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HM Treasury Budget March 2021 – Response from MtW CEO Sam Olsen

Working through and with business, here at Movement to Work we focus on creating quality work experience opportunities to support young people to break the cycle of ‘no experience, no job’.  Each time a new budget is announced we look at it through a business lens – searching for any policy or budget shifts that will encourage businesses to do more.

Yesterday’s budget announcements to extend the furlough scheme until September and the £20 uplift of universal credit will, at least in the short-term, support unemployed young people whilst looking for a job or exploring re-entering education.

With predictions of peak unemployment in September and an economy that will have shrunk by 10%, at Movement to Work we see this as a moment where youth employment schemes need to be brought together as a cohesive policy to ensure impactful delivery.

  • Timelines need to be changed to account for ‘time lost’ in lockdown

We are supporting business to create Kickstart, Apprenticeship and Traineeship programmes alongside T-level and Sector-based work academies (to mention but a few). However, the reality is that each time we have had to enter a national Lockdown, the start date for so many of these programmes has had to be pushed back by multiple months. Businesses need to be able to support their own employees safely back into the workplace before opening up youth employment programmes. The knock-on effect is that some businesses will only be able to offer one as opposed to two cohorts of Kickstart unless the current deadline of December 2021 is moved.

  • We need to act boldly – now – before it is too late

According to the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), recovery could happen 6 months earlier than expected and I am optimistic about how some sectors are already starting to plan for the reopening up of their face to face youth employability programmes. However, if we really want to grow back stronger and ensure those young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are not driven further from the labour market – we need to act now.

Many of our partners, particularly in the hospitality and retail sectors, have a long way to go to get back to feeling strong again post-pandemic. Whereas when the Chancellor last delivered a budget youth unemployment was at a historic low, it is now skyrocketing.

The number of people aged 16-64 claiming unemployment related benefits has increased by 271,000 from January 2020 to January 2021, an increase of 120%. This was driven by increases from March to May when the number of claimants more than doubled.

  • Put our young people front and centre of new industry and green innovation

As local and national government start to plan to deliver on freeports and new economic green growth across the country, we call for all involved to embed youth employment into their plans ensuring that skills development and diversity of opportunity are core to successful delivery.

  • We all have a responsibility to be a part of the solution

The media talks about the risk of the lost generation – if we act now, boldly, this needn’t be the fate of our young people. We can do something about it. As leaders, we have a responsibility to be part of the solution and not the problem. How do we challenge our organisations to recruit for potential and to remember to support the young people who faced barriers to the labour market even before COVID-19? Namely, the hardest hit, those who struggled pre-COVID and now struggle so much more. The moral case for change has never been greater.

  • We need to look for potential and be prepared to develop it

I challenge businesses to seek these young people out to make them their next hires. We need to take that extra step of considering character and attitude over perfectly written C.V.s. We need to look for potential and be prepared to develop it. As a movement, we will help you build impactful programmes and continue to develop evidence and insight into what works.

Diversity and Inclusion, in-work-poverty, youth crime – these issues are not new. They are the reason the Movement was founded in 2013. COVID-19 has forced many of us to take a long hard look at what really matters. Let’s not use COVID-19 as the excuse to do less, but the wake up call we all needed to do more.

We are beginning to see the impact Kickstart can have as a wage subsidy and as a lifeline for intermediate labour markets, but before the next budget young people deserve more than an extension of existing programmes.

  • Let’s think longer term

So our response to the budget is it’s a stopgap, whereas we desperately need to think longer-term and more sustainably about how to enable young people to thrive. We need to connect the dots and see how programmes like Kickstart, Apprenticeships, Traineeships all connect together and how to make them more appealing and easier to navigate for businesses. Both business and young people need an opportunity to work with the government to co-create a new employability landscape that coherently brings these offers together. Movement to Work will continue to work to facilitate this type of collaborative effort in 2021.

Sam Olsen is CEO of Movement to Work

Change starts at home – MtW CEO Sam Olsen 2020 end of year message

It’s been a strange year with many of us re-creating work environments at home, becoming home-school teachers and trying to appreciate what we have as opposed to what we miss. There’s much of 2020 that we’d likely rather put behind us, but what we cannot forget is the countless young people who have born the brunt of job losses, now suffer a distinct lack of opportunity, and have lost the ability to see a career trajectory they can be excited about.

As we approach year-end and finalise our business planning for 2021, I’m thinking not just of the targets of our objectives but also the how: Does our plan for 2021 strategically address future talent development nationwide? Are we helping to create truly supportive and inclusive environments and not just delivery/ output metrics? 

Given the nature of what Movement to Work (MtW) is – a small but mighty core team that works through and with numerous partners for our delivery – as CEO I’ve been committed to looking at our own house as well as pushing agendas in others. I am passionate about developing a positive internal environment for my team (despite us all now working remotely!) that allows everyone to be the best they can be. If I don’t uphold that standard at MtW, how can we then do the critical job of supporting and challenging businesses to do more their side? 

In 2021, Movement to Work (MtW) remains committed to working with employers to create brilliant opportunities for young people, and pushing government to create an environment that enables businesses to easily welcome those young people furthest from the labour market. 

All too often in business, when we are planning we focus on new innovations, the next big thing, but I wonder if we think enough about nurturing what we already have and developing its potential? I was struck this year in conversations about ‘Powering the North’ which focused on attracting young people back from the South. However, even in the context of pre- COVID high levels of unemployment, I challenge us to think about nurturing the talent that already exists in the North. Imagine a young person who was disengaged at school due to instability at home – she doesn’t have GCSE maths but she may have strong finance skills having run the families budget from an early age. How do we challenge our recruitment processes to embrace the experience and the potential as opposed to closing the door based purely on letters on a sheet of paper? How do we shift hiring-culture to see the importance of nurturing what we have before us as opposed to striving for an ‘A* best’ candidate to simply pick up and run with? What needs to change in business to see the individual holistically rather than via how they perform on a test or what they bring to an awkward virtual interview? These are questions we’re holding.

Young people need opportunities, jobs, and careers to see the art of the possible, to have barriers broken down. As part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), there’s a focus on ‘levelling up’ and ensuring this is available for everyone – focusing on those furthest away from economic stability. As we approach a period of high unemployment and let’s not forget what Brexit might bring, we mustn’t forget our social commitment and SDG driven responsibility of levelling up. We need to dig deep and ensure we focus on continuing to support young people who face multiple barriers as our first priority. They are, of course, a vital part of the future of any nation and we should seek to pave a way that is solid and exciting – not uncertain and scary.

Working environments that enable us all to be the best we can be, that listen to our lived experiences and see your value as a human being, are the environments we should be creating at work and home (and working from home!). With this in I mind, I hope we take time between now and 2021 to consider what pledges we can make for the year ahead to allow young people to thrive despite the challenges we face. 

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and all the very best for 2021.

Sam

#YoungPeopleWork

Sam Olsen – Movement to Work CEO

Sam joined Movement to Work in February 2020, coming in as an experienced Whitehall senior civil servant where she held the position, Deputy Director for Social Work Reform within the Department for Education (DfE) driving two major workforce reforms. She also chaired the department’s disability group, championing inclusion and diversity across the department. She was previously Deputy Director of the Business Partnerships team in the Cabinet Office with oversight of private sector engagement across a range of Prime Ministerial priority policy areas.

Before that, Sam was Director of Strategy and Development at St Christopher’s Fellowship where she had lead responsibility for developing fundraising, marketing and communications strategies which would support the delivery of a sustainable future for the organisation. Previously, Sam spent 10 years working with Virgin Atlantic – highlights including the start-up of Virgin Nigeria whilst living in Lagos as the VAA Country Manager and developing a Multi-National Sales team.

She is a keen skier and a passionate supporter of her kids playing rugby, cricket and hockey. On weekends, Sam loves to cook for her friends and family.

Connect with Sam:  LinkedIn 

 

Nine out of 10 employees will have to reskill by 2030

New research, conducted by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI), has concluded that nine out of every 10 employees will have to engage in some form of reskilling by 2030, costing the Government £130 billion. The report predicts that around 26 million workers will require upskilling as their role evolved, whilst a further five million will require more fundamental retraining.

The report highlights four key issues that the Government and businesses must work together to tackle:

    • Investment in workplace training has stagnated in the last decade, but needs to increase.
    • SMEs face barriers, including lack of scale and high fixed costs for training, that can prevent them from increasing investment in training. 
    • The current training landscape is complex and does not support the large scale reskilling the UK requires.
    • Individuals in at-risk automation occupation groups don’t believe that their roles will be impacted by technology, and people looking to retrain struggle to find quality information on the right jobs and training to take up.

To see the report’s recommendations, or read the full report from CBI (October 2020), click HERE.