voluntary organisations, social enterprises and volunteering
voluntary organisations, social enterprises and volunteering
voluntary organisations, social enterprises and volunteering
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Notes and Presentations from Fife Employability Forum held on Wednesday 20 August 2014
Created: 11/09/2014
News/Events Category: FVA NewsThe Forum on Wednesday 20 August was once again a great success with 36 participants from a whole range of sectors.
We were very pleased to hear from Grace Emerton of Havelock Europa and Allison McKenzie from Business Gateway on the ‘employer experience’. John McFarlane gave an insight into developments around the Employer Programme in Fife. Copies of all their slides can be found below as well as a summary of all employer recruitment incentives currently available in Fife.
In the second half of the morning we considered what we as a sector could do differently and what we might like to see coming from the revision of the Single Point of Contact (aka the Opportunities Fife website). Some of the key points raised included:
Improving employer engagement:
- Building on the single point of contact approach is great. This has been working well but more improved co-ordination promoting the range of Skills Development Scotland, Opportunities Fife and Scottish Government opportunities would be helpful;
- Matching numbers of clients to employers needs is important;
- The timescales on Fife Youth Jobs Contract were sometimes quite long and hard for small businesses to cope with;
- There is no co-ordinated approach in Fife to arranging work experience placements with schools. Experience is that has worked well elsewhere;
- We need to increase awareness of DWP Access to Work support for people with health problems and disabilities;
- There is a role for employer ‘education’ about the clients we work with and that it isn’t as bad as they think;
- Employers need support beyond recruitment.
Employer Recruitment Incentives (ERIs):
- FYJC has been great – and good that there may also be provision for other disadvantaged groups (eg health /long term unemployed);
- Co-ordinated information on what eris or training funding is available also would be great – for service providers and employers.
Website:
- Would be great to be more of a portal to the range of service provision in Fife;
- Should include partner/client/employer testimonials;
- Directory of service provision would be great;
- Directory not just of jobs but also encouraging partners to post training opportunities too;
- When people register and flag up a disability that the system flags up possible support services (or it could simply route them to a bespoke page on health & disability service provision);
- Include volunteering opportunities with a view to potential employment (this could simply be a link to the FVA website – not my idea honest).
Client facing:
- Feedback to clients who are regularly unsuccessful in application and referral to additional support;
- Can SPOC be used to market clients? Can they upload their CVs for employers to browse?
Single Point of Contact (SPOC):
- There was still some confusion in the room as to what SPOC is and how it works. Once Phase 2 is agreed then some money could be put aside for awareness sessions for employability service providers on what it does and how it can help them and their clients;
- Ditto for employers e.g. to promote it via Chambers of Commerce etc;
- Could there be a ‘charter’ that OFP partners/deliverers sign up to?
Other:
- Once Workforce Modelling research completed promote it out there so that employability providers can direct some of their delivery around growth areas in Fife.
These notes have been feedback to OFP partners and those involved in reviewing employer engagement in Fife.
Thanks to everyone who was involved and took part in the discussions. Once again this was a useful and informative event.
Downloads:
• Incentives for Employers (298KB) PDF
• Opportunities Fife Presentation (1,899KB) PDF
• Havelock Europa Presentation (5,836KB) PDF
• HR Support Presentation (782KB) PDF
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