Productivity Pitches #7: Welfare

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Productivity in public services has never been more important. Most services are struggling to return to pre-pandemic performance levels, and the new Labour government has indicated that spending will remain tight. Improvements in performance will likely come from frontline workers finding new, innovative ways of delivering services.  

So what can be done to improve productivity? By highlighting outstanding examples of innovation across public services, Productivity Pitches, a series of events hosted by the IfG, aims to share and support ways to improve performance levels.

This event was the seventh in the series and focused on welfare.

Each speaker had 10 minutes to present their innovation, followed by 10 minutes of audience questions. The chair and a guest from The Productivity Institute – which is kindly supporting this event series – brought together the common themes from the pitches and discussed the lessons for improving productivity.

The speakers for this edition of Productivity Pitches were:  

• Eileen Broderick and Sarah Gamble from Islington Council on a new programme that identifies people that are eligible for pension credit but not yet claiming it and contacting them to encourage uptake
• Richard Clifton from Shaw Trust, on its IPS (Individual Placement and Support) programme, for which it has strong evaluation evidence, but will also mention the innovative contracting approach being used by the West London Alliance to fund it. Through this it has been able to bolt together a number of different contracts, allowing it to provide a single front door through which to triage and then direct people to the right service.
• Kevin Donaghy, from Belfast City Council on Labour Market Partnerships, a programme in which they identify persistent vacancies in the city, and then run workshops lasting between 2 and 16 weeks in which they train people on the skills they need to fill those roles.

The event was chaired by Nick Davies, Programme Director at the Institute for Government. Professor Melanie Jones, Academic Lead on the Wales Productivity Forum, joined the discussion of common themes.

Productivity Pitches is kindly supported by The Productivity Institute.