Connecting investments on skills, careers guidance and employment

Blog posts

18 Dec 2024

Alison Carter, Principal Research Fellow

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Last week in Parliament, Policy Connect, a cross-party think tank, partnered with the Career Development Policy Group (CDPG) to host a roundtable on ‘Unlocking Potential: How Careers Guidance Can Fuel Economic Growth’. The event came hot on the tail of the Prime Minister’s speech at Pinewood Studios on 5 December when he vowed to make the UK the fastest-growing major economy by the end of a first Labour term in government.

I attended the roundtable as a panellist and two expert IES colleagues joined online. We witnessed a wide-ranging discussion that featured analysis from participants on the government’s plans for careers guidance and potential policy reform. Lord Jim Knight and panellists considered how careers guidance can be funded and delivered effectively in support of economic growth.

The panellists included: David Morgan (Career Development Institute), Dr Alison Carter (Institute for Employment Studies), Dr Elnaz K. (Speakers for Schools), Clare Viney (The Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) Limited), Professor Tristam Hooley (University of Derby), Katharine Horler (Careers England), Alison Morris (Skills Federation (aka FISSS)), Rebecca Passingham (Unison), Beth J. (Gatsby Charitable Foundation), and Tom Baines (West Yorkshire Combined Authority). So, what did we learn? 

The big takeaway for me was the need to shift to a careers guidance service for the whole population, not just for the unemployed or for young people. Three main points stood out for us:

• Employed adults benefit from career guidance too
• Good progress has been made, but considerable scaling up is still required in schools
• More support is needed for those outside formal education

Career guidance is for adults too

My IES colleague and NICEC Fellow Wendy Hirsh noted that public employment services inevitably focus on unemployed adults. However, employed adults need career support too - especially in re-skilling/ upskilling and increasing productivity. There were useful comments from several panellists about the need to keep careers and skills closer (not just careers and employment i.e. job getting). Clare Viney from The Careers Research and Advisory Centre (CRAC) argued that career guidance is central to delivering numerous economic and social goals including the objective of a UK economy expressly linked to raising living standards and employment prospects for Britain’s workers. We already have a National Careers Service (NCS) but very few know about it.

My presentation described the results from the IES evaluation of an employer-sponsored career coaching programme for primary healthcare workers. This is an important study because it is rare to find independently evaluated and published examples of career development focused on employed adults, many of whom were highly skilled, and addressed outcomes for employers in the primary healthcare sector, not just outcomes for individuals. We found positive effects in terms of reduced intention to leave 1-2 years after workers finished their career coaching. You can see a summary report of the IES study co-authored by myself and Wendy Hirsh here.

I made the point in the discussion that the number of people employed in the UK dwarfs the number of unemployed: approx. 30.4 million payrolled employees compared to 1.8 million people claiming benefits principally due to unemployment. And there are the working self-employed to consider on top of payrolled employees. At various times during their working lives, all adults can benefit from the advice and support to upskill and retrain. That way we can address skills shortages and mismatches, help people adapt to a fast-changing labour market and smooth people’s transitions into growing high tech and green industries.

Right policy in schools but needs scaling up

My IES colleague Emma Pollard noted many panellists supporting the view that the evidence base is strong so we already know that careers guidance works, and what careers interventions should look like. Two next steps were discussed: the need for more trained professionals and the need to scale up.

Firstly, more trained professionals. Panellists felt the signs are positive with the new government pledges around training 1,000 new careers advisers (if this means new people entering the profession rather than training those already in the profession). The strong message from the event was that, to do all the things we need to do to help people into good work and adapt to changing labour markets, we need more careers advisers and these need to be trained professionals. Professor Tristram Hooley argued “we need professionalism at the heart” recognising and valuing the careers profession (better pay, better funding for careers services, better funding for training and CPD and enabling specialisms), alongside understanding the challenges faced e.g. fragmentation and an unstable market and pressure to do more with less. Indications are that numbers of advisers supporting young people is increasing (i.e. in schools) but numbers supporting adults is falling.

Secondly, Tristram Hooley spoke about the policy for schools being “right policy, wrong size”. Emma Pollard agrees with him that there are not enough resources to do all the things we need to do in schools/education e.g. work experience. Scaling up funding is needed so that careers interventions can be meaningful (planned, enabling reflection) and deal with the whole person.

More support needed for those outside education

Panellists acknowledged that those in education are a captive audience and so easier to reach with careers support but after education people are dispersed and harder to engage with. And what about those whom education fails – i.e. those not in education, employment or training, more commonly known as NEETs. We heard at the event that the proportion of young people being home schooled has increased significantly, and those who were in education before secondary schools had a legal requirement to provide independent careers guidance.

The government is already proposing to put career guidance for adults more strongly into the employment service space via jobcentres. The IES-led Working for the Future report has influenced government heavily in this area. A key point made is that Jobcentres are too focused on administering the benefit system and can push people towards getting 'any job' rather than best job for them. Hence the need for strong career angle. People need to be able to access careers support after education.

So, it is clear we must not focus all our efforts solely on those in education. But - and this is big one - there needs to be a culture change around employment services away from benefits and sanctions towards support for all - otherwise people will not engage or see it as something for them. We need to make it a true public employment service.

The CDPG argues that investment in career guidance could drive fiscal benefits that offset the investment made, with every pound spent on youth guidance the country could expect to receive £2.50. For every pound spent on guidance with unemployed adults the figure rises to £3.20.

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Any views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institute as a whole.