Boosting progression in the UK labour market

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Stephen EvansFebruary 2014

About Working Links

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• Established in 2000 to support unemployed and disadvantaged individuals into lasting employment.

•Unique mix of government, private and voluntary sector ownership.

•To date, we’ve worked with over 15,000 employers and helped more than 250,000 people back into work.

Delivery in Britain

The labour market context (1)

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Traditional focus

Increasing focus

Little focus to dateLow pay defined here as

below Living Wage or London Living Wage

The labour market context (2)

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The policy challenge

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The lower end of our labour market isn’t working as well as it should for:

•Individuals. Low social mobility, in-work poverty, low pay-no pay cycle

•Employers. Low productivity, recruitment & training costs

•Exchequer. Costs of in-work poverty, costs of ‘churn’

The current policy response doesn’t meet this challenge:•It’s no-ones job to help people progress from low pay•Support that might help is relatively limited and fragmented•The evidence base is limited too

But this is starting to change:•We called for employment & progression programmes•Both parties thinking about payment by wage outcomes•Some forthcoming City Deal initiatives

Some delivery challenges

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1) Customer engagement. Once a customer has found work, it is often a challenge to keep them engaged – can an enhanced offer change this?

2) Employer engagement. What is the sell to employers?

3) What works. This is a new area of policy – how can we take a ‘test, learn, adapt’ approach?

Watch this space…

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We’re developing further policy & delivery thinking and will be sharing this during 2014

A number of cities are developing plans to commission progression services, including Plymouth – this gives a great chance to test approaches

We have argued that the successor to Work Programme should be paid in part on wage outcomes, and that this should apply to skills programmes too

Progression is now the next frontier of social security support