This week’s interviewee works for Jobcentre Plus, handling benefit claims and helping people to find work
“I have been working as a personal adviser for 35 years. One of my key objectives is to help get people off Job seeker’s Allowance and into stable, long-term work within 12 months of signing on.
Change is part and parcel of life at the Jobcentre – and within the public sector as a whole – but the overhaul of two key areas of the benefits system currently being implemented is going to have a significant impact on our operation.
First, Incapacity Benefit (IB) claimants are being reassessed, and the existing benefit is being replaced by Employment Support Allowance. Under the old system, if someone was injured and could no longer do their old job – driving an HGV, for example – they could claim IB until the injury had healed. But under the new system, we look at what other jobs the claimant could do: part-time work, perhaps, or establishing a new career working from home.
Apart from the savings that will be made, one of the best things about this new system will be the positive effect it has on claimants themselves. Statistics show that someone who’s been claiming IB for more than 10 years has as much chance of dying as they do of retiring: that is to say, their condition worsens when claiming sickness benefits long-term. Under the new system, we will be able to work with claimants, help them to find new opportunities and offer them the chance of a brighter future. This could very well prove to be a lifeline for many who, under the current system, have been written off.
The second big change we are preparing for is the introduction of Universal Credit (UC). This will streamline the various benefits into one single payment, cutting down on administration and easing the transition between Jobseeker’s Allowance and job earnings. Claims are made online too, which will be much more cost effective – although it does raise concerns about how those without basic IT skills, or access to the internet, will be able to navigate the system.
The policy sounds great in theory, but the reality is somewhat removed from this. Some benefits, such as Carer’s Allowance, aren’t included in UC: why is this? The introduction of UC created the opportunity to completely revamp the system, but it seems to have become a little half-hearted. Part of me wonders why they are changing things at all.
As with all new policies, one of my biggest concerns about its introduction is whether our IT infrastructure will be able to cope. The IT system at Jobcentre Plus is a big problem for us: it is 17 years old, and its failures can reflect really badly on the service as a whole – which is frustrating. Very often we will be asked to implement a really great-sounding new strategy, or new measures are fed down from above, and they don’t work simply because of the logistics of synergising the IT system. The problem is that those proposing and signing off the changes simply have no knowledge of shop floor operations. It’s a shame, because we all really want to make these new measures a success.
Timescales can have a huge impact on the success of new schemes, and sometimes we run into difficulties because we just haven’t had enough time to get systems and resources into place before launch. The Universal Job Match – an online service that finds relevant jobs to suit your CV – is a good example of this: we experienced teething problems with it because it was rushed through very quickly.
Issues can also arise at a local level when implementing a national policy: it’s not always the case that ‘one size fits all’. Recently, we were appointed as a work academy for a local recruiter, and we ran into some difficulties because small elements of the process which we had to follow were not applicable to the situation. We had to spend a lot of time completing extra paperwork, because we were so tightly bound by the policy framework.
Of course, it is essential that we have the correct rules and restrictions in place: we are, after all, accountable to the people and funded by the public purse. But with improved IT systems and a little flexibility around how we implement policies, I do believe that we would be able to provide a greatly improved service all round. I love my job, and I think – with a few tweaks here and there – those of us who see our role as more than just a job would be able to extract greater levels of satisfaction each and every day.”
Interview by Claire Wilson