Blog

As someone that likes to start the day with a brisk walk on the treadmill, I well understand the dangers of not keeping pace. Keep moving or fall off. The employability world is no different, we must constantly innovate and adapt to move forward.   

Our sector’s recent awareness day – Employability Day – reflected this in abundance. As organisations, Ingeus included, opened their doors to show the incredible range of services, methods of delivery, and novel partnerships supporting today’s disadvantaged jobseekers, I was led to reflect on the seismic changes I’ve witnessed and helped steer here at Ingeus in recent years.  

The first, catapulted up the priority list by the pandemic, has to be the use of technology. Go back 10 years ago, when the first Employability Day was hosted, and we’d likely be working with some participants who didn’t own digital devices or have an email address, let alone know how to use it. Pivoting so quickly to remote services during the pandemic involved getting people online – and it’s stayed an integral part of our offer. With our network of partners, we now routinely provide broadband, data, recycled devices, and IT training: the building blocks of modern-day job searching. How we search for roles, prepare, and apply for them has changed beyond measure, as have the artificial intelligence tools used to practice interviews and sift CVs. When used to enhance, but not replace, the expertise of our teams, I see great promise for these tools. The technology 10 years from now will be unrecognisable from todays and we must lead it responsibly in the right direction, ensuring it opens up, not closes routes to work for all.   

That work itself is also changing. Employers have been quick to capitalise on remote and hybrid working models, while self-employment is fast becoming a hallmark of traditionally employed sectors such as construction, security and driving. Just as a vacancy for a drone operator or Uber driver would have meant nothing to me 10 years ago, labour market needs will align with the quick passing of time, driven in no small part by societal changes, AI and net zero.  

At the start and end of all this of course lie our participants. Many face significant challenges in finding and sustaining work and it was wonderful to celebrate some of their successes on Employability Day.   

Mental health has always been a stubborn characteristic of the people we help, again brought into sharp focus by the pandemic. Wider wellbeing factors, debt, and housing issues are also now an intrinsic part of the mix and it’s only right that modern programme design accommodates people’s holistic needs. As we move to more localised funding and control of employability programmes, I hope this will strengthen even further as commissioners and providers work together to innovatively tailor support to specific residents.  

While I don’t like to pigeonhole people into distinct categories, there’s no denying that world events are playing a large part in the people we see and the services they require. People displaced from their own countries need language support and help to pivot their skills and qualifications to UK standards; older workers wanting or needing to unretire seek help to navigate their tech-heavy job search; young people urgently need programmes to build their resilience and confidence following a pandemic that ruled their formative years; and people at home with a disability or health condition need to know that there’s sympathetic support to reintroduce them to the world of work.      

That’s another reason why the awareness brought by Employability Day is so important. I feel incredibly privileged to work in a sector that impacts people so positively but we’re a hidden gem, largely out of sight until you need us. Employability day served as a public reminder that while the challenges faced by jobseekers today are evolving, so too are our solutions.