How to reach and engage priority clients
A number of mechanisms exist for effectively reaching out to and engaging individuals in employability.
These include:
Outreach
Developing and implementing targeted outreach, engagement and marketing strategies, via
- Personal contact in the community
- Joint working with frontline staff of other agencies who are in contact with clients
- Utilising community or other agencies’ premises
- Effective location of provision
- Involving the voluntary and community sector
- Involving the local community
Area based approaches
Some of the most successful employability approaches and initiatives have had a local focus. The advantages of this are:
- The problem becomes manageable in scale and this can be strongly motivating to agencies and their staff.
- The objectives are clear and tangible
- The service can be tailored to the local profile of unemployed/inactive people and to the needs of local employers
- Strong working relationships can be built up with local employers over time
- Local staff can build working relationships with the people running local front line services and third sector support organisations
- The approach is locally committed and seen as being part of and ‘for’ the locality. This can be reflected in a locally relevant name (often named after the area: see Branding)
- The service is highly accessible to most local residents
- It maximises word of mouth referral from clients
- Successes are easily linked to the local service and help to ‘spread the word’.
Area based approaches take three forms:
- Area based projects or initiatives, focused on a town or significant community, but often covering a smaller area of significant need. This approach may focus intensively on relatively small areas in an effort to reach very hard to reach groups. This approach has been pioneered in Scotland by CEIS as the Full Employment Areas Initiative (FEAi) www.ceis.org.uk/index.php
- National programmes which focus on significant areas of high unemployment or inactivity. Employment Zones have been among the most significant of these initiatives and their evaluations provide valuable insights into what works (Synthesis of evidence on Employment Zones: http://research.dwp.gov.uk/asd/asd5/ )
- Regional approaches which break the problem into bite size chunks by focusing on a rolling programme of community based approaches – such as that adopted by Highland Council in the 1990’s.
There is a clear trend of rationalising localised approaches to reduce the significant overheads involved and gain economies of scale. Examples are the restructuring of the 8 Local Development Companies in Glasgow into 5 Local Regeneration Agencies and the creation of 2 employability companies in Lanarkshire.
Client target approaches
There is a significant overlap between area based approaches and client group approaches – for the simple reason that client groups are often geographically concentrated. Most local initiatives have been set up by funders who are keen to focus on clients who are harder to reach and/or require more support than that available from mainstream services like Jobcentre Plus or Flexible New Deal.
Evaluations have revealed that such services often attract clients who are relatively short term unemployed. But the rapid success that can be achieved with this client group can create a positive local image which is helpful in attracting those in harder to reach groups.
Most national programmes are targeted at groups which are particularly vulnerable in the labour market: lone parents, long term unemployed, people with disabilities, BME groups.
There have been a number of major projects aimed at very specific groups (eg redundant coalminers were helped by British Coal Enterprise, shipyard workers by British Shipbuilders Enterprise Ltd and steelworkers by British Steel Enterprise) the lessons from these projects remain relevant today, notably about creating a well-funded, comprehensive service that can provide bespoke routes to work that integrate skill development, employability skills and employer engagement and support, with specific support for small business start ups).
Local projects have been established to target specific groups such as this or combinations of them. Some of the lessons from these approaches are:
- Be clear about who the target group is and understand its scale and distribution – in other words, how many potential clients are they and where are they?
- Work with members/leaders within this group to design a service which is accessible and relevant to their needs.
- Ensure that the support for each individual is designed to meet their agreed needs and objectives.
- Understand the skills, experience, support and training needs of the group as well as the social and community norms by which they live.
- Train members of the client group to deliver the service: this helps to ensure sensitivity and commitment.
- Ensure that the service reaches out to its target client group rather than be ‘taken over’ by more assertive low priority clients.
- Deliver a high quality service and help clients to spread the word.