Our Expertise

Employment & Worklessness

Addressing worklessness is a key priority for national, regional and local government. This is because of the negative impacts of worklessness on individuals, families, communities and the nation including increased poverty and social exclusion, a loss of economic output, high fiscal burden, and an inter-generational impact on the prospects on children of workless people.

Policy interventions to address worklessness are now becoming more targeted and are the driving force for joining together strategies and services at different geographical levels. It is now far more common to see interventions that span diverse issues such as: skills, housing, childcare, and health. Working on employment and worklessness issues is therefore very complex, involving multiple agendas, areas and agencies.

Step Ahead can support you in tackling employment issues and worklessness in your area by providing clear, robust analysis that takes into account related issues and the local, regional and national context. Our research has helped previous clients to: 

• measure the success of programmes designed to reduce worklessness;
• improve the service they provide to workless people through creating a single point of access;
• implement worklessness reduction programmes;
• identify groups of economically inactive people who were interested in working;
• improve the effectiveness of work reduction interventions;
• examine travel to work patterns;
• engage the third sector in achieving unemployment targets.

Examples of our work include:

• undertaking a formative and summative evaluation of some of the projects which formed a multimillion-pound research and development programme called EQUAL.
  
  
• developing a business plan and sustainable funding model for entry to and progression in work programmes in the East London City Strategy Pathfinder. We now provide ongoing consultancy support in guiding the implementation of the programme.
  
  
• developing an engagement strategy for the Voluntary and Community Sector to support Regional Economic Strategy objectives on worklessness and skills.
  
  
• creating a monitoring and reporting framework for reducing worklessness and measuring skills in Devon, for use by stakeholders developing Local Area Agreements.
  
  
• developing the Brighton and Hove’s City Employment and Skills Plan, which sets ambitious targets for the city to improve employment and skills.

If you are interested in finding out more about our work in this area, please contact:

Paul Gallagher: 020 7953 8423
paul.gallagher@stepaheadresearch.co.uk

Bruce Nairne: 07970 510237
bruce.nairne@stepaheadresearch.co.uk