BASE Conference 2008

Local Employment Partnerships

Chris Wood

LEP Operational Support

11th September 2008

Introduction

• Background

• What are LEPs?

• LEP Pre-employment Training

• LEP Partnership Agreements

Background

Our vision and purpose

• Helping disadvantaged people into work, as a route out of poverty

• Providing financial support for people of working age while they are out of work

• Addressing inequalities of opportunity• Protecting the integrity of the benefit system• Working with employers and partners to address

market failure in the labour market

Jobcentre Plus aims to provide work for those who can, and support for those who cannot by:

Transformation of our services

• Implemented a new organisational design and operating model

• The roll out of our Jobcentre Plus office network has been completed

• Almost all of our 77 Benefit Delivery Centres have opened

• All our 31 Contact Centres are in place• Separated commissioning and

procurement from delivery

Every working day, Jobcentre Plus:

• Records around 6,000 of our customers moving into work

• Receives 18,000 jobs from employers• Conducts 45,000 adviser interviews• Processes over 15,000 new benefit claims• Takes over 69,000 calls to our contact centres• Receives over 354,000 visits to our website• Receives around1,089,000 job searches on our

website• Prosecutes on average 42 people for benefit

fraud

What are LEPs?

Background to LEP

• 2007 Budget - 5 retailers (Tesco, Sainsbury, ASDA, B&Q and M&S).

• In work, better off Green Paper in July extended to all sectors.

• Aim: 250,000 people into work by the end of 2010.

The Deal

• Employers agree to give people a fair shot at the job

• Government ensures disadvantaged customers get preparation and support enabling them to meet employers’ needs and expectations; and

• Jobcentre Plus individually tailors recruitment support for employers

• Agree local arrangements

The LEP Definition

• As a minimum we must have a verbal commitment from the employer that they are actively working with Jobcentre Plus to support their recruitment of priority group customers

• The LEP Agreement does not need to include any measures other than this employer commitment to work with us to seek to increase the number of priority customers they employ

• We must hold a record on our systems that the agreement has been made

The LEP Eligible CustomerOur priority customers include:

• People with health conditions on Incapacity Benefit• Lone Parents on Income Support• People on Jobseekers Allowance – New Deals,

Employment Zones and those unemployed for more than 6 months

• Disadvantaged groups – for example customers who have problems with alcohol and drug misuse, refugees and ex-offenders

• Unemployed people not claiming benefit in certain local authority wards with high levels of deprivation

LEP Measures• Offer Work Trials• Offer a target number of places for disadvantaged

customers• Pre-employment Training• Guaranteed interviews• One to one employer mentoring• Revise their application processes for LEP customers• Offer flexible working patterns• Offer further training for LEP customers once in

employment – e.g. Train to Gain• Providing facilities for group seminars – focusing on one

parents

Business as usual?

• This is not ‘business as usual’ or ‘just about employers’• Higher proportion of inactive and long term unemployed

into work (top two priority groups for Jobcentre Plus)• Bigger push to help customers to be job ready and for

employers to take them on• Greater alignment and tailoring of provision to real job

opportunities• Success is a shift in employer recruitment practices,

where a much higher proportion of our priority customers get jobs than was previously the case

LEP Progress to date

• Almost 6,500 business have recruited through LEPs with Jobcentre Plus

• 27,072 job outcomes have been recorded to the end of August

• Sector Employability Toolkits in 9 key sectors

Outstanding Challenges

• Right employers, right location

• Making national agreements work locally

• Developing provision for England, Wales & Scotland

• Involving other partners

• Translating employer engagement into outcomes

Working with partners

• Building on the labour market knowledge of existing players

• Building on the expertise of existing players in working with employers, and utilising existing employer networks

• Building on existing knowledge of relevant provision - use by employers or groups of employers inc. SMEs

• Working with DIUS/LSC and devolved administrations to develop work-focused and accessible provision

LEP Pre-employment Training

LEP Provision

• Employer led, agreed locally• Pre-employment training with 2 week

sector skills routeway at the core• Flexibility to add modules, eg

– Jobsearch– Work skills– Specialist disability or ethnicity modules

• Option to use generic material provided by Sector Skills Councils

Sector Routeways

• Skills Active • Asset Skills • Construction Skills • Skills for Health • Hospitality (People1st) • Logistics (GoSkills / Bus Driver) • Retail (Skillsmart) • Skills for Security • Skillfast UK (Sewing Machine and Textile)

Sector Employability Toolkit

• A suite of products to help Advisers and providers meet employer demand

• 2 weeks in-house training, followed by• Work Trial, followed by• Guarantee of a job interview as a minimum for

those completing the whole routeway• Post employment support and training, assisted

by employers for those who are recruited

Funding & Delivery of Pre Employment Training

Options in order of preference

– LSC funded provision (England), Skillbuild (Wales), TfW (Scotland)

– Existing Programme Centre contracts– Other JCP programmes eg New Deal Prime

contracts– Alternative funded programmes, eg ESF, WNF,

City Strategy– Commission additional provision

LSC is the first choice for Pre-Employment Training• LSC offers a package of support for customers that

consists of both Pre-employment and Post- employment training

• LSC is the first port of call and has appointed LSC LEP Regional Champions

• LSC encourages employers to opt into Train to Gain – but participation is not mandatory

• Employers do not need to have signed the Skills Pledge – the focus is on recruiting and up-skilling new employees, rather than up-skilling the entire existing workforce

• LSC skills brokers and providers will explore on-going skills development for individuals recruited via LEP

• Promoting an Integrated Employment and Skills Agenda.

Procedural obstacles

• Work Trials• Employment Zones• Private Sector Led New Deal• Provider Led Pathways to Work• New Deal• Flexible New Deal• Eligibility

The LEP project is working to ensure a strategic fit with:

Local Partnership Agreements

Providers as LEP Key Partners

• Crucial, given the scale of LEP targets, and your work with the customer groups

• Key role in achieving job readiness

• Role as LEP PET deliverers as well

• Access to 100,000 vacancies per annum

• Free

• Win – Win situation

Providers as LEP Key Partners

• Additional employer leads

• Integrating the end-to-end process

• Hiding the wiring from employers

• A shared challenge – success for the system

The Jobcentre Plus proposition

• Jobcentre Plus wants a real Partnership with Providers so that we operate as a single system engaging locally with employers.

• Employers expect us to hide the wiring so that they don’t face multiple and confusing contacts.

• We and Minister expect the 250,000 LEP jobs target to reflect success for the system as a whole which of course includes DWP’s contracted Providers.

The Jobcentre Plus proposition

• We have no motive to keep our employer contacts to ourselves. We will share all our LEP contacts with providers so that employers and customers benefit. This gives us no sensitivity about providers subsequently claiming outcome payments if customers get LEP jobs because LEP Pre-employment Training provides additionality.

• We know Providers have excellent arrangements of their own with employers. We want to build on those and bring those employers into the LEP fold.

• We have built simple operating systems to accommodate

Questions