Executive Summary
National Audit Office Value for Money Report
For millions of people, Personal Advisers
are the face of government. Jobcentre Plus has 9,300 advisers who
conducted 10.8 million jobseeker interviews in 2005-06 at a salary
cost of 238 million. Interviews last from 20 minutes to an hour,
depending on the particular programme the customer is part of and
what stage of looking for work they have reached. Advisers help
people find work by diagnosing barriers to employment and assisting
them to overcome them. They also have a responsibility to protect
the integrity of the benefits system by ensuring those who should
be doing so are actively seeking work.
The Government aims to increase the employment rate to 80 per
cent, which will require many more of the harder-to-help (in
particular, those on Incapacity Benefits) to enter employment.
Personal Advisers will be crucial for achieving this and demands
for their services are likely to increase under the proposals
outlined in the 2006 Welfare Reform Bill.
Overall value for money assessment
Overall, our findings are encouraging. There is evidence that
Personal Advisers have contributed to the high employment rate in
the United Kingdom, as well as the relatively low levels of
unemployment. In particular:
- customer research shows advisers have a positive impact by
raising customers confidence, equipping them with improved
job-seeking skills and assisting with job applications;
- the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
found significant improvements in unemployment levels in the United
Kingdom and other countries with similar policies related closely
to the adoption of active job-seeking measures such as those
organised through Personal Advisers;
- independent research suggests the use of Personal Advisers is
associated with greater numbers leaving benefits; and
- third party employment advisers commented favourably on the
ability of Jobcentre Plus Personal Advisers.
The amount of time Personal Advisers spend advising customers is
crucial to their effectiveness. Currently, around 52 per cent of
adviser time is spent interviewing. Other time is spent in
training, performance monitoring and completing paperwork, some of
which is clearly necessary. However, there are a number of barriers
to maximising the amount of time spent with customers. In
particular:
- customers are often late for interviews or fail to turn up at
all. In 2005-06, customers did not attend around 1.8 million
scheduled interviews at an estimated cost of 16 million;
- a range of other factors reduce the productivity of staff,
including limitations of the IT system, some unnecessary paperwork
and interruptions during interviews. Errors made by contact centres
have knock-on effects in Jobcentre Plus offices and overruns in
Financial Assessor interviews can affect Personal Advisers.
Jobcentre Plus has already made improvements to processes to
assist Personal Advisers such as introducing new
Diary/Administrative Support Officers from September 2006 to
undertake routine work, altering the target regime (which has
reduced the burden of performance measurement), and trialling
changes to the process such as the part played by the Financial
Assessor. Jobcentre Plus could further improve productivity of
advisers. In particular, it should:
- identify and remove unnecessary paperwork and introduce simple
improvements such as reducing the need to write customer details on
many forms, and reducing the number of forms by amalgamating
similar ones;
- make the most of the role of Diary/Administrative Support
Officer to manage adviser diaries, answer calls during interviews,
complete routine paperwork and monitor targets;
- emphasise more clearly to customers their responsibility to
attend interviews, share best practices in securing high attendance
rates such as reminding customers of impending appointments by
phone or text, and using unambiguous language in letters with
customers;
- longer term, make better use of locally available data to plan
better the use of adviser time, and introduce improvements to its
IT to remove actions which do not add value.