Blog

Singing from the same song sheet

13 Sep 2024

As an employer of more than 2,500 people, Ingeus understands the inherent link between inclusive recruitment and employee retention. Exploring all avenues to find the right person for a role upfront, builds loyalty, saves costs, and reduces risk. There is a direct correlation between mindful, supported recruitment and a stable, productive workforce.

Ingeus finds people with potential and supports them to become committed team members – both within our own workforce and the many employers we help to fill vacancies. Finding that perfect fit is becoming increasingly important as employers navigate the country’s fast-changing labour market and proposed legislation. With government plans to strengthen the employment rights, protections, and wages of workers from day one of employment, employers will be ever more mindful of finding the right people to match their vacancies.

Understanding employer need is crucial in avoiding mismatches in the programmes we’re delivering. It’s also an area of massive national debate: How best to support employers by finely interlacing the services of employment support organisations like Ingeus, skills providers, Jobcentre Plus and the National Careers Service? Our industry body ERSA – the Employment Related Services Association – of which I’m a Board member, lists meeting the needs of employers as a principal theme of its 2024 Manifesto, and it’s a strand that resonates strongly with the work we do here at Ingeus. 

While calls continue at a national level for programmes and services aimed at, and shaped by, employers, ERSA members like Ingeus have a crucial role to play in demonstrating collaboration and innovation at an operational level.

Starting with the end in mind, we ask employers what they ideally want and need with their next wave of recruitment. It means finding people with the enthusiasm and interest for those roles and upskilling and supporting them to reach the employers’ expectations.

A good example of this was a pilot programme we recently ran with a North London teaching agency struggling to find teaching assistants to work with neurodivergent school children. Recognising the value that participants with neurodivergent conditions on our Work and Health Pioneer Programme could bring, we turned to our specialist provider network to provide bespoke training to prepare them for the roles. It was a wonderfully engaged and successful group, now ready to take up positions and support the children in their new school year. Ongoing support from our employer services team and Able Futures (specialist mental health provision) colleagues will smooth transition into the roles. 

Pilot partnerships like this, collaboration with employers, and working with everyone after participants have entered work is also recommended in the ERSA Manifesto. Ingeus routinely offers a range of in-work support including on the job training, travel expenses, clothing, and equipment; basically whatever that person needs to successfully sustain their work.

I am very proud of the collaborative approaches and innovative efforts Ingeus teams develop to bridge the gap between job seekers and employers. I often hear of employers building up relationships with Ingeus colleagues over many years, innately trusting them – and only them in some cases – to fill their vacancies.    

As we enter a new era of Government thinking, I hope to see more coherent collaboration across all areas of the UK labour market. Our industry talks as one about the need to re-energise and re-engineer the systems supporting jobseekers and to better integrate the wealth of expert health, education and employment services to actively support thousands of economically inactive or disadvantaged people. 

As they say, if you don’t risk the unusual, you must settle for the ordinary. I hope the rousing Manifesto chorus of ERSA and its members will be heard, with employers taking their rightful place in the front row. 
Read the ERSA Manifesto here.