A thought struck me this morning when I went to the local shop to buy the Echo. I glanced at the other newspapers and saw a myriad of mostly pathetic headlines and thought it was stupid that so many newspapers were total rubbish.
Then I thought that no matter how stupid they are people are entitled to read what they want to.
And that got me thinking about competition. Competition is no bad thing when it comes to things like newspapers. We might shake our heads over the fear mongering of the Daily Mail, or the celebrity tat in The Sun but we don't have to buy them. We are free to ignore them if they are not what we want.
On the other hand, there are some instances when having competition is counter productive. Recruitment agencies for example.
When I first started out job hunting as a teenager, there were no recruitment agencies in my town. Every job going was advertised in the jobcentre. A one stop shop as it were. It advertised every job available locally and also a few national vacancies. Advisers were also able to look for a particular job title in any other area.
Many employers now don't use the jobcentre, they use recruitment agencies instead. While this may seem logical, it makes it a bit of a nightmare for the jobhunter.
You don't want to miss any potential job so you have to sign up with all of them.
You make an appointment, go along with your CV, then fill in a form with the same details that are on said CV and then you do the tests. Spelling, grammar, maths and typing speed. (yes I am using my own experience of looking for admin work, other types of work will obviously not use the same tests)
And you do this for every single agency you sign up to. And you still have to use the jobcentre, because there are still a few jobs there and of course you have to use to to sign for your benefit.
That's an awful lot of time spent doing the same thing.
Wouldn't it be a lot easier and much more streamlined if there were still a one stop shop?
Showing posts with label jobcentre. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jobcentre. Show all posts
Tuesday, 31 May 2011
Tuesday, 15 March 2011
Some common sense
Today's news brings with it this little tidbit - Jobless figures rose by 27,000 in the three months to the end of January, bringing the total number of unemployed to 2.53 million people. That's a shocking amount.
The Jobcentre in my home town is open just one day a week. That's despite it having a huge unemployment problem.
Jobcentres aren't just there for people to sign on. They advertise local, and national, vacancies which anyone, employed or not, can view. They serve as places for people to get help and advice. Or at least they are supposed to.
But they're being treated as factories, for pushing people from one end to another as quickly as possible. And now their staff numbers are being cut.
The unemployed are treated as goods on a conveyor belt. Or worse, they are treated like criminals. No-one asks to lose their job, for their firm to go bust, or for them to become ill. So why the criminal treatment?
I honestly don't think this government realises what being unemployed is like. The worthless feeling when you are unable to provide for yourself and your family, that gets worse with every rejection. The humiliation of having to queue in the Jobcentre to sign on for your benefits and prove that you've applied for a certain number of jobs.
And if you have the audacity to become sick then you face the humiliation of claiming ESA. I say humiliation because you're treated as if you're faking your illness from the start. The Work Capability Assessment, carried out by unqualified, non specialist assessors, is designed to prove you can work, not to confirm that you can't.
And because of it's failings, hundreds of thousands of people are about to be pushed onto Jobseekers, to join the rest of the 'goods' on the conveyor belt.
Atos gets paid £300 million for this. That's in addition to the £500 million it's already been paid for it's current services.
And let's not forget the much lauded (by the ConDems) Work Programme. Private companies can bid for government contracts to help the unemployed back to work. At a cost of anywhere up to £2 billion a year, according to the Financial Times
With the number of Jobcentre staff now being cut, the system will get worse. I'm no economist or politician but it seems to me to be crazy to payout millions to private firms whilst cutting the number of Jobcentre staff.
So here's an idea - stop paying the private firms. Stop sacking the JC staff. Recruit more of them and train them properly. Have them take on a case load of certain amount of claimants that they work with - from the initial signing, to the 2 weekly appointment, to jobseeking. Have them get to know their clients. So they can help them better and stop the culture of treating everyone as a commodity to be got through.
Stop paying Atos. Instead of subjecting every claimant to a WCA, work with their consultants.
That way you stop wasting millions, or even billions, you take more off benefits, and you stop vulnerable people from being treated like cattle. When people start being treated as humans again they are more likely to accept help, to trust their advisers and their confidence is boosted. All of this helps them to look for work.
And the disabled and sick stop living in fear. They stop thinking that taking their own lives is the only way out. They gain back that scrap of dignity that it left to them.
All of this is common sense surely?
The Jobcentre in my home town is open just one day a week. That's despite it having a huge unemployment problem.
Jobcentres aren't just there for people to sign on. They advertise local, and national, vacancies which anyone, employed or not, can view. They serve as places for people to get help and advice. Or at least they are supposed to.
But they're being treated as factories, for pushing people from one end to another as quickly as possible. And now their staff numbers are being cut.
The unemployed are treated as goods on a conveyor belt. Or worse, they are treated like criminals. No-one asks to lose their job, for their firm to go bust, or for them to become ill. So why the criminal treatment?
I honestly don't think this government realises what being unemployed is like. The worthless feeling when you are unable to provide for yourself and your family, that gets worse with every rejection. The humiliation of having to queue in the Jobcentre to sign on for your benefits and prove that you've applied for a certain number of jobs.
And if you have the audacity to become sick then you face the humiliation of claiming ESA. I say humiliation because you're treated as if you're faking your illness from the start. The Work Capability Assessment, carried out by unqualified, non specialist assessors, is designed to prove you can work, not to confirm that you can't.
And because of it's failings, hundreds of thousands of people are about to be pushed onto Jobseekers, to join the rest of the 'goods' on the conveyor belt.
Atos gets paid £300 million for this. That's in addition to the £500 million it's already been paid for it's current services.
And let's not forget the much lauded (by the ConDems) Work Programme. Private companies can bid for government contracts to help the unemployed back to work. At a cost of anywhere up to £2 billion a year, according to the Financial Times
With the number of Jobcentre staff now being cut, the system will get worse. I'm no economist or politician but it seems to me to be crazy to payout millions to private firms whilst cutting the number of Jobcentre staff.
So here's an idea - stop paying the private firms. Stop sacking the JC staff. Recruit more of them and train them properly. Have them take on a case load of certain amount of claimants that they work with - from the initial signing, to the 2 weekly appointment, to jobseeking. Have them get to know their clients. So they can help them better and stop the culture of treating everyone as a commodity to be got through.
Stop paying Atos. Instead of subjecting every claimant to a WCA, work with their consultants.
That way you stop wasting millions, or even billions, you take more off benefits, and you stop vulnerable people from being treated like cattle. When people start being treated as humans again they are more likely to accept help, to trust their advisers and their confidence is boosted. All of this helps them to look for work.
And the disabled and sick stop living in fear. They stop thinking that taking their own lives is the only way out. They gain back that scrap of dignity that it left to them.
All of this is common sense surely?
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