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A Jobseeker’s Diary: the ‘Work Coach’ Collection
Thought pieceI’ve always been a collector. I have a vague childhood memory of collecting rocks on a beach and not being allowed to bring them home. An 18th birthday present sparked a paperweight collection. Then there are the books: I have a ‘to read mountain’ – I feel a ‘to read pile’ lacks a certain level of dedication.
These days I have expanded my collecting habits to work coaches – and, if you pay taxes in the UK, you’re the lucky people funding it.
Before I start, I ought to say I like all of my work coaches. They’re good people; they just haven’t convinced me the same can be said of the system they operate within.
#1 The ‘Skills Bootcamp’ Work Coach
I acquired work coach number one through a skills bootcamp course. Because his clients arrive in waves, he sometimes gives the impression of being overwhelmed. He needed me to provide evidence that I had secured a job interview after the course. Ticked that box, based on my pre-course skills, didn’t get the job. I keep asking what the skills bootcamp course qualifies me to do. He doesn’t seem to understand the question. I’ve run out of ways to rephrase it; not often that happens.
This may be a gender thing – it’s known that women tend to only apply for jobs where they can tick all the requirements, whereas men are more likely to chance it. The jobs that want my shiny new qualifications are also requesting degrees in things like geography or earth sciences. My degree is in law: great for arguing within defined parameters, less good for analysing global urban futures. On the plus side, I’ve proved I can learn something new – proof that age isn’t a barrier to acquiring new skills.
#2 The ‘Job Centre Plus’ Work Coach
Number two is my Job Centre Plus work coach. I bounced around a few before landing with him. He is young enough to be my son and is constantly baffled that no one has ‘snapped up’ someone with my experience and skills. We disagree on the reality of age discrimination. He genuinely believes it doesn’t exist, I want the cold, hard data to ascertain recruitment patterns. To be fair, at his age I didn’t believe in age discrimination either.
There are two DWP pathways for job seekers of my vintage: the gainful self-employment route and the seeking permanent employment route. I opted for the latter because when there’s economic uncertainty, it makes sense to have a monthly salary. This means I have to spend 35 hours a week job-searching. With the exception of weekends and bank holidays, I have to fill in a daily record of my activities. This includes the job sites I have searched, anything I’ve found, applications I’ve made, results of said applications, etc. I take pride in making these updates as short and entertaining as possible.
I need to have a weekly face-to-face meeting with work coach number two. If I’m doing freelance work and don’t hit key words in my journal, he has to ‘have a word’ with me about the requirement to job hunt. I have had to explain the concepts of invoicing and payment terms and that when I am paid for freelance work, I don’t get Universal Credit if I earn more than £728 a month.
Of course, I could have just lied and said I was job hunting rather than working on freelance assignments but I’m enjoying educating him.
There are some interesting rules when it comes to Job Centre Plus and job seeking. Your search should be within an hour’s journey by public transport. Sounds reasonable except that everything is organised by county boundary. I live near multiple county boundaries, this means there are two centres closer to me than the one I have to attend, which is an hour and 25 minutes away by bus (no trains, trams or tube round here) but they’re in different counties. Apparently, I’m not supposed to run a car but I opt for the 17-minute drive anyway. It’s my small rebellion.
#3 The ‘Over-50s’ Work Coach
Work coach number three specialises in over-50s job seekers. She definitely believes in age discrimination: she gets ghosted and ignored almost as much as candidates do. She can tell from my daily journal that I already use all the specialist websites she recommends.
We have a lovely chat. I let her know about Brave Starts’ Age Against the Machine event, and she talks to me about how vital she thinks advocacy is for the over-50s. Unfortunately, she can’t do much advocating when employers are refusing to talk to her. I’m offered the chance to meet her several more times but I decline – lovely though she is, it’s not going to help me find work.
#4 The ‘Restart Programme’ Work Coach
After nearly six months, I’m packed across to the Restart programme, where I acquire work coach number four. Unlike Job Centre Plus, the Restart programme likes people to have their own transport and covers the costs of attending fortnightly meetings.
The government set up Restart after the pandemic, committing £2.9bn to it. Funding was cut to £1.7bn as a readjusting jobs market meant there were fewer referrals than anticipated. The buoyant jobs market meant it had some success, so a further £1.1bn was slung at it, which will keep it going until 2026.
In a struggling jobs market – there are currently 1.6m people chasing 718,000 jobs (this assumes all the jobs are real, which is debatable) – Restart is less successful, with fewer than 25% of referees achieving a ‘successful’ outcome, defined as a job or six months of gainful self-employment.
Work coach number four apologises a lot. Even though I’ve worked for more than 35 years, she is supposed to take me through a booklet to make me understand that paid work is more financially rewarding than being on Universal Credit. I get that there are families where multiple generations have been unable to find work, but I can’t understand why this activity doesn’t happen earlier in the process. She doesn’t know either, and work coach number two also has no idea.
The speed at which she chucks me across (sorry, refers me) to work coach number five is impressive. I doubt I’d left the car park. I suspect this might be because my response to ‘do you have any questions?’ was, “Does the organisation that runs this Restart contract have a success rate above or below the national average?” After a long silence she changes the subject.
#5 The ‘Start Your Own Business’ Work Coach
Work coach number five works for a not-for-profit. She’s got no idea why I’ve been referred to them as they specialise in helping people set up their own businesses. I did that 20-odd years ago – I got out of freelancing after 15 years because of the economic uncertainty after Brexit. After some discussion, we decide that, as it's been a while since I marketed myself, rather than an employer’s product, a marketing refresher might be useful.
It turns out that work coach number five used to work on the Restart programme. She gives an additional insight that doesn’t seem to appear in the government’s review: it’s far more successful in urban areas. One of the two nearer Job Centre Pluses to me is urban, has more employers in the neighbourhood, so has more chance of placing people, but it’s not available to me due to county boundaries.
The government review admits Restart doesn’t work for people with complex health issues or those with specialist qualifications. Work coach number five uses the word ‘niche’ to describe my skill set.
Meanwhile, work coach number two is concerned about the switch of route into self-employment. I point out I’ve had more success picking up freelance contracts than salaried employment, and ask him how many holidays from work he’s had this year – there’s no time off the treadmill for jobseekers. He refers me to work coach number six.
#6 The ‘Self-Employment’ Work Coach
I am assuming work coach number six is a replacement for work coach number two, but I also thought that about work coach number four. As it happens, work coach number six bounces me straight back to work coach number two. This is because, if you move onto the gainful self-employment track, you have one year before the DWP uses your projected income to work out your Universal Credit entitlement rather than your actual income. The clock starts ticking as soon as you register. While I’m more positive about the self-employment route than I am about someone offering me a job, I’m not convinced about the economic situation over the next 12 months.
There is no halfway house, so I’m stuck in the position of working as a freelancer while having to job hunt for 35 hours a week in a market which is stacked against the over-50s job seekers.
The current system does work for a minority but, due to my qualifications, I’m not eligible for a lot of the training on offer – although some courses look as though they’re qualifying people for the jobs AI is taking.
But there are some fatal flaws in the system:
- The insistence on county boundaries means an urban area with more opportunities for advocacy is closed off to people who live within the specified commuting distance. What’s wrong with getting job seekers to select the most appropriate Job Centre Plus/Restart office based on public transport? Or why can’t there be a hub system where offices work together? Shared events, shared advocacy, employers get to see a wider group of candidates – there could be upsides for everyone.
- Employers need to be incentivised to recruit the over 50s. Otherwise they don’t even bother talking to the specialist work coaches, let alone the candidates.
- With so many work coaches, I have at least one meeting a week, sometimes more. Why can’t they talk to each other? Why are they not allowed to use their experience to determine what contact is necessary in individual cases? Most of them have told me they can spot fakers a mile off.
- All of this is costing the tax payer a fortune. Given that public services are in dire need of money, can’t we have a 21st Century version of Roosevelt’s New Deal, where job seekers can earn their benefits and gain training and experience at the same time? Benefits can be enhanced for those who agree to take part in the scheme. Exactly what it would be should be determined by the government, unions, employers, education providers, work coaches and job seekers. Surely our combined experience would create something better than the existing, expensive doom loop?
