Where’s the fella who’s creating the jobs?

Taoiseach Enda Kenny wants 75,000, or more than two in five long-term unemployed people back in work by 2015. That, starkly, is the ambition of the re-launched ‘Pathways to Work’ initiative announced on Friday.

Given that success will mean a near three-fold increase in the rate of employment growth, and that this increase is expected to come from the ranks of the long-term unemployed, the plan is certainly ambitious.

The launch of the 50-point plan was signalled in Mr Kenny’s announcement on Wednesday which drew attention to three critical components of the Government’s strategy to tackle long-term unemployment.

Firstly, a different approach to engaging with unemployed people, secondly to target the revival of the construction industry as a source of new and accessible jobs, and thirdly to demonstrate work can pay.

While all three parts are, indeed, ‘essentials’ as Mr Kenny described them, it’s the first element of this three-pronged approach that is going to require the most astute thinking. Just what is meant by ‘engaging differently with people who are unemployed’? Mr Kenny later went on to indicate that the private sector would have a role to play in getting people back to work. Next week the Department of Social Protection is holding a ‘job-path information session’ where more should be revealed.

Taken alongside the Government’s flirting with strategic outsourcing as a radical and structural change to the provision of public services, perhaps this really does indicate a commitment to corral the best ingredients from both private and state sectors to create a real and working solution to the highest-priority issue facing Ireland today — tackling unemployment.

What then, does the Government need to consider when shaping an effective solution to such a high-profile issue as unemployment? What is vital given the stated desire to make such a major impact on a vast and wide-scale problem.

It is advantageous that this is not entirely innovative thinking; watching others trial and error first is no bad thing. We can look to the Work Programme initiative in the UK and the Job Services initiative in Australia to learn lessons before embarking on our own journey.

There are four key principles that will underpin any effective solution. The first principle is data. Work is well under way here to capture some of the data needed to start matching 75,000 jobseekers to jobs.

The Intreo model, which introduces a one-stop shop for both support and job activation, has already profiled more than 150,000 jobseekers. If we’re serious about getting these people back to work, then knowing who they are, where they are and what range of skills they possess is a good start.

The second critical factor is the community. Any plan that wants success on a broad scale and is serious about finding the right types of jobs for the skills available, needs to work on a local, community basis.

Again, no need to re-invent the wheel. There are many local initiatives, such as JobCare on Pearse St in Dublin, that combine community resources with big business. Thirdly, if you want private sector help in tackling the problem, you’re going to need a private-sector commercial model to make it work.

Private-sector agencies work mainly on a contingency or ‘no-foal, no-fee’ basis. That is to say, if they don’t make a successful placement, they don’t get paid. That works where you have high volumes or high-value placements, such as finance professionals.

If employers themselves are neither going to pay the premium fees nor take on the volumes of jobseekers required to make a contingency model work, the State is going to have to at least part-fund the service. Finally, the fourth and most critical element: jobs. We can build a best-in-class, data-rich, community-engaged and commercially- viable partnership-based Job Path programme — and watch it fail miserably if there are no jobs.

We need thousands of employers each creating one or two jobs as a far higher priority than the headline-grabbing acts that create just several hundred. Mostly we need demand.

We need business to be busy, fed by active and confident consumers. At the launch of the Pathway on Friday we had our ministers representing both education and the unemployed but where was the fella who’s supposed to be creating all the jobs?

* Richard Eardley is managing director of Hays, the professional recruiter