The Government’s New Deal has the potential to reduce skills shortages, according to a report from the Industrial Society, published this week.
Research on the controversial welfare-to-work scheme shows that where New Deal advisers work closely with employers, the scheme can find sustained jobs for “hard-to-place” young unemployed people.
In the past the New Deal scheme has been plagued by high drop-out rates.
The New Deal: A Good Deal Better confirms a pattern of weak basic skills among many adult job-seekers, but also indicates that some merely lack confidence. Employers which have recruited successfully have invested heavily in training.
“Asda and Peugeot gained much out of the New Deal because they adopted the approach of ‘give us the raw recruits and we’ll train them’ – rather than crossing their fingers in the hope that the right people would apply. This has also been the case with Anglian Water,” the report concludes.