Mystic Al Predicts the Future

Welcome to the first employability bulletin for 2012. In this week’s issue we have asked our welfare to work expert and soothsayer Alistair Grimes (aka Mystic Al) to give his take on what 2012 has in store for the sector. But first a big congratulations to Yvonne Dobbs of Epcot Career Solutions who won the draw for readers who correctly answered the most questions in our end of year quiz.

A friend of mine in local government was once asked to give his prediction for the year ahead. His answer was ‘365 days’. Anything else risks serious embarrassment since consultants, by and large, are poor at predicting the future (unlike economists who are poor at predicting the future and the past).

If we make the less than heroic assumption that both unemployment and youth unemployment will continue to rise it might be worth considering the implications for various government programmes, contractors and the institutional architecture that is dealing with employability.

We might wonder, for example, how long will it take the various LEPs to organise themselves and to start delivering their part of the employability deal (job growth through stimulating/supporting the private sector)? Given that re-organisation tends to result in a dip in performance, I’m not sure that we should expect a lot of rapid progress. We might also wonder when those organisations who have an important (but not central role) such as the Homes and Communities Agency get round to building communities as opposed to building homes (and how the ‘single conversation’ is going in terms of joining up local stakeholders and the HCA).

The Work Programme will start to enter that difficult territory where the evasion ‘too early to tell if it is working’ starts to wear off. Certainly the structure and pricing of the WP do not seem to have been designed to deal with a prolonged recession. Mystic Al predicts that even before the attachment fees end and everyone moves onto outcome payments some providers will feel the strain and look at DWP bailing them out or throw in the towel. This poses two crucial issues for DWP. First, will it cave in and find a way of subsidising Prime Contractors who threaten to walk away or will it accept the logic of the market place? Second, how will it re-contract failures (either financial or performance) and will it take performance/track record into account or go the usual way and look at price as the single most important factor? In short, will it move from the current policy of administering a competition for funds to actually having a view about the sort of market place it wants to create and the long-term results it wants? At the moment it is as if a landowner tells the world he wants a garden with lots of bio-diversity and creativity, but once the tenders come in decides that it is OK to just have grass and concrete because it is so much cheaper.

Finally, the WP was set up as a ‘Single Programme’ to simplify matters and stop the proliferation of parallel programmes for similar client groups. Already this has shifted to a ‘Single Framework’ leaving lots of room for, well, parallel programmes funded by ESF or whatever and the slightly strange site of organisations who weren’t considered good enough for the WP being given other funding in preference to those organisations who were thought to be good enough for the WP. And, of course, it hasn’t dealt with the issue of local authority funds for employability which remain obstinately un-integrated and quite substantial. In Scotland, for example, the Government estimates that local authority funds for employability are greater than the WP contracts. One consequence of this is the paradox of money available, but no clients because of the mandatory nature of the WP. Sooty used to solve his problems by sprinkling ‘oofle dust’. Central and local government may need something as effective if they are to make the best use of the common resources in this area that are still delivered in those silos we are always aspiring to break down.

My prediction for 2012 in this field is that we will still see, to adapt Shaw, ‘too many partners divided by a common objective’.

Do you agree or disagree with Mystic Al? Get in touch Alistair.grimes@rocketsciencelab.co.uk

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