I am not interested in having a big old moan about the Jobcentre. There are plenty of people out there who will happily take on the job of chief moaner and tell you that all is bad. Having evaluated Jobcentre Plus services for the last two years, I know that the work of the advisers is difficult, complex and quite stressful.
What this study is about...
- Jobcentre Plus services have been thoroughly evaluated as a whole in terms of their implementation process as well as their impact (although the most recent impact study about the Flexible New Deal is still ongoing). The Department for Work and Pensions commissions a Customer Experience survey on a regular basis. However, the results of these studies provide high-level pictures and often more general indicators. While I have personally conducted in qualitative customer interviews for the evaluation of the Flexible New Deal, the results from these interviews gave anecdotal insight and only scratched the surface, indicating some high level problems but not necessarily highlighting issues at a personal level.
- From the customer interviews, it transpired that services for highly qualified people are rather limited at Jobcentre Plus. Initially, during the height of the recession there were some measures introduced to alleviate the immediate pressure created from the influx of professionals, but many were abandoned after a short period of time when the labour market started to stabilise again. Some studies even indicate that Jobcentre Plus services are simply not designed for highly qualified professionals and instead focus on people with low and no skills.
- Front-line services at Jobcentre Plus have been studied outside of the commissioned evaluations, but mainly from the perspective of and focussing on the work of the advisers (see Wright and Bertram). There are, to the best of my knowledge, no studies from the perspective of the service user.
- This study is a participant observation of Jobcentre Plus services for highly qualified people (and I really don't expect to be still in the system to make it through to the contracted portion of the Work Programme).
- The aim is to assess:
- What support is offered to highly qualified people to help them back into work?
- How the services are implemented from the view point of the customer?
I will expand this section with the relevant literature as I go along. For now, I found it important to start recording my experiences and observations so that in the end I will be able to relate them to the wider theoretical context. I will also provide a section on the methodology of participant observation and keep a reflective log on the challenges of this method in the methodology section.
A word on terminology
I do not like the word "customer" in the context of Jobcentre Plus services. "Customer" implies that people have a choice in what service they would like to take on and that they have some power over the seller. In the context of Jobcentre Plus, this is clearly not the case and "customer" is just a rhetorical construct used by policy makers within the context of the sub-contracting and marketisation of services. Therefore, I much prefer the term service user. It has its own problems, but I find it more fitting than customer.
