Employability
I reconvene the committee. I apologise to the committee for starting almost three minutes later than I said we would.
Agenda item 3 is to receive a report back from members on the employability workshops that took place on Friday. As part of its examination of the need to improve the employability of those furthest from the labour market, the committee held one-day workshops in Ardrossan, Dundee and Dumfries, involving more than 45 organisations from the public, private and third sectors as well as individuals, to hear about people’s job-seeking experiences. We will now have a discussion on what happened. We will try to keep this reasonably brief, but I do not want to restrict people if they want to make any comments.
Let me kick off with the workshop in Ardrossan, which I attended with Michael McMahon. I will talk to a couple of points, but I will not go through the excellent notes that Jim Johnston and Ross Burnside prepared for the meeting, which will all be appended to our report so that people can look at them in depth and things are not missed out. Michael McMahon can follow on from my comments with any salient points that he wishes to make.
An interesting point in the Ardrossan workshop was that there seems to be a disconnect between the perceptions in some of the different groups. For example, in the first session the local employability partnership representatives talked about providing employers with the individuals and skills that they need. They talked about partnership working and the complex employability landscape, but they also conceded that there is an issue about competing with each other for funding to reach targets. They talked about how big public sector employers are doing a lot less on the employability issue than the private sector is, and they also talked about the need for co-location—providing employability services in a shared space or physical close proximity—and the importance of schools and local flexibility.
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That view was contradicted by the local business sector, which seemed to feel that it did not have much engagement at all with employability agencies. Businesses said that they got what they referred to as aggressive phone calls from various different organisations and agencies asking whether they would take someone on and offering financial inducements to do so.
The problem is that those inducements do not seem to be particularly important to employers relative to the need to have the right person sent to them. A lot of employers were concerned that someone would just be sent to them regardless of that individual’s particular interests, aptitudes or skills. In the hotel and catering sector, for example, there was a deep sense of frustration that there appears to be no acknowledgement of different types of employers, and that businesses are simply sent someone just so that targets can be met.
It seems that there is not enough focus on asking employers what they need. There was talk among employers of building attitudes to work, and of the desire to do that as early as primary school, particularly in areas where there are second and third generations of unemployed people.
Businesses did not believe that the education system is fit for purpose in getting some school leavers ready for work. They believe that there is a real issue with the effectiveness of some placements with regard to soft skills. The Department for Work and Pensions came in for particular criticism for sending people who are not appropriate. Businesses also talked about the lack of long-term placements, and said that people are being sent to them without the basic necessary skills.
Businesses’ experience of Scottish Enterprise was mixed, which somewhat contradicts some of what we heard earlier today. There was concern about the process of allocating grants, and we have heard some of those concerns today with regard to RSA grants. Some people seem to be exasperated by how difficult it is to get grants and by who gets them.
There was an issue with the planning system in North Ayrshire. It seems to be easier to say no to an application than to approve it, which is apparently restricting some business developments. Businesses believe that they should get direct funding to do their own training rather than funding being allocated to agencies, where there is perhaps a mismatch with training needs.
There was a real concern about the benefits system and flexibility, and businesses talked about things over which we do not have any control, such as reserved issues. For example, they said that cutting VAT on building developments would help in getting banks to lend more money.
Among third sector organisations, there was a feeling that the agencies are less joined up than they have been previously, and that they need to co-design and co-produce services. The view was that work programmes are done on the cheap and that the compulsory component of the benefit system is counterproductive.
There was a real issue—which was also raised later by the service users—about the need to build the confidence and self-esteem of people in the school system. The organisations believe that support for employability programmes and entrepreneurship programmes in school is crucial in giving young people the right focus.
There was real concern about the focus on targets and numbers, and the view was that soft skills should be included when measuring outcomes. The problem—as those organisations perceive it—is that the DWP in particular is focused only on getting people into work, which is not very helpful as some individuals are effectively bypassed by the system as a result.
With regard to tenders, not enough weight is given to the quality of schemes that need greater time and intensity rather just processing numbers. There is an issue with the sausage-machine mentality in processing some of those things.
The organisations are supportive of what local authorities—and North Ayrshire in particular—are doing, but they feel that the NHS is more difficult to work with on employability. Again, they emphasised that the private sector is better than the public sector in that regard. They said that we need less short-term funding, to be less reactive and to take more of a long-term approach, which the trade unions commented on some months ago. They believe that there needs to be more accountability and transparency with regard to what the employability budget is spent on and what it can deliver. They emphasised that the priority should be a one-to-one focus—that was not exactly what the International Labour Organization said last week, but it was something that was also emphasised today.
In the service users session, there was a consensus that the most effective work programmes are those that focus on positive thinking, confidence building and teamworking. However, there was concern among the participants, most of whom were older than the 18-to-24 age bracket, that because most interventions are directed towards the young, older long-term unemployed people are at a major disadvantage in employability programmes. That is a particular issue for women who have been out of the labour market, perhaps because they have been raising children.
All the participants had had negative experiences with Jobcentre Plus and the Department for Work and Pensions. Problems with a lack of flexibility and unwelcoming and intimidating environments were mentioned, as was inconsistent advice from the DWP on people’s entitlement to benefits while on training courses. If someone goes on a certain course, will they or will they not lose their benefits? That is clearly a real issue for people.
There was also concern that the compulsory element means that square pegs are being put into round holes for the sake of box ticking at the DWP. There was criticism of some of the training courses that are offered, which are viewed as being mass-produced and generic. There is real concern about people not being treated as individuals.
Michael, do you have anything to add?
That was a comprehensive overview. As Ardrossan is not in my area, I tried to compare and contrast the position there, using the information that we were given by people from various sectors, with the position in my area, which I know about from speaking to people from the same sectors there. Although there are specific issues in Ardrossan and North Ayrshire, the position there is comparable to the position in my area. It seems that there is a Scotland-wide issue rather than just a problem in certain local areas.
As the convener said, the problem seems to be too great an emphasis on quantity rather than quality. The tick-box exercise to get large numbers through is working against both the private employers that want to engage in providing training and opportunities for people, and the public sector, which wants to be seen to be getting as many people through as possible.
We need to focus on the outcome that we are trying to achieve. A lot of evidence was provided that simply churning numbers through the system is not sustainable. We heard that, if more time was taken to work with people individually, in a more focused way and over a longer period of time, more people would have the opportunity to use their skills to go on and have greater experiences in the workforce. In the longer term, that would be a more stable and sustainable approach.
I will add a further comment. Employers said that they often feel that their time is being wasted because they are sent people who are clearly unsuitable, given the skills base that is required by the company. It is a case of just anybody being fired over to them. We heard that some of the people who are sent are of high calibre and that there is no difficulty with them, but that others clearly do not have the right attitude or aptitude, and the employers feel quite aggrieved about that. Busy people are putting in time to interview folk who are clearly not suitable, and preparatory work is not being done before those people are sent to employers.
John Mason and Elaine Murray attended the session in Dumfries. Who wants to kick off?
Again, it was a good session. We started off with the attendees from the public sector and the local employability partnership, who believed that they were telling us a very good story. They talked about their partnership working and they had a table that showed their aims and when they expected to achieve them. They said that there is a problem with work placements, particularly in rural areas, where there are not many small and medium-sized enterprises that can take people on for work placements. They also said that there should be more emphasis on key sectors in the area, such as hospitality, tourism and leisure. Jobs in those sectors are still seen as not being good careers, and we heard that there ought to be more emphasis on that.
The attendees said that one-to-one support is successful but costly. I think that we wondered why, if it is costly for the public sector, they are not involving the third sector a bit more. There was a feeling that some of the national schemes are a bit too urban-centric and are not as well tailored to rural communities as they could be. They also talked quite a lot about what they call the pipeline, and the need for successes along the pipeline as they get people to the point at which they become employable. They said that it is not just getting people to the end point and into a job that is important, but the progression that they make along the journey.
A piece of jargon that I had not heard before was “hiding the wiring”, which apparently involves—
We heard that as well, funnily enough.
It involves a scheme that they were obviously very pleased about—an offer that they were going to describe as an employer offer on recruitment and training—and that had been recently launched. They felt that it could offer a service to employers. It sounded quite good until we asked local businesses what they thought about it, but nobody had consulted them.
There is still a disconnect between the public sector and the other partners. Perhaps people in the public sector are getting better at speaking to one another, but they are not yet necessarily communicating as well as they could with the private sector and the third sector. Indeed, the employer offer was seen as competition for the private sector, which thought, “Well, some of us do that and the public sector is trying to come in and do things that we do.”
It was a fairly large concern among local businesses that there is not enough private sector involvement in the local employability partnership. There was also a strong feeling that there needs to be an ability to train management and that it is not just about training people at the bottom. If we are looking at the demand side, it is about training the managers as well. More needs to be done on that.
It was felt that a bit more involvement in the school curriculum is probably needed to explain the opportunities of the various sectors, and there was a feeling—I am not sure whether this is true in the public sector as well—that there are too many schemes and too many different funding streams. I know that the Scottish Government is beginning to address that. I think that there is talk of a single employability fund in “Working for Growth: A refresh of The Employability Framework for Scotland”. Perhaps that might begin to cover concerns about there being too many different funding streams.
Strangely, there was a feeling that one of the problems in schools is that people go to school and then to university and then go back to school as teachers. That was said in two of the sessions. Perhaps teachers do not have the life skills and experience to be able to teach pupils about or expose them to other work opportunities, as they have not had such opportunities.
There was a bit of concern about whether people will have the right skills when the economy starts to grow again and whether we are investing in the skills that we will need to grow the economy. As I said, there was a general view that the landscape is too complex.
The third sector thought that getting the third, private and public sectors around the table is difficult. There is a lot of talk about working together, but it did not feel that things are working as well as they should be.
The duplication of effort was talked about. More than one third sector organisation thought that there is a rather low referral rate from Skills Development Scotland, and it was also thought that SDS does not cope. The third sector was represented by people from Apex Scotland, for example. Some people who are very far from the job market have significant problems and it was felt that, in some ways, public sector initiatives do not cater for some of those youngsters and they are not being referred on. Some of those young people have very few core skills and they need assistance.
There are problems in engaging youngsters at school and significant issues around chasing funding.
The service users’ input was very interesting. They talked about the real barriers that they experience in trying to get into work. Members will not be surprised to hear that transport to get to work is a barrier in rural areas. A youngish man who lived in Kelloholm was eventually offered a job in Annan, but it cost £12.30 a day to travel by train from Kirkconnel. By the time his travel costs and what he would lose in benefit were taken into account, he would be doing that work for £8 a week. A young woman in hospitality described how the bus to Dalbeattie left at 11 o’clock at night. If her shift finished at 7 o’clock, it did not matter: she still had to hang around to get the 11 o’clock bus. There are big transport issues in rural areas.
It is rather shocking that a young mother of youngish children has had problems with employers asking about her childcare arrangements. I think that it is illegal, but fairly large employers have asked her how, with young children, she will manage the shifts. The types of businesses in rural areas, such as those in the hospitality sector and the big retailers, expect people to work weekends or nights. There are not that many childminders who will look after kids at those times, so there are big childcare issues there.
The service users felt that more information and guidance could be given out, and that the Government should make more use of social media to get information out there. That was quite interesting, and perhaps reflected the age of the people who felt that we could be doing more in that regard.
There was a feeling that, although there are some jobs out there, the difficulty in rural areas such as Dumfries and Galloway is being able to get to the job in the first place.
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Does John Mason wish to add anything?
That was pretty comprehensive.
Like Michael McMahon, I found it good to be in a completely different area. Originally, I was going to go to Dundee, but I ended up in Dumfries. It is a big town, but there were a lot of people from outwith the town. They were very appreciative, and I think that I got more credibility for coming down from Glasgow, whereas Elaine Murray is more local.
The wider point is that it is extremely good to do that type of thing. I know that it is time consuming and it causes problems for me as it does for everyone else, but people really appreciate being listened to. We got that feeling from all the sectors that we spoke to.
A number of issues came up. For example, the point was made that some stuff is too urban-centric. Both the public and the employers spoke about incentivising employers, which was quite interesting. Some of that is, of course, outwith our control—for example, employers would like national insurance contributions advantages or corporation tax advantages if they are taking people on. The idea of being more joined up on non-domestic rates was another suggestion—employers want a bit of relief if they take people on.
There was an issue with the private sector not being included—although the public sector thought that it was—so there is a wee bit of a lack there. There was a concern that, although catering and hospitality is such a major employment sector in that area, there are no training facilities—a centre of excellence, for example—such as there are in the Highlands. That seems to be an obvious problem that somebody needs to tackle.
The issue of schools came up, although I am not sure that I have fully got my head around it. There was a discussion about what core skills are and what soft skills are, because some of us have been using those definitions interchangeably. There was a feeling that core skills are things such as problem solving, whereas soft skills are more to do with communication and that type of thing.
There was a feeling that the payment of £2,000 for an employer who took someone on was a big advantage, and that it would be disadvantageous if that was not there. It was felt that 26 weeks is not really long enough to train up young people.
There was a bit of criticism that everything has to be innovative: at council level, Government level and indeed at every level, people think that they have to have new ideas. For the third sector, that can just become confusing. Transport was also raised as an issue.
A good point from the third sector was that people need to be allowed to fall off the bus a couple of times—in other words, they blow it, and you still give them a chance. That is necessary for some people, which was quite a good point.
I will restrict myself to just one point from each of the four meetings. I echo John Mason’s point that it was a great idea—it was a very valuable day for me, especially as I spent it in Dundee, outside my region, which gave me the chance to speak to people with whom I had not come into contact before.
I will start with the service users session, which was pretty inspirational. It involved listening to people who had turned their lives around and who spoke quite eloquently about that.
There were a lot of key points, but I will leave the committee with one point, which is the question whether support should be provided to individuals or in groups. The service users were pretty adamant that a group setting is better. I am sure that there are exceptions, but they felt that having to go through the act of going into a group of people they did not know boosted their confidence. When people go to work in the real world, that is how it will happen—they will not get a one-to-one session in their job. They said that everyone in the group became quite good friends, and that they provided a support network for each other through the highs and lows of the courses that they took. I want to flag that up as it seems to tie in with what the ILO said to the committee a couple of weeks ago.
We then heard from third sector organisations. Their biggest frustration is funding and the fact that it is often provided for only a single year. As we might imagine, they want funding for longer stretches of time; they said that two-year funding would be a big improvement, but they are pushing for three-year funding. They also talked about the optimum length of time for working with individuals. As others have said, if an organisation has only a few weeks with somebody, it will make a minimal difference. There are exceptions, but in general the organisation will need at least six months, and probably closer to a year in most cases, in order to make a meaningful difference.
The biggest frustration for the businesses that we spoke to—it was mainly expressed by small businesses, as I suppose the bigger ones are a bit better plugged in—was that the landscape is still quite crowded. We have heard about that before. They said that it is not always clear who they should speak to about a particular issue, and because the head of human resources in a small business is also the head of health and safety and the head of pretty much everything else, they do not have time to go and look at four or five websites or make four or five phone calls. They want one person they can phone. They do not care what that person does next or who they pass the inquiry to behind the scenes. If there was one number that businesses could phone or one person they could contact, that would make a huge difference. At least one of the businesses said that, if that was the case, they would probably have at least another two apprentices within their business, and I am sure that that is not an isolated example.
Our final meeting—it was actually the first one—was with the employability partnership. This comment is subjective and anecdotal, but I got a pretty good feel from the group that they work with each other, know each other and speak to each other. They like each other and they are also happy to disagree and debate things, which is refreshing. Much of that comes down to the fact that, when the partnership in Dundee was formed, in 2008, pretty much everything was co-located in one office, so they can hear each other’s telephone conversations and they work together daily. That seems to have worked well for service users.
The area in which they feel that they need to do a bit more work involves ensuring that they engage with individual businesses, and particularly small businesses. In some cases, they go out and knock on the doors of shops and try to speak to the owner or manager, but that is slow going. They think that they need to do more work in that area. However, I was quite impressed by what we heard.
Bruce Crawford and Jean Urquhart were not involved as they joined the committee only recently. Do either of them, or indeed any other committee members, have any comments to make at this point?
I have personal experience of some of the difficulties that we heard about from all the members who have spoken. It has become obvious, not only in my business but in businesses in the Highlands in general, that the other European workers who come into the tourism, catering and hospitality trade, which is what I know, do not come through the job centres, Skills Development Scotland or other such agencies. There is an entrepreneurial spirit there. The position has changed in the past 20 years. We used to see far more young people across Scotland who were prepared to move around for jobs and to come and take them. We seem to have got stuck, in that people remain in their own areas and they are not particularly being encouraged to go beyond them. I do not know why that is the case.
That is an interesting point. Perhaps some people are just more risk averse than they were. There could be a host of different reasons. For example, if a Polish person goes to live in Inverness, they will know that, because there are already 5,000 or 6,000 Polish people there, they will have a proper community support network. It is sometimes more difficult for people to move within their own country, and not just because of accommodation costs. People’s expectations are different.
Also, it is a different type of person who comes from overseas. We have a really high expectation of Polish workers, but they might not be representative of all people in Poland, in that they are the ones who get up and go. It is not always fair to compare people who are here with people who have come from elsewhere. Scottish immigrants in America were very dynamic.
I accept that, but it was not like that in recent history. We used to get several hundred applications from Scottish students—from the Glasgow area in particular—who wanted to come and work either part time or full time, but that no longer happens. We might get one or two applications. Most things come through the internet now, anyway, but—
Has there been a change in relative pay and conditions?
No.
Okay.
I thank all the participants for their useful contributions, particularly committee members. I also particularly thank Dawn Redpath from Dumfries and Galloway Council, Andy Lee from North Ayrshire Council and Allan Millar from Dundee City Council and their respective teams for all their assistance in setting up the workshops, and I thank our clerking team, which did an excellent job on this.
All the information that came in from the sessions will go into our employability report, which we hope to have—
At the end of November.
We are going to secure at the Conveners Group a full parliamentary debate on employability in the new year, so we will look forward to that as well.
The final item on our agenda is item 4, which we agreed to take in private.
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Meeting continued in private until 12:16.