Shared employer engagement in practice: what works

ReAct: collaborating for employers

The Restart prime providers are sponsoring the ERSA conference in November 2025. In the conference run up, the ReAct partnership is releasing a series of briefing papers highlighting key research from the collaboration and how the insights can inform solutions to Get Britain Working.

Achieving the ambition of an 80% employment rate through local Get Britain Working Plans will take more than delivering programmes – it demands a culture of collaboration. In our first briefing paper, we reflected on the partnerships between employability services and local stakeholders and the factors that lead to strong relationships. In our second briefing paper, we turn our focus to another Restart collaboration, that of the Prime Provider Network which represents national employer engagement teams from across the Restart providers.  Recent research with the network has explored the value of collaborative working in employer engagement activities at a national level, both for employment service providers and for employers, and drew insights from this collaboration to inform devolved commissioning of employment support.

Recent research showed that collaborating on employer engagement within the Restart programme is contributing tangible benefits in knowledge sharing, understanding and meeting employers’ needs. The findings underscored a continued role for a national employer engagement network to support employers seeking centralised recruitment activity. A national strategy could be strengthened by setting goals, understanding measurement and providing an enabling framework and technology for effective collaboration.

However, as the employment services landscape evolves, these strategic elements are increasingly relevant to regional and devolved models. Applying them locally could significantly strengthen employer engagement within the broader context of Get Britain Working, helping to align national ambitions with local delivery and ensuring a more cohesive experience for employers across the UK.

The ReAct Partnership is an industry-led, active collaboration to support a continuous improvement community in the Restart programme through action research, shared and iterative learning, and the development of applied, evidence-based resources. The Partnership is co-funded by the eight ‘prime providers’ for the Restart programme — FedCap Employment, AKG, G4S, Ingeus, Maximus, Reed, Seetec and Serco — and is being managed by the Institute of Employment Studies (IES), working alongside the Institute for Employability Professionals (IEP) and the Employment Related Services Association (ERSA).