In today’s Britain there’s still too much untapped potential as far as the labour market’s concerned. Too much talent wasted. Too much ability unrealised. Full prosperity for this country can only be delivered and Britain seen to be properly equipped for the future if business leaders transform their way of thinking. They need to move away from using some of the talents of some of the people, and instead look at employing all of the talents of all of the people.
The Government knows this desire cannot be achieved by its own work in isolation. Nor can it be achieved by businesses operating in a silo. Only by businesses, individuals and the Government working in tandem is the goal going to be realised.
For its part, the Government must take responsibility for funding basic skills training and reforming its provision. Individuals must then assuming responsibility for signing up to (and completing) that training before snapping up the jobs on offer. Crucially, it’s the employers in all sectors who must accept the fact they need to be responsible for providing good job opportunities and career paths, and continually improving the skills of their workforce.
At present, across all industries there are something like two-thirds of a million vacancies to be filled. The biggest challenge to full employment isn’t a lack of jobs, then. Rather, a lack of suitable/transferable skills and a scarcity of links between those who need jobs and employers requiring good people.
Through JobCentre Plus, the Government is now in continual dialogue with the leading companies in Britain about ways in which men and women previously overlooked for roles can be taken on, trained and offered career opportunities. The good news is that many of the best known employers among them G4S Security Services (UK) and VSG in the security sector want to play their part, and that’s why they’ve committed themselves to the ethos underpinning Local Employment Partnerships (LEPs).
LEPs: what are they, exactly?
To bolster the New Deal, help 250,000 individuals back into work by December 2010 and give them the chance to develop the necessary skills to stay and progress, LEPs have been set up as a ‘deal’ between the Government and employers.
That deal is simple. Through JobCentre Plus and its partners, the Government is committing to ready people for work. Employers with vacancies then commit to give those people a fair shot at a job through enhanced recruitment processes, fair interviews, useful work placements and invaluable mentoring.
In practice each LEP agreement is going to different from the next. They’re tailored to the needs of individual employers. The agreement will build on a given employer’s existing approach to recruitment and retention through a range of specific measures designed to assist benefit claimants. These measures might well include:
As part of the agreement, JobCentre Plus identifies a named contact to work with the interested employer at both national and local levels. Where necessary, JobCentre Plus will also work with its partners to develop effective pre-employment training that will meet the needs of the business, and identify suitable in-work training to support retention and development of new recruits.
How are LEPs holding up?
It’s fair to say that LEPs are being recognised by all kinds of employer as a recruitment solution they simply cannot ignore. Why? LEPs save employers time, money and a whole lot of hassle. To date, over 5,500 individuals have been recruited via LEPs by upwards of 650 employers. Pretty good going, it must be said.
As LEPs continue to grow, it’s understandable that the Government is keen to champion them and their demonstrable successes. Employers that have signed on the dotted line and begun to implement their agreements are seeing the benefits, and they’re keen to share their experiences.
With this in mind, JobCentre Plus convened a Round Table breakfast briefing and debate on LEPs at 77 Kingsway the home of Fishburn Hedges Public Relations under the banner ‘Harnessing Untapped Potential to Solve Your Recruitment Needs’.
The discussion was chaired by Sue Veszpremi (head of employer engagement at JobCentre Plus) with a Keynote Address from Stephen Timms (the current minister for employment and welfare reform). Also in attendance were among others G4S Security Services (UK)’s Human Resources director Valerie Dale, Keith Francis (managing director at Vision Security Group), Tony Gates (Carillion Group’s business development director) and Tina McKenzie (head of Contact Centre solutions with Randstad UK).
Opening proceedings, Sue Veszpremi explained: “Our aim at these events is to bring together employers from sector groups to share their experience and feedback on how they work with JobCentre Plus through LEPs, and how we can make the process better. It’s a challenging agenda for us but, equally, recruitment is an extremely challenging agenda for today’s fast-moving businesses.”
Veszpremi is aware that there’s no ‘one size fits all’ with recruitment strategies. “We must work alongside and with employers to make sure we understand what suits them best. Where the sequencing of jobs is important, for example at retail outlets, and where security jobs are on offer a long way ahead of retail jobs, we are working tirelessly to understand employers’ needs and sequence training.”
The Train to Gain initiative
Veszpremi was quick to point out that JobCentre Plus is also working closely with the Learning and Skills Council and the Train to Gain initiative to ensure that pre-employment and in-work training is in place. “Our philosophy is one of training people for sustainable employment. Often, if individuals have been unemployed for a long time and have previously worked in only one industry, they perhaps don’t recognise that they have the skills or can acquire the skills to move into a completely different industry. We’re working frantically to help customers make that leap.”
Next to speak was Valerie Dale, who sat next to yours truly in ‘Security Corner’ (so too did VSG’s Keith Francis). As Human Resources director at G4S Security Services (UK) a quality company operating in an often cut-throat market Valerie knows that a robust recruitment model is essential.
“In the security sector we have continuous growth, low margins and high employment needs,” opined Dale. “That means we are constantly on the look-out for people to join us, stay with us and be motivated to work for us. LEPs are a natural medium whereby we can reach people that would once have been outside our radar.”
Dale is continually looking for ways in which her department can positively impact on the company’s bottom line by bringing sound Human Resources decisions to the business. Why did G4S choose the LEP route, one wonders? “Our customer sites in the UK are truly nationwide, so the recruitment model we adopt has to be flexible enough to adapt to the requirements of different geographical areas while maintaining a degree of consistency. We saw a partnership via LEPs as an additional instrument to build into this model.”
G4S’ involvement with LEPs is driven by three requirements: to show a commitment to the workforce on a UK basis, develop existing relationships with JobCentre Plus as a new strategic partner and gain access to an important sector of the workforce that would previously have been out of reach. That involvement now stretches from Edinburgh, where the initial ‘pilot’ ran, through to central London where Dale’s team is currently interviewing just shy of 200 JobCentre Plus applicants each week via group interviews.
Advantages derived from LEPs
According to Dale, there are a number of advantages associated with LEPs. “Vacancy advertising, recruitment and selection management and processes save our recruitment officers a lot of time out in the field,” explained Dale. “We work in partnership with a local labour market expert, and have been provided with skills and training support. The LEP can also provide mentors to support those who’ve experienced personal problems and help them into employment. There’s a check in place, too, to make sure they’re fit for work and, more specifically, fit for work in our industry.”
For Dale, its involvement with LEPs demonstrates G4S’ Corporate Social Responsibility. “We’re working in local communities, upskilling local people and employing them. The LEPs allow us to pinpoint a future generation of workers.”
Only recently, G4S’ resourcing officer in Scotland interviewed an LEP candidate at the end of a training programme run by Triple A Training. The officer recognised the interviewee from a previous employment meeting two years earlier. The man had been offered work at G4S, but eventually decided to stay with his then employer. Unfortunately, he was then made redundant, which led to illness and depression and 18 months without employment.
“This time around he’s accepted our offer,” enthused Dale, “and is soon to be deployed to a static security officer post in Hamilton.”
Have there been any barriers to implementation? “Licensing has been a slight problem. Due to the processing delays with applications, we can lose candidates. Rather than hang around, it’s easier for JobCentre Plus advisors to place people in positions at Tesco. We also have to face up to the fact that security may not be the industry in which people want to work. It doesn’t have the best of images, to be honest. All of us need to help change that.”
What’s the best way to guarantee success from LEPs? “It’s really all about building that relationship with JobCentre Plus advisors to make sure they place their clients with us,” Dale affirms. “We support recruitment open days with them. We agree to vary our practices as best we can so that we’re able to guarantee interviews to anyone who has passed through JobCentre Plus training or the JobCentre Plus recruitment process we’ve agreed with them. Without exception, we guarantee these candidates an interview.”
As a result of LEPs, G4S now has what Dale aptly terms “a personal presence” in the local community. “Our jobs are advertised in JobCentre Plus offices. People who come in looking for work are now fully aware that we’re a serious employer in their local community.”
Gaining a business ‘edge’
Keith Francis had attended the breakfast event to sign a national LEP agreement with Stephen Timms on behalf of VSG. He also wanted to add his thoughts on the matter at hand, and was as forthright and intuitive as ever.
Commented Francis: “It’s a massively competitive employment market out there. I’m not here today, and nor is VSG, on the basis that LEPs are nice to do. I’m here because LEPs offer our business the opportunity to gain an ‘edge’. At the end of the day we’re in the market of recruiting people and, through LEPs, we’re talking to the biggest pool of available labour in the UK.”
Francis is adamant that we all need to move away from the stigma of placing the unemployed back into work and focus instead on the fact that “there are people whom we want to employ, so let’s make it happen”. For Francis, LEPs are “too good an opportunity to turn down.”
Some very interesting perspectives on LEPs were delivered by the final speaker of the morning, the Carillion Group’s business development director Tony Gates, who focused on the 2012 Olympic Games. As a mixed support services and construction concern, Carillion’s growth is driven by the need to recruit (the Group employs 50,000 people, 20,000 of whom are UK-based). This year alone, the firm needs to recruit 4,000 people on home shores alone.
“It’s not sustainable for us to look at our competitors, and for us to recruit from each other,” said Gates, who could just as easily have been talking about the private security sector. “We need to be more strategic and systematic, and really hit the untapped areas.”
At the moment there’s a wealth of employment opportunities in big developments such as the Olympics. “The challenge in terms of recruitment for 2012 is how to co-ordinate it all,” Gates added. “There’ll be a number of contractors employed to build facilities, and a number of public services companies engaged to help stage the Games. Most of them will already be engaged with some form of training and local employment initiatives. We have to bring all that together, and bring it together early.”
Again mirroring what needs to happen in security provision for the Games, Gates concluded: “We need to ask ourselves what we can be doing now to set in motion the systems and processes that make sure we have the right people in the right jobs in good time.”
