Tag: customer insight

Worklessness Co-Design

DWP have worked with local authorities, Jobcentre Plus and local partners in five areas to develop Co-Design Pilots, testing new solutions in tackling worklessness – in a world where local authorities are had to rethink their role, given much reduced resources and the advent of the Work Programme and Community Budgets. The pilots were in Birmingham, Bradford, Lewisham, South Tyneside and Swindon. New ways of working variously related to, eg, working with families; Jobcentre Plus outreach; key workers; personal budgets; social enterprise for employability; and employer engagement; and a youth employment campaign. On behalf of Local Government Improvement and Development – since absorbed within the Local Government Association, we supported the pilots and wider dissemination. We set out to:
  • bring together knowledge and learning from the pilots and parallel developments in other parts of the country
  • signpost relevant tools, research and evidence, eg, on customer insight, cost-benefit, and service design and innovation
  • highlighting policy developments which are shaping the future terrain
Resources from this work are available for download:
  • Customer insight and worklessness: recent contributions to knowledge, evidence and techniques relating to the needs and experiences of customers of worklessness services.
  • Cost benefit and value for money resources: materials designed to assist partners in assessing financial costs and benefits in planning and commissioning, business case preparation, evaluation, and so on. It goes beyond ‘worklessness’ in including relevant content on children and young people, health and crime reduction which matter when looking at wider social returns and potential savings to the public purse.
  • Evaluation checklist for worklessness co-design: a set of questions, developed for the  pilots to help them build in evaluation from the outset (content linked to the appendix in DWP’s interim report which provides a ‘light touch’ cost-benefit framework
  • Worklessness co-design pilots: what’s been tried elsewhere?: a briefing on local ‘pilots’ in other parts of the country that have used structured approaches to innovation. These include initiatives stemming from Total Place and programmes such as Family Intervention projects, Drug System Change and Child Poverty Pathfinders which explore similar themes and challenges.
  • Tools for worklessness co-design: signposts to tools supporting collaborative planning and commissioning, customer insight and behaviour change, and service redesign and innovation.
The final DWP Co-design report drew out achievements, lessons and next steps. It also included case studies on each of the pilots, a checklist for local authorities on working with JCP and Work Programme contractors, and an outline of what JCP bring to the partnership table.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.educe.co.uk/?p=272

Place Advisor – Improvement & Efficiency

The final stage of our place-based work with Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands (IEWM) involved advice to the Coventry Partnership, in support of their IEWM-funded improvement project. This undertook qualitative research with young men (aged 16-35) in one part of the City, seeking to understand better their concerns, motivations and use of local public services. Partners sought to clarify what works and what doesn’t in how they work with different groups within this population, find better approaches and achieve both improved outcomes and savings.We also assisted the Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire sub-regional partnership,  building on their Total Place pilot. This aimed to generate savings, develop radical new forms of service delivery, accelerate performance and spread best practice. Projects within the programme related, eg, to children’s services, adult social care, procurement and asset management, strategic planning and infrastructure. Advice focused, for example, on performance metrics and shared services.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.educe.co.uk/?p=259

Customer Insight Skills Audit

Humber Innovation Partnership – formed by the four Humber councils and other public sector partners – commissioned a Customer Insight Skills Audit as part of their Customer Insight Programme. Its objectives were to:
  • take stock of the state of play in developing customer insight, including how customer insight is perceived and addressed
  • highlight good practice on which to build, and how to increase returns to insight activities
  • identify skills gaps and how best to meet these, notably through making the most of existing knowledge and expertise
The research was carried out primarily through an online survey aimed at strategic and service managers and analysts, and through face-to-face interviews.The report ( pdf 568KB) sets out the state of play on customer insight, factors driving and constraining its further development, skill requirements, gaps and expertise. There are recommendations for driving the agenda forward and for developing skills and capacity at LA level and across the Humber.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.educe.co.uk/?p=270

Customer Insight and Research in the East Midlands

This project, promoted by East Midlands Improvement and Efficiency Partnership (EMIEP), sought to make the case for continued investment in customer insight and research, by demonstrating how these activities can lead to better and more efficient services. There were two strands: first, skills workshops and networking relating to customer insight, data analysis and research; and secondly, a series of sub-regional demonstration projects using statistical analysis, social research and insight methods to investigate different aspects of getting 16 to 18 year olds into employment, education or training. These projects explored, for instance, the needs and experiences of young people in rural areas, teenage mothers, and triggers for young people disengaging and getting involved in anti-social behaviour. Typically they involved analysis of Connexions client data and qualitative field research. There was strong interest in identifying risk factors to reduce the likelihood of young people becoming NEET. Derrick Johnstone played an advisory role as a Local Improvement Advisor, helping to shape the programme and input on practice elsewhere. This involvement follows an earlier LIA assignment for EMIEP reviewing customer insight and R&I in the region.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.educe.co.uk/?p=255

Customer journeys and disadvantaged groups

One of the themes we pursued in our work with Improvement and Efficiency West Midlands on tackling worklessness has been that of improving customer journeys. We produced two briefings, one an introduction to customer insight for local strategic partnerships (pdf 162KB) and the other on customer journeys and worklessness (pdf 381KB). These supported workshops and action learning run with practitioners in the West Midlands, helping to shape thinking and practice, eg, on the Connections to Opportunities programme in the region.In looking at the topic we have sought to draw out distinctions between ‘customer journeys’:
  • as used in integrated service design (the  planner’s eye view of how services should fit together and offer progression for jobseekers and employers)
  • as experienced by service users
  • where the focus is on mapping the background processes
In this, we followed guidance produced for the Cabinet Office – with participants typically finding the different – and complementary – approaches illuminating. Customer journey analysis featured in a range of subsequent activities. We produced a digest of research and resources on-line that relate to customer journeys and customer research relating to disadvantaged groups (Part 1 on customer needs and transitions pdf 227KB; Part 2, covering references on health and worklessness pdf 204KB).

Permanent link to this article: https://www.educe.co.uk/?p=254

Reducing Worklessness in Norfolk

We assisted Norfolk County Council and partners in developing the Worklessness Assessment and Framework for the county, in partnership with OCSI and Papworth Consulting.Elements of the work included:

  • analysis of changes in the Norfolk labour market, needs and barriers amongst disadvantaged groups
  • customer research, focusing on the needs and experiences of individuals from different groups and parts of the county
  • pulling together information on current worklessness provision in the county, building on a regional mapping project undertaken by the University of Glasgow
  • reviewing the implications of a changing policy environment
The Worklessness Assessment fed into the Norfolk Economic Assessment and the County’s Child Poverty Assessment and Strategy. The work subsequently provided a basis for influencing the delivery of the Work Programme in the county.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.educe.co.uk/?p=258