As part of the Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s Plan for Jobs, last week saw the launch of Way to Work, a concerted drive across the UK to help half a million people currently out of work into jobs in the next five months.
While we have more people on company payrolls than before the pandemic, latest figures show there are around 1.2 million vacancies across the economy, including many in key sectors. We also have over a million Britons with talent on Universal Credit currently without a job who are expected to look for work.
To tackle this challenge, the Government is launching Way to Work, bringing employers into job centres and matching them up with claimants. This will fast track applications and interviews, speeding up the process of getting people into work.
It will also become easier for employers to work with Job Centre teams to fill their vacancies through jobs fairs (both in person and online), Employer Hubs, social media channels (including JobHelp), and advertising on FindAJob.
For new Universal Credit claimants, we are reducing the “permitted period” to search for a job in their preferred sector where they have appropriate skills already from 3 months to a maximum of 4 weeks.
They will then be switched to an ‘ABC’ approach – ‘Any Job, Better Job, Career’. This is because the longer someone is out of work, the more difficult it is to get back into it.
The expectations of claimants will be stepped up, with referral for sanctions considered for those who are not complying with their claimant commitment. This could happen, for example, where someone is not attending job interviews without good cause or turning down job offers when they are capable of doing that job. This balances the commitment both to support people back into work and to taxpayers as a whole.
There will continue to be support for claimants with personal, tailored support from work coaches, and by using other levers in the Plan for Jobs programme.