How recruiters can give something back through welfare to work

Peter Crush

We’re in a more candidate driven market than ever, yet the long-term unemployed still face an uphill struggle to get into work. What role can recruiters play in the welfare to work market, asks Peter Crush? 

News last week from Manpower showing job prospects are stronger than before the recession is a welcome boost for both job hunters and recruitment agencies alike.

But for one group – the long-term unemployed – this uplift could actually mean their prospects are worsening. From the point of view of talent-hungry employers, the question they face is stark: why risk hiring those with long periods of inactivity on their CV, when far more reliable can be used first?

As a survey by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit also recently revealed, 40% of graduates now take traditionally ‘non-grad’, entry-level roles as a route into careers. And these are exactly the sorts of roles the long-term unemployed used to take.

The Government’s flagship policy to deal with this has been the multi-billion pound ‘Welfare to Work’ (W2W) programme. But according to the Public Accounts Committee (PAC), it’s been an unmitigated failure, with just 3.6% of people it was helping between 2011-2012 achieving secure employment. In one three month period, only 20 people from 9,500 referred to employers got jobs.

The reason it’s failed, say critics, is that most of the people it tries to help are simply Britain’s unemployable – people forced off incapacity benefits, who don’t want to work, or who often have mental and low self-esteem issues associated with long periods of worklessness.

Stuck in the middle 

Recruitment agencies have been pitched as the perfect intermediaries to match people up with cautious employers, but those involved with it so far have not received a good press either.

One unnamed provider in the PAC review was found not to have placed a single person aged under 25 in a job for longer than six months. Payment is based on how long people they place stay with employers, so in 2013 the Work and Pensions Committee slammed agencies for playing an “ineffective numbers game” that comprised “deluging employers with poorly matched CVs and under-prepared candidates.” Dame Anne Begg, chair of the committee, said: “Work Programme providers need to focus on preparing jobseekers for real vacancies and offering an effective recruitment solution to employers.”

Faced with such criticism, it makes you wonder why agencies would ever want to get involved with such a tough-to-crack scheme. The answer, of course, is the genuine satisfaction agencies derive from placing people who are often forgotten and not on most employers’ radars, and some feel that now is the perfect opportunity to turn this poor perception around.

Shifting perceptions

One agency attempting to do just this is Nottinghamshire-based blue-collar agency Staffline. In 2011 it specifically invested in welfare-to-work provision when it paid £3 million for agency Fourstar, and in July 2011 it secured a five-year contract with the DWP. In May 2014 it also bought Avanta, making it the third-largest Welfare to Work provider. Staffline’s CEO Andrew Hogarth says it’s a tough job, but one he feels it’s important to do.

“We have to break down all sorts of perceptions about the long-term unemployed,” he says. “Some employers do still have a stereotype in their minds, but in our experience people who are unemployed don’t choose to be; it’s more that life and happenstance has dealt them a tough hand. When employers work with us, they often find that staff they hire are more loyal, because they know they’ve been given a chance. This is the message we push.”

Taking those referred from job centres, Staffline can work with people for three months or longer before placing them with employers. According to Hogarth, the this process is, as he calls it, “recruitment, with knobs on”. “What we do is almost get back to the basics of what recruitment should be – giving people a chance,” he says.  “Lots choose to make a lot more money doing traditional recruitment, but you don’t do this end of recruitment for the money.”

“It gives me and my staff a real buzz to know we’re getting people back on track. I’d much rather see the long-term unemployed given a new job, than someone, for instance, who’s already a secretary, getting just another secretary job.

Around 50% of the referrals he now gets are placed into sustained jobs, and he like others, believes the media doesn’t help agencies achieve this success. Jonathan Firth, operating director, Michael Page Finance, says: “The media have been very harmful in spreading an image that the long-term unemployed are lazy. Often it’s not the case. Most of the time they’ve been unlucky.”

Unemployed or unlucky?

Michael Page is another of the leading players in Welfare to Work, but more in a support (and non-financially rewarding role), providing skills to people looking for jobs, rather than placing them directly with employers. It partners with Shaw Trust, which recently merged with the Careers Development Group.

“A side people don’t often hear about in conversations about the long-term unemployed is that we actually help lots of professional people, who have been made redundant,” he says. “A lot of the time, our skills are about transferring our knowledge of what employers look for. We help people tune up their CVs, prepare the right questions for interviews, and get their confidence back.”

He adds: “Often, the problem is not that there aren’t jobs to apply for – actually, just applying for jobs is easy – but it’s making sure the people we help apply for the right jobs; jobs they’re actually likely to get.”

Procurement for government contracts means opportunities to be a main provider are limited (800 suppliers were recently chopped down to 18), but there are hundreds of supply chain opportunities that agencies can find out about and get involved with.

For instance, last November Interserve, a specialist in support services construction, set up a 12-month pilot to provide help for Employment Support Allowance claimants get back into work, through a partnership with Interserve Working Futures (its in-house recruitment training and coaching service for job seekers) and charity The Rehab Group to create ‘Rehab JobFit’. It aims to up the numbers finding work for three months or more to 25%, and partners with other providers to provide training and support.

Those who do get involved can access funding, but agencies that volunteer their skills can also benefit from it being a CSR activity to rally their staff around and ‘give something back’. So far, more than 200,000 job seekers have found work through Welfare to Work and associated partners, according to the Employment Related Services Association. That is surely a cause for celebration amongst all the associated partners who have helped in either a small or large way in this process.