Saturday 4th December 2010, 09:18BloggingNot blogged for a while. Been busy times. Also been experimenting with Twitter and feeds off LinkedIn.
Pondering how we create the social networks and technology access – then suitable networks – to support more v..View Complete Post Wednesday 10th February 2010, 13:32Total PersonNew concept. Very cool. Well, as cool as public policy gets. Bit geeky some might say.
Hopefully a simple concept. A4e is about higher performing public services at lower cost. Better outcomes for citizens, better outcomes fo..View Complete Post Wednesday 3rd February 2010, 13:33Social Purpose CompanyOver the last 18 years I’ve had lots of people tell me that a private company shouldn’t be doing what we do. I’ve also had loads of people tell me they are amazed at what we do. I have never had a problem reconciling good business principles with the social values that are so important to the work A4e does.
View Complete Post Wednesday 28th October 2009, 08:51Business strategy – common sense?Every now and then you see something written down that sums up your intuition. Your gut instinct. A few years ago the Harvard Business Review wrote up a piece of research that said long term revenue growth – as opposed to short term profit focus of the markets – drove long term shareholder value. For that read, long term sustainability and opportunity for everyone working in a business.
View Complete Post Friday 9th October 2009, 14:37Public Spending: Influencing the Future
The start of Flexible New Deal is new and exciting. It is also the culmination of 5 years intensive, hard work by a lot of people in A4e. We have worked hard to inform the debate about reforming and continuously improving the provision of employment and skills. Making these services relevant and successful in boom and recession economies has been a core focus. Taking our experience over 18 years, our successes and failures, our learning from the UK, France, Israel, Germany and Poland, we have sought to help shape the design of the programme nationally and create a vibrant n.. View Complete PostTuesday 14th July 2009, 08:44German Welfare Policy
Interesting day in Germany. Achim had worked with our advisers in Germany to pull together a short 'discussion lunch' to talk about the evolution of the welfare, employment and skills programmes in Germany. I was there talking about A4e's experiences in the UK, Australia, France and Germany. Some interesting questions - not least because I had to have it translated back and forth, curse my lack of language skills!
Few big issues came out, which are similar to other countries where we work, or are developing opportunities
- need to ensure that employme.. View Complete Post Monday 13th July 2009, 15:20Observations on FT article about sickness benefit
The article on the number of people claiming sickness benefit but who are able to make a positive economic contribution and enter the workforce comes as no surprise to those working in welfare over the last 20 years. This should be seen as an opportunity to provide a group of people that has often not had access to personalised job hunting support and, more importantly, assistance with those other barriers (debt, housing etc.) with a route to sustainable employment.
In the late 80's and early 90's many people leaving the manufacturing and coal industries were.. View Complete Post Wednesday 8th April 2009, 15:48Rating A4e's Service
One of the areas we always try and improve is the way we respond to customer feedback. This includes giving a voice to satisfied customers, listening to suggestions for improvement and putting right complaints about services we provide. Broadly the feedback we get falls into three areas:
- Dissatisfaction because we are providing a service badly
- Complaints about the service we provide because our customers do not like the service we have been asked to provide by governments
View Complete Post Tuesday 7th April 2009, 15:15Australia 2Even more exciting news. We had two years of hard work establishing whether we could make an effective contribution to welfare, employment and social policy in Australia. There were a number of long, testing visits to Australia from various members of the teams in UK. At the end of last year, we appointed a senior team in Australia – experts who shared our vision for improving people’s lives – to work on the opportunities under the 2009 ESA tender. And today we were informed we had been successful!
We will be working in three areas – two in Sydney (Eas.. View Complete Post Tuesday 31st March 2009, 16:06Social Policy ReformA lot of press coverage questions whether reforms to social policy - particularly welfare services - should be taken forward in the current economic climate. My own view is that they need to be put in place more quickly but such measures need to be agile and designed to respond to various 'shocks' to the market we see taking place. Predicting unpredictable events is hard but designing flexible solutions, that can be iterated, is core to reducing the impact of recession on those most vulnerable as well as newly unemployed. This sits at the centre of much of our discussion with governments ar.. View Complete Post Monday 23rd March 2009, 08:53AustraliaBusy times as we found out a few days ago that we had been short-listed – alongside 200 other organizations – to help develop innovative approaches to tackling unemployment amongst some of the hardest to help communities in Australia. The Innovation Fund has some interesting similarities to ‘Right to Bid’ in the UK. Over coming days, our team in Australia and the extensive group of people in the UK who have spent time in Australia over the last two years sharing ideas and building our understanding of the market, will be waiting with baited breath for the outcome of .. View Complete Post Friday 16th January 2009, 14:31Green Shoots? Leadership?It’s nice to be able to catch the news anywhere in the world, any time of day. The downside to a 24/7 news cycle is that we get locked into some pretty daft discussions. I was struck by the hammering Baroness Vadera got for daring to talk about green shoots of recovery. This was then picked up and turned into a story around whether business people can make effective politicians or not.
I see green shoots of recovery. I’m not being insensitive to the many thousands of businesses and client I work with at A4e who are still reeling from the impact of the economic downturn ..View Complete Post Wednesday 14th January 2009, 14:05It’s Liquidity – but not as we know it!One of the most important issues we have needed to tackle to minimize the impact of the recession and support those organizations that can create jobs and grow during a recession, is liquidity for business. There have been some scary deals done prior to the credit crunch and over-gearing which has led to businesses being in difficulty. Some will be poorly run. The majority however are businesses which are fine, dealing with a challenging economic environment and need sensible working capital in place to sustain and create jobs.
My job takes me into the financial community and my ro..View Complete Post Tuesday 13th January 2009, 10:31Vision into Reality: Financial AdviceThe FSA announced their regional pilots recently to provide generic financial advice (Money Guidance) to support people to manage their financial situation. For me, it is the beginning of a large scale new part of our business. We have been running a smaller prototype for a while, having put considerable effort into a review by a chap called Thoresen which set out a government strategy for supporting people in the UK to make the most of the money they have.
Before that we had helped vulnerable DWP clients open bank accounts to receive their benefit and state pension payments electr..View Complete Post Tuesday 13th January 2009, 08:40The Principle of FiveA lot of people have asked me recently on my view of the announcements from the government to tackle recession and unemployment in particular. I’ve run A4e through downturns and recession, seen different drivers and different consequences. I talk about the ‘Principle of 5’ with the customer groups I work with.
In ‘normal’ economic conditions, the principle of 5 for our clients and services goes something like this: 5 people made redundant, one will find work themselves, one will get support from the Jobcentre and find work, one will likely be out of wo..View Complete Post 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 o..View Complete Post Monday 29th December 2008, 14:35Speaking at the House of LordsSounds a bit grand but I had a lovely opportunity to speak at one of the private rooms in the House of Lords just before Christmas. I was contrasting UK and Israeli welfare reforms given that both countries are undertaking their own review of policy direction and implementation. James Purnell and David Blunkett were speaking, so it was an interesting reflection of where UK welfare policy has come from and is moving to. I was pulling out similarities and differences from our experience in both countries.
There were some really good questions. As ever, the crucial role of the persona..View Complete Post Friday 19th December 2008, 13:52Franco-German Welfare ReformsIt’s been interesting – well interesting for a geek like me – to follow some of the discussions between M. Sarkozy and Frau Merkel on the stimulus packages (or not) and the impact on each country’s economy to tackle recessionary pressures. The FT yesterday had an interesting article on responses to recession, economic and social similarities/differences and the unemployment rates in each country.
We are moving into the third year of our businesses in France and Germany. The teams there do a wonderful job as they are both developing new and different res..View Complete Post Monday 15th December 2008, 15:42International Public Services – DeAnne JuliusEarlier this year I went to Washington as part of a working group from the UK promoting the DeAnne Julius report. There were some good headlines outlining best practice and learning that we had developed in the UK as we have evolved the use of third and private sector suppliers in the design and delivery of public services.
My personal view is that where PFI and capital/infrastructure projects have dominated the landscape over the last 10-15 years, the next 10-15 years will see the continued, rapid evolution of front line public service markets. There will still be significant infr..View Complete Post Tuesday 9th December 2008, 15:01Long Lost FriendI got a lovely e-mail from an old friend recently in response to the Blog. Ted was one of a small handful of us in the first days of A4e who helped set up and launch our first piece of business. It was lovely to hear from him and he is claiming he is 72 now – can’t believe that, 65 max I reckon. He is one of many wonderful people who have helped A4e grow and transform over the years. A phrase I have repeated when talking about A4e's growth is that if destination and end points are how you work, then A4e probably isn’t the place for you. If the journey – and many st..View Complete Post
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