What would you like to ask the Minister for Employment?

We have an exciting episode of the HR People Pod in the pipeline, where we will be taking the opportunity to interview the Minister for Employment, Alison McGovern, and we want your help!

To help shape the discussion on the episode, we want to hear from you around some of the concerns, challenges as well as optimism you have towards the government’s Get Britain Working proposals as well as the recent Keep Britain Working review. 

Below is a reminder of some of the key proposals set out within the Get Britain Working White Paper:

  • Tackling long-term sickness – ambitions to reverse the increase in economic activity caused by ill health, with long-term sickness-related economic inactivity at a near-record high
  • Youth guarantee – a pledge to provide all 18-21 year olds in England with access to an apprenticeship, training, education or help finding a job
  • Jobcentre reforms – transforming the Jobcentre system into a new ‘national jobs and careers service’, which will focus on skills and careers rather than solely monitoring and managing benefits claims

Related links:

The Keep Britain Working review subsequently calls for urgent collaboration between government and businesses. The document suggested the inactivity crisis is “unlikely” to be resolved by the Government efforts alone, emphasising that employers have a “key role to play in creating inclusive workplaces that protect mental and physical health and support the retention and rehabilitation of employees, including disabled people and people with health conditions”.

Related links:

Thank you and look forward to seeing your thoughts, questions and comments below.

Parents
  • My question would be what is the strategy for building the broader economy for the changing world of work and how is the minister working across the relevant departments - education, health, business etc to ensure we approach this holistically rather than in short term political cycles.

    I'd echo the other points.

    Education needs to look at providing a broader access to work and life skills rather than focus on one track, costly university education.
  • Totally agree - there is already some great work going on in this respect with University Technical Colleges, which tackle both the technical skills shortages but also general employability skills. As a school governor in a very successful UTC, I've seen first hand the great benefits there are working more closely with industry - our employer partners snap up our students who are able to pursue some amazing career opportunities as a result, and the employers regularly comment that they notice a real difference between our students and those in other schools! So while UTCs are doing this very well, there is a lot more that could be going on in this sphere with schools more widely. I'm a great believer that University is most definitely not for everyone; the most important thing is to find the right pathway to progress - be that university, an apprenticeship (including degree apprenticeships, or going straight into employment or other training.
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  • Totally agree - there is already some great work going on in this respect with University Technical Colleges, which tackle both the technical skills shortages but also general employability skills. As a school governor in a very successful UTC, I've seen first hand the great benefits there are working more closely with industry - our employer partners snap up our students who are able to pursue some amazing career opportunities as a result, and the employers regularly comment that they notice a real difference between our students and those in other schools! So while UTCs are doing this very well, there is a lot more that could be going on in this sphere with schools more widely. I'm a great believer that University is most definitely not for everyone; the most important thing is to find the right pathway to progress - be that university, an apprenticeship (including degree apprenticeships, or going straight into employment or other training.
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