Jobcentre 'useless' at providing top staff

By KATIE TAYLOR FOR MAILONLINE
Updated:

 

As some small businesses start looking towards recovery and are taking on more staff, complaints are growing over Jobcentre Plus, which according to the Federation of Small Businesses, one in three of its members finds ineffective.

Job Centre Plus

Overlooked: Small business are favouring private recruitment companies over Jobcentre Plus

With unemployment expected to rise to 3m and 9% of small business owners surveyed by the FSB planning to take on more staff in the next six months - amounting to more than 400,000 new jobs - urgent action is needed.

Fewer than 20% of small businesses say they used Jobcentre Plus to find more staff, turning instead to costly advertising and private recruitment services.

Hydraulic Projects, based in Dawlish, Devon, designs and manufactures valves and pumps for the marine autopilot market.

The business has been affected by the recession, but prospects are improving and the company, which has 23 staff, is facing major problems recruiting the skilled design engineers and technicians that its products rely on.

Managing director Elaine Slater, who recently spent £2,000 on recruitment agency services that proved unsuccessful, says that Jobcentre Plus stopped being useful as soon as the service was centralised.

Elaine says: 'To advertise a vacancy, you speak to someone hundreds of miles away who knows nothing about the local job market, while the online service is too inflexible for our company as you have to categorise your requirements under headings that don't reflect our skill needs.

'At a time when they most need it, the overwhelming feeling is that support is not there for small manufacturers in this country.'

The FSB wants to see links established between Jobcentre Plus, Business Link and skills boards, and a dedicated small business manager appointed for every Jobcentre.

Elaine Slater

Unsupported: Elaine Slater

FSB national chairman John Wright says: 'Small businesses are key to the UK economy and will be crucial to getting the country back on track to recovery.

They want to employ staff and tackle rising unemployment figures, but are put off by a Jobcentre service that doesn't meet their needs and by the lack of support they get from the Government.'

Help with staffing issues, including recruitment and training, along with Government action on access to finance, a reduction in taxation, and a scrapping or simplification of red tape affecting business, topped the wish list of 6,000 small business owners polled by the Forum of Private Business as they draw up their expansion plans for a recovering economy.

Policy representative Matt Goodman says: 'This feedback indicates how ready some small businesses are for good news. We are not out of the woods yet, but more and more signs are pointing towards an economic recovery next year.

'Our task is to support those businesses in difficult sectors or parts of the country who are still struggling, to lay the groundwork for those business owners who are starting to build their businesses above and beyond where they were a year ago.

'That means better access to equity finance, more affordable lending from the banks, and a stable, business-friendly regulatory environment, as a minimum.'

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