Three key lessons for organisations leading Get Britain Working: learning from approaches in the employability sector

Blog posts

19 Jun 2025

Rosie Gloster, Deputy Director, Public Policy Research
Jonny Buzzeo, Senior Research Fellow

 

Reflections for Employability Day 2025: from inactivity to good work

To support the Government’s ambition to increase the employment rate to 80%, local and combined authorities have been asked to take forward Get Britain Working plans. This requires organisations to align employment support, skills, health and other services to engage and support economically inactive people into good work. What lessons can organisations leading Get Britain Working plans take from previous efforts to integrate services and foster effective cross-system collaboration?

1. Align system partners to employment outcomes to measure progress

Employment outcomes, including measures of progress towards employment, must be defined consistently between partners, integrated into services, and systematically monitored across the support landscape. Partners who have not traditionally focused on employment as part of their service delivery may require support to understand the value good work can have in supporting their wider strategic objectives, such as improving health and wellbeing outcomes. These actions will help to ensure alignment with the shared vision of an increased employment rate.

Creating systemic change will take time, especially where it involves transforming culture and practice, as organisations typically deliver to their existing strengths. This dynamic was evident in the Health-Led Employment Trials, which aimed to achieve both employment and health outcomes for participants. In one trial location, greater involvement from the health sector contributed to stronger health outcomes for participants, compared to a control group, but there was less impact on employment outcomes. In contrast, in the other location where employment support organisations led provision, participants had better employment outcomes compared to a control group.

The Association of Healthcare professional’s consensus statement is a helpful start to transforming culture and practice. It calls on health professionals to recognise good work as a health outcome. But there will be further work required to ensure that front-line staff feel confident and equipped to ask questions in the right way, can record and monitor employment data, and embed employment in a clinical pathway. Without tracking employment outcomes, alongside others, efforts could misalign with the ambition.

2. Create structures to develop and extend workforce knowledge and capability, supporting better customer and employer experience

Partnership and network development to build knowledge and understanding of the support available across the work, health and skills system will be needed to encourage partners to work effectively together in the interests of service users. Staff in support organisations often share common values and objectives, such as delivering a personalised service, or providing choice. Yet they have different organisational cultures, terminologies, and approaches (e.g. the NHS is a process-driven organisation, and employment support providers have been encouraged to innovate within a ‘Black Box’ model and adapt services based on local context and client needs). Facilitated networks can help to bridge the gap. This is an element that is often unfunded in project-based commissioning, creating a role for Get Britain Working leads.

3. Foster trust between partners and ensure alignment across services

System partners need to build trust and a consistently effective way to achieve this has been through the co-location services (e.g. Integration of Employment and Skills services). More recently services have been co-locating in places visited regularly by people in their localities. These trusted intermediaries can vary and include faith-based or community organisations, libraries, or Housing Associations as being piloted by JobsPlus.

The Advancement Network Prototypes trialled local solutions to enable individuals to access support with a focus on building trust. To help overcome fears among partners that service users might experience inconsistent quality in delivery across the system, the prototypes focused on building confidence and trust by:

• creating and sharing directories of local services; and
• developing and implementing a network-wide quality standard, aligning procedures to support confidence in inter-agency working.

The potential prize from more effective system working across work, skills, health and other support services is clear, with potential benefits for service users and employers. While the ambition is bold, achieving it will take time, sustained effort and dedicated resources to drive cultural change and a system capable of addressing the underlying causes of rising economic inactivity and barriers to good work. Organisations asked to Get Britain Working should embed employment outcomes across system partners, fund the creation of partnerships and networks to share effective practice, and work to align and build trust on the consistency of service user experience. This will require ongoing investment, not just to establish these systems, but also to adapt and sustain them.