Creating sustainable employment opportunities for the unemployed

This article addresses challenges associated with creating sustainable employment opportunities for the unemployed and encouraging employer engagement in skills development and utilisation more generally. Survey and case study analysis of an initiative introduced by New Labour in the National Health Service England (NHS) provides evidence of employer reluctance to engage with a policy which addresses social exclusion and unemployment. Reasons are presented for this policy to implementation gap. This behaviour, in a buoyant economy, underlines a broader concern that voluntarism will be insufficient in the current economic climate to encourage employers more generally to adopt longer-term workforce development strategies. This reluctance to engage is compared with those NHS employers who were motivated to develop intermediate labour markets for the unemployed with explicit links to their internal labour markets, thereby providing opportunities for work experience and job progression. Implications are drawn from these contrasting behaviours as to how the state can encourage more employers to adopt progressive practices.