Last week’s figures tell the story: people out of work up by 137,000 to 1.86m;
people claiming jobseeker’s allowance up by 75,700 to 1.07m in November.
These are the largest UK jobless rises since the 1990s. No wonder Mel
Groves, chief executive of Jobcentre Plus — first port of call for the
growing number of unemployed – sounds like he is preparing for war.
“We’ve taken on 1,000 new staff in November, another 700 this month and I
would like another 1,000 in the first half of next year. Some of those are
going to come from Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, and maybe some
from Land Registry – people are buying fewer houses so I’m talking to its
chief executive about taking employees from there.”
Groves, who already has 68,000 staff in his network, is co-ordinating the
front end of the country’s response to recession. With mass layoffs possible
in what could be Britain’s worst downturn for half a century, the state’s
newly modernised Jobcentre Plus is in the spotlight. And Groves, a lifelong
public-sector manager, says he is ready.
“In the 1980s, when there was a downturn, we weren’t prepared. We just paid
people. This time Jobcentre Plus will be trying to get people back to work
as quickly as possible. The current ministerial team has been investing in
Jobcentre Plus in a way that didn’t happen in the previous downturns.”
So the 744 centres, many on high streets and in town centres, will offer
integrated advice on benefits, retraining and job searching, as well as
providing facilities for employers to interview and run medical
examinations. There are touch-screen computer displays, online vacancies,
partnership deals with professional recruitment agencies and a host of
initiatives taking advice out into the community.
Add to that 31 phone-in contact centres, 88 benefits-processing sites and
Europe’s biggest database of jobs, and it is, we are assured, a long way
from the desolate, dole-queue shuffle immortalised in The Full Monty.
“We’ve invested £2 billion of public money to create a modern employment
service,” says Mansfield-born Groves. “I’m confident we are geared up for
next year.”
Sitting in his Westminster office high up in the Department for Work and
Pensions (DWP), Groves seems surprisingly upbeat. As cherubic as a stubbly
Jasper Carrot, he looks a good decade younger than his 62 years.
Few have more experience of the state’s employment and benefit services – he
worked in his first Labour Exchange at the age of 18, and recently helped
revamp Jobcentre Plus, which was set up in 2001 to combine the employment
and benefits services. Appointed chief executive last month, Groves has
special dispensation to work beyond the civil-service retirement age of 60
as his network prepares for 2009.
But even adding 1,000 staff a month barely does justice to the scale of the
downturn Jobcentre Plus might have to deal with. The network will be hit by
a surge in demand that could push it to the brink.
Factor in the demands of politicians, currently pursuing a welfare reform
agenda ill-timed for recession, and you can see why heading Jobcentre Plus
might require an experienced hand. It has become, even by government
standards, a complex organisation, with myriad partnerships, working through
a mind-boggling clutch of initiatives and acronyms: IS (income support), ESA
(employment and support allowance), JSA (jobseeker’s allowance), IES
(integrated employment and skills), BWC (better-off-in-work credit) and
more.
Should the network stumble next year – failing to pay benefits, or losing
control of its new IT – work and pensions minister James Purnell will get it
in the neck, followed swiftly by Groves.
But if he’s nervous at the prospect, you wouldn’t know it. Warm and chatty, he
rattles through the initiatives currently occupying his team, emphasising
that he wants more pro-active involvement with employers before redundancies
happen. He cites MFI and Woolworths.
“We wrote to their chief executives the day they announced they were closing .
. . Rather than waiting for them to come to us, I want us to get in there
early, a modern service that can help people before they are unemployed.”
Then there’s a new scheme allowing the unemployed to retain benefits while
working on trial for employers at no cost. And if unscrupulous employers
took advantage of that to get free labour?
Groves frowns. “We would explain they couldn’t be part of the solution if we
suspected that. We have much better relationships with employers now. We are
at the heart of communities working with learning and skills councils, we
want employers to give people a fair chance.”
In fact, that’s an edited version of what Groves actually said. Just
occasionally he speaks so densely, throwing in acronyms and the names of
initiatives and organisations, that it’s hard to follow unless you have
specialist expertise. Then he surfaces into plain English again.
And that, say others, is why he is a good choice for the task ahead. Groves is
a confident people manager, yet deeply rooted in the employment service, and
his bottom-to-top experience and modest background – the only son of a shoe
factory worker – will play better with underpressure staff than any flash
high-flyer parachuted in.
John Clare, former boss of Dixons, who sits as non-executive chairman of
Jobcentre Plus, compares Groves’ skills with those of a grizzled retail
boss. “Controlling, managing and motivating a dispersed workforce that deals
with customers directly, and using systems that are similar to retail. And
it’s an operation that has changed dramatically in the past five years, but
Mel helped implement that, and such experience is invaluable.”
The biggest difference, adds Clare, is that – unlike in the private sector –
there is no “integrated motivation of making a profit”. Instead,
Groves has to work to a clutch of shifting delivery targets, and is more
vulnerable to the whims of politicians than any corporate boss would be to a
company board.
His relationship with Purnell and the DWP permanent secretary Sir Leigh Lewis
will be key. Lewis was the first chief executive of Jobcentre Plus from 2001
to 2003, and will be an experienced ally.
David Anderson, another former Jobcentre Plus boss, now chief executive at
Co-operative Bank, says Groves will be grateful for it. The political
imperative of top public-sector jobs is often hard to mesh with the
practical end of delivery. “What is needed – and what Mel has – is an
ability to deal with the ambiguity of the different requirements coming all
the time,” says Anderson.
This month’s white paper on welfare reform is yet another shift in targets. At
a time when there is likely to be less employment around than for decades,
Groves’s team faces more changes to benefit rules and a push to get those
who have never been in work – including single mothers – back into the job
market.
Groves, not surprisingly, is keen to avoid passing judgment on what
politicians want, but acknowledges that public pressure for reform is high,
even in a recession.
“There is a recognition that some people are in a passive state where they are
more comfortable on benefits, but they don’t realise how much support is
available. Where people are resting on benefits, we’ve got to talk to them
and convince them they have a contribution to make.”
Groves is not without experience of the hardship that unemployment can bring.
Born an only child in Mansfield’s tough mining community, he vowed to take
any job he could after his father’s illness with cancer left the family
struggling. At the Labour Exchange, they offered him an interview on the
spot.
“The woman told me to come back in my school tie to see the manager.” By the
next week he was helping behind the Labour Exchange desk. After that he
worked across the Midlands, and later in the Manpower Services Commission.
He also did a short stint at the Treasury in 2000 working on the reforms
that created the Department for Work and Pensions. “I was the hard-bitten
field operator,” he says. He has seen boom and bust, but never a downturn
like the one we are facing.
“In the 1980s it was more regional, with a shift from manufacturing, effected
by government policy. The difference this time is that there is clearly a
global downturn . . . We are seeing people across the country made
unemployed, affecting every region and labour market. It’s a consistent rise
across the country, nobody is exempt.”
And has he got everything he needs from the politicians? Of course, says
Groves. But then he would.
Ever discuss politics with them? He smiles gently. “No, but from time to time
I have to say what Jobcentre Plus can achieve or not.”
Then he adds: “You know, we don’t do the Sir Humphrey thing – I like to think
we are more closely involved with the real world.” Next year should provide
plenty of opportunity to prove his point.
The life of Mel Groves
VITAL STATISTICS
Born: September 12, 1946
Marital status: married twice, with one son
School: Queen Elizabeth Grammar, Mansfield University:he didn’t go
First job: assistant at the Labour Exchange
Pay package: £140,000 plus bonus
Home: Nottingham
Car: maroon Jaguar S Type – “My car is a 10-year-old Jag. I bought it
secondhand. It’s my pride and joy. Yeah, I clean and polish it every
weekend. Nothing wrong with that.”
Film: Touching The Void
Book: The Long Road To Freedom, by Nelson Mandela
Music: Bruce Springsteen
Gadget: Blackberry
Last holiday: Portugal
WORKING DAY
THE Jobcentre Plus chief executive wakes at 6am at his London hotel. “I live
in Nottingham,” says Mel Groves. “So on weekdays I stay near Regents Park on
a special government rate.” He is at his Westminster desk by 7.30.
“If I’m in London I am in meetings or on the phone from then until 7.30 at
night. I don’t go out to lunch, but have the occasional working dinner.”
Eight senior executives report to him, and he has a weekly meeting with
James Purnell, the work and pensions secretary.
Groves tries to get out to see employers and regional offices at least once a
week. “I helped shape Jobcentre Plus, so I can’t walk away from it.”
DOWNTIME
MEL GROVES relaxes by working out in the Nottingham University gym, near his
home in Bramcote. “I try to go a couple of times at weekends, but it’s never
enough.” He also loves walking. “One of my favourite books is Wainwright’s
Walks in the Lake District.” At weekends, he watches football and rugby. He
is a long-term supporter of Nottingham Forest, so he is used to
disappointment.
Groves holidays in Portugal twice a year, usually in the same village. A
creature of habit? “Yeah, as soon as I get there I can relax. I take a pile
of Ian Rankin books, and I love going into restaurants and the guy says ‘Hi
Mel, you’re back’.”
