DEMOS

 

The Government's welfare to work programmes should be restructured to put employers at their heart and make a significant contribution to full employment. This report sets out a radical vision of what the welfare-to-work system could look like 10 years from now.

The New Deal has been a considerable success, having substantially reduced long-term unemployment among young people. But, in order to further improve the performance of welfare to work, employers now need to become far more involved in the design and implementation of programmes.

This report is the result of a year long study of 40 welfare to work programmes, mostly in the USA. Its key finding is that those programmes which are most successful in placing unemployed people into better paid jobs with career prospects are designed to meet the needs of specific employers or sectors. Existing programmes should be turned 'back to front', so that they start with employers and their recruitment needs and train jobseekers for those positions, rather than training jobseekers and then hoping to find employers who want them.

A 'demand led' welfare to work system would best be led by sectoral employer organisations, working with service providers. In the long run, these new institutions could cover much of the economy. Within this framework, welfare to work would be integrated with lifelong learning initiatives, to ensure that people received support to upskill and develop their careers.

The report concludes that 'comprehensive service' programmes that integrate welfare to work and lifelong learning will be essential not only to help unemployed people into living wage jobs, but also to help them sustain higher wage employment over the long-term. By helping employers to update their skill bases and change their business strategies, the programmes will also boost the competitiveness of UK firms.

The report is sponsored by Reed in Partnership, part of the Reed recruitment group set up to run Government welfare to work projects.

David Pinto-Duschinsky is a Demos Associate and previously worked for the New Deal Task Force.