Monday 5th January 2009, 14:48Gordon Brown’s Jobs PledgeIt’s easy to be cynical about the PM’s announcement on creating jobs, announced over the weekend. Although the economic circumstances are difficult, there are many jobs still being created, vacancies unfilled and this will continue as will job losses over coming months. The opportunity and focus needs to be on matching people into suitable opportunities as quickly as possible.
Confidence is an important part of business. As a Non-Exec on the RDA in Yorkshire, along with other Board members, I have been looking at ways to support businesses and jobs. Developing a sense of optimism, a vision for the future, can be tough but it is important that business leaders are both pragmatic and positive in the current climate. There is no end of commentators keen to feed a 24 hour news cycle with prophecies of doom and gloom.
I don’t need anyone to remind me how difficult it is. I remember the early 80’s - recession and riots. I started business in ’91 and the economy got worse as I spent my first years in work. I constantly look for opportunity and examples of things going well. Speaking to a number of businesses, I see many focused on opportunity, many using their experience of previous recessions to manage their own companies and support others. We must not ignore, nor stop supporting, those for whom this is an awful time. We also need to be focused on driving recovery and growth and supporting those strong businesses – and there are many – over coming months.
So, I’m up for doing what needs to be done through A4e’s work. We need to support those out of work managing the transition they need to make. We need to build their confidence and esteem, help them find the opportunities and prevent them falling into other difficulties with mortgages, debt, health or other problems. And then we can support in moving them into work as soon as possible.
An important component of the PM’s 100,000 jobs, economic stimulus and fiscal plan – as with other countries – is to link this into existing programmes for unemployed people. As businesses look to support with infrastructure and transport investment, we need a clear plan to recruit workers who have been unemployed as well as safeguarding current workers.
As new jobs are created in new industries, we need to combine skills programmes with employment programmes to equip people with the skills new organisations will need as well as help them find the staff with basic skills needed in any business – admin, finance, sales etc. And as jobs are created in the public sector, we need to ensure we give access to people who are unemployed and we get an equivalent balance of people from progammes like New Deal accessing these opportunities.
This is often harder than it sounds, so it needs A4e and other suppliers in these sectors, to work collaboratively and smarter with other stakeholders to make New Deal for the unemployed a part of the ‘New Deal fiscal stimulus’. There are massive gains to be had by better linking these initiaitives together and we’re ready to make this happen.
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