mandated with the task of forcing scroungers back to work. Thankfully, many of these frontline staff know better and accept that nearly everyone unemployed has been forced into that situation through a series of unfortunate circumstances. No-one wants to be jobless and I cannot imagine anyone being happy to remain on benefit for the rest of their life. Penury, which is what people experience when they are on the dole, is never pleasant.
Staff employed to help the jobless back to work often come from a background where they too were unemployed and forced onto a government scheme. Indeed, many of these programmes have proven useful pickings for welfare to work companies to find good staff they can cherry-pick and then train to help others.
Unfortunately, this training is often desperately inadequate. Clients referred to training providers often come to interviews with multi-various problems – debt, housing issues, relationship problems, childcare problems, health difficulties, psychological problems and, in some instances, a lack of education. Add to this the known psychological problems often associated with unemployment such as depression, low self esteem, anxiety, paranoia and alcohol or drug misuse and you have major casework issues.
Though the NVQ level 3 in advice and guidance is a credible qualification, it is wholly inadequate for the situation. Caseworkers dealing with those who are jobless need to be skilled in counselling techniques, motivational interviewing (with detailed knowledge of approaches adopted when using models such as those recommended by Prochaska and DiClemente) and cognitive behavioural intervention skills.
The vast majority of frontline workers would jump at the opportunity to learn new skills – because they care, but the management within these companies have, until now, been disinclined to invest significantly in appropriate training. So, the end product has been a mish mash of a welfare to work scheme resulting in only 8% of those referred securing full-time, permanent work. Ask any caseworker whether they think things to could be done better and all agree. Sadly at every step along the way they have been stopped by managers exclusively focussed on the profit motive rather than the welfare of either the staff member or his/ her client.
Sometime today companies will learn if their bid has been successful and for many it will mean trying to do the same job for less money. Already some companies have set up systems to ensure staff will only keep their job if they take less pay. For others it will mean redundancy. Already many are looking to a date in June when their employment will end. They do not expect the new contract to save their jobs. They will, of course have had 90-days to find another job, but with an entire sector in total disarray, finding a new employer will not be easy. We can expect to see many really talented people to leave the sector. They will be mourned by some, but soon forgotten by others.
I say to those affected – always remember these pages will always remember the service you have given this sector. You will not be forgotten and we will never forgive the fat cats and the profiteers in the welfare to work sector for the way they have treated you.
May your successes be great and your pleasures be many. You have given several years of your life to helping others and as such, you have left an indelible mark on this world. I ask all of you now facing redundancy – when you finally walk out the door – stand proud, for you truly were professionals.
For those of you who remain – it is time to bring about change. We cannot keep doing this to ourselves. Are we truly saying we are so impotent? Are we saying we are so under the thumb of the bosses that we can’t say no to future redundancies?
Of course not. When the dust settles and we know who has won contracts it will be time for those who are angry enough to introduce the trade unions into your work place. Once we have united staff under a common ban we can face management and make the welfare to work sector an industry to be proud to work in.
In the meantime, it will be a rather grotesque experience today watching the multinationals suck off the cream from British taxpayers’ money.
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