How UK career professionals can stay afloat amidst public sector funding cuts
“Fantastic careers programme – but we can’t justify running another one in the current economic climate.”
The UK is facing the biggest public spending cuts since World War II, imposed by the newly formed British Coalition Government. The extent of the cuts is breathtaking, and everyone will be affected in one way or other: public sector workers, suppliers, contractors, and of course the general public.
So what can you do as a career professional whose contracts are dependent on public sector funding? Here are a few strategies that we have discussed in our UK networks of career professionals:
1. Renegotiate your services
If there is no money left to run tried and tested career programmes, suggest more cost-effective alternatives. For instance, instead of 1:1 career consultations, could you introduce a group coaching programme? If you run workshops for 20 people, could you increase numbers to 25 to achieve a lower cost per person? If your clients consider you a valued resource, they’d rather come to a practical solution than give up your programmes altogether. The challenges are obvious: a) how far do you compromise before the quality suffers, and b) how do you get clients to understand that the results might be different?
2. Repackage your services
Career development is out – outplacement support is in. That’s the overall message from public sector clients. They have a huge challenge on their hands in justifying any expenditure. You can repackage a career transition programme one of two ways: If your programme will help people move into new jobs before the organisation has to make them redundant, you’re saving the organisation money and that’s an easier internal sell. Or, you could provide an outplacement support programme for those affected workers.
3. Become an associate
For some of us, work has dried up completely. Consider becoming an associate of a larger careers firm. Yes, you won’t earn as much as before, but it will provide some steady income and still leave time to find new markets for your own work.
4. Collaborate with other independent consultants
With the major public sector reorganisations ahead, there will still be large career and outplacement contracts out for tender. As individual career professionals, we often don’t qualify as suppliers because we don’t have the required delivery capacity. Collaborate with other independent consultants and find out how you can tender together. You will have to create a new company, a separate entity from your individual practices. It will take some work and someone will need to drive the process, but it could be a viable alternative.
5. Increase the number of private sector clients
Can you grow your client base of commercial organisations? Apparently, the “War for Talent” has started again in professions such as accountancy, HR, IT and the engineering and technical sectors http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jobs/7929183/War-for-talent-resumes-as-salaries-climb.html. And talent management programmes are resurfacing. If you have experience in these areas, you should be able to identify new income streams.
What wisdom can you share that will help UK career consultants keep their businesses going? Please comment below.
Ruth Winden
Jobs & Careers in the UK
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Government policy needs to change over the support given to public sector workers facing redundancy. Government departments and public sector organisations need to work with Small and Medium sized Enterprises which provide redeployment assistance to help outplace up to 600,000 people who could be losing their jobs.
Many highly competent individuals will lose their jobs due to the cuts agenda. But the over riding ethos must be to quickly get them back into employment, so they continue in economically and socially significant roles, instead of finding themselves sidelined in society. Given the size of the task, SMEs have a vital role here.
But smaller companies like us, even though we can provide a nationwide capability, fear big training businesses will be used instead, maintaining the status quo and pushing many far more economical and often higher quality providers out of the sector altogether.
The Government mustn’t create a redeployment ‘closed shop,’ excluding SMEs from the tendering and procurement process. There’s no easy way for smaller providers to get in as we can prove time and again from our recent efforts. This could cost taxpayers up to £350 million more, because often small firms can do it much more cost effectively and tailor their support precisely to Departmental and organisational needs.
That can be a lot harder for larger companies with bigger overheads and who have in many instances standardised their products. We just want to ensure the SMEs don’t get left out in the corporate cold by a Lib Dem/Conservative Government which promised to look out for the little guys, but risks leaving the giants to rule the roost.
Given the current uncertainty all this creates in the Public Sector, we’ve asked for information before the Party Conference season in September, regarding each Department’s provisional plans. Forewarned is forearmed. The Prime Minister is pressing his Ministers to act fast and we agree. We’ll share the responses from all Departments on 21st September, 2010
Dear Lembit,
Thanks so much for your detailed reply. I will certainly follow your campaign to raise awareness of SMEs in the UK career management and outplacement field, which I believe you started recently together with the outplacement firm Grey Hair Management.
I am based in the North East of England, where one in three jobs is based in the public sector. A ratio that, in my view, has been rightly identified as unsustainable by the new Government. This imbalance should have been addressed a long time ago. To do it now and hope that the private sector will create the required number of new employment opportunities to compensate for the public sector redundancies is totally unrealistic. And on top of it, with the planned closure of our regional development agency One North East, I wonder who will address these deep structural issues at a regional level.
I fully agree that everything needs to be done to help individuals get back into employment, or start their own businesses, in line with their levels of achievement, as quickly as possible. As career professionals we have an important role to play, in providing support, advice and knowledge to help job seekers navigate a successful job search. The majority of our clients come to us because they just don’t know how to master the challenges of a job search in the internet age, let alone finding employment in an economic downturn. And there have been many success stories. It can be done again, also in the North East.
Yet many people in this region worry whether there will be enough jobs to go round. Are we in danger of losing a great number of talented people who’d rather move elsewhere than stay unemployed? This would be a terrible loss and setback for a region that has worked so hard to come out of the last recession stronger.