PSI
Central London
Thursday 24th January
Founder of Tree Shepherd, Colin Crooks, has been invited to speak at an event organised at PSI in London on Thursday 24th January. He will be speaking about the plight of the long-term unemployed and some of the solutions he proposes in his book, How to Make a Million Jobs.
This is a ticket-only event with only a very limited number of places, so if you would like to attend, please email colin@treeshepherd.org.uk asap.
Guardian competition for best job creator
I believe that many areas of the UK suffer from endemic unemployment that remains virtually untouched by whatever happens in the economy. Such areas are really challenging to operate in and most SMEs prefer to invest elsewhere (only 13% of them start up in the most deprived areas). As I sat down to write my book, my experience told me that social enterprises are far more likely to set up in such areas and that they seemed to employ more people that similar sized SMEs. It was gratifying to find that SE UKs independent research (Fightback Britain 2011) confirmed both these observations.
So what is the reason for this difference and why are social enterprises better at creating jobs where they are most needed?
To help answer this question I am teaming up with the Guardian Social Enterprise Network to find the best social enterprise job creator. The top prize is a feature length article on your enterprise on the networks’ website based on an interview with me on what you do, why you do it and how well its worked. Second prize is an opportunity to get a blog published on the network. Oh yes and each of the best 5 entrants will get a free copy of my book – lucky people! I will also undertake to list all the entrants on this site (what have let myself in for!?) By definition we know you are very busy so we’ve kept the requirements to a bare minimum all you need to do to enter the competition is nominate a social enterprise in100 words on what it’s doing to help the unemployed. then email Joe Jervis at the Guardian. Don’t forget to give us their name, contact details and post-code. Self nomination is perfectly fine – in fact I expect it!
Of course every entry bolsters the argument for social enterprise and will add to my campaign to make social enterprise central to the debate about job creation and tackling deprivation.
I can’t wait to review all your entries, good luck!
Colin
Please read my latest blog on the Guardian Social enterprise network. The crisis of unemployment is not improving. Millions are languishing in worklessness but we can do something about it if we have the will.
How to make a million jobs – A charter for social enterprise
A Review
I met Colin at The Cottage Cafe, Pitfield Street, Shoreditch in London. This cafe is a fine example of what enterprise can do , it is a vibrant trendy cafe plus it has select second hand furniture and other goods for sale . Just down the road there is a social impact hub which hosts several charities and is next door to London Youth a third sector representative body for young people’s centres in London.
This area of London is very close to my heart. A 100 years ago in a street just a few minutes walk away my Great Grandfather lived with his parents and seven brothers and sisters in a small terraced house. He was a lowed skilled worker and he lived in a world where there was no welfare state and he regularly faced worklessness and underemployment in the London of the 1900s. In September 1914, At 23 he volunteered for the Royal Fusiliers, he was wounded twice he survived Gallipoli, The Somme and was taken Prisoner at Cambria. On his return he worked hard and improved his skills and therefore his prospects. He and his children became successful and made positive social impact by starting businesses and employing local people.
Colin’s book shows that despite numerous systems, complex bureaucracies and billions of pounds it is people who make a difference and it is enterprise, focus and social impact that should be the real aims so that we can ensure real tangible prosperity. Colin is right, challenging and beating worklessness is the main objective now. Worklessness is a perennial weed it grips and restricts everything that it touches. It ties down our prospects for growth and freedom and it has an even more terrible impact on something more important …democracy. If people have no stake in society, democracy erodes away and is usurped by the ideologies of fear. My great Grandfather and 10,000’s of other Londoners have fought , died, protested and survived for a better life and worklessness is our collective challenge.
An excellent read and full of sound ideas for a positive way forward I thoroughly recommend this book to anyone who has a passion for dealing with the world as it is and championing locally generated solutions to worklessness.
Stephen Jeffery
Chief Executive
London Learning Consortium
Portland House
Stag Place
London
SW1E 5RS
On 5th September 2012 I featured on BBC 2 Daily Politics show with Jo Coburn and Andrew Neil. It was a very exciting opportunity to get over my concern about the let-down generation that didn’t get a very good education and watched their local factories and workplaces close all around them.
BBC 2 Daily Politics Watch Again
You can watch my soapbox and the interview on the link above
Social Enterprise and the unemployment crisis
Published on the Guardian Social Enterprise Network
25. July 2012
I recently spoke to an audience at the RSA, aiming to debunk the rather comfortable myths about unemployment that many have accepted. Seemingly unemployment is not too serious, it’s cyclical and there are jobs out there for those that have the gumption to go and get them. I’m afraid those assumptions are plain wrong.
The numbers are far from manageable because official unemployment figures – 2.61 million out of work – hide the fact there are actually 6.5 million people who want to work in this country (ONS “economically inactive but want to work” data, May 2012 http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/datasets-and-tables/index.html?pageSize=50&sortBy=none&sortDirection=none&newquery=economically+inactive+but+want+to+work&content-type=Reference+table&content-type=Dataset).
They’re not cyclical either. Even in 2005 at the height of our booming economy there were 4 million people unable to get work who wanted it.
And as for “there’s work out there if you want it”, official vacancies hover around half a million. This means even without the people who want to change jobs there are 13 unemployed people for every one vacancy.
The numbers alone don’t tell the full story because behind them is a terrifying skills gap. As employers ask for increasingly higher skill levels and employment becomes more technical, we create a widening gap for the millions who don’t have even the basic skills. Around 10 million working age people don’t have a Level 2 qualification, which means they can only go for the most basic of jobs.
But those low and semi-skilled jobs are fast disappearing. Our modern business models look to remove labour at every turn or ships jobs abroad. Many businesses are also keen to set up on green fields well away from dense urban populations. This compounds the problem for those communities in deprived inner cities where a disproportionate number of the unemployed live. For the huge number of people who want to work but have care commitments to fulfil, distance to work is a critical factor. They simply cannot afford the extra time away from their dependents travelling to and from work.
These apparently inevitable economic processes create ever more desperate ghettoes of unemployment of people with low skills or complex commitments. So how do we reverse the trend and create low and semi-skilled local jobs? Enter social enterprise.
Social enterprises are perverse. They deliberately choose to locate in challenging areas and are three times more likely to be based in an area of multiple disadvantage and high unemployment than their private sector equivalent (SEUK 2011). And relative to a similar sized private firm they employ more people.
So we have a desperate and growing need for jobs in deprived areas but the majority of business owners are not inclined to invest. There must then be a compelling case for supporting those people who do want to invest their time and sweat in such areas. Social entrepreneurs are the committed and determined business pioneers who are prepared to make the sacrifices needed to buck the trend. If government backed those individuals who take up the challenge because they are motivated by more than money, they would get a massive social dividend on their investment: higher employment, increased social harmony, increased local income, reduced benefit dependency.
For government and local authorities investing in social enterprise should make sound policy, but what about the business community?
There is an equally compelling economic argument for businesses to invest in creating work in our most deprived areas. Just say they took an active part in creating a million new jobs. At the median wage that would be £26billion added to GDP. This is money that would typically be spent on products supplied by our largest firms. However, the benefits are far more strategic than a boost to local markets.
As the baby boomers start to retire there is going to be a massive labour shortage in this country and companies are going to be competing intensively across the skills matrix for people to work for them. Helping to create additional employment now for people who will otherwise languish at home is a very good investment in a future where there will be less working age people.
And again its not just numbers; in my experience unemployed people often hide remarkable skills and insights, which until they start to work are completely smothered. Seeing that potential gradually being released as a person builds in confidence has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
As Harvard Business Professor Michael Porter says in his seminal paper “Creating Shared Value”, investing in local supply chains where businesses can form relationships and work together on problems can be a most productive way of creating innovation. If that local supply chain included social enterprises who were harnessing the ideas and creativity of a let-down generation we could produce some very interesting results.
There is a clear case for businesses to look over their shoulder at the depressed neighbourhoods on their doorstep and to engage with social enterprise to create work. They’d increase their markets, widen the pool of labour and discover some extraordinary insights.
Colin Crooks, serial social entrepreneur and Director of Tree Shepherd
Pre order my new book http://authr.com/title/348/how-to-make-a-mill_a-charter-for.html
The let–down generation
written by Colin Crooks
published by New Start magazine 4th July 2012
Serial social entrepreneur Colin Crooks highlights why social entrepreneurs are the key to turning round our most deprived areas and helping the let-down generation.
In my recent BBC Radio 4 Four Thought lecture I spoke about the 6.5 million people who actually want to work in the UK but cannot find a job. I spoke too, about the fact that there are 10 million people who don’t have a single level 2 qualification. Most of these people went through schooling between the 70′s and the 90′s. I call them the let-down generation. However, what I didn’t have time to say is that a highly disproportionate number of these people live in our most deprived areas. This will come as no surprise to readers of New Start but nevertheless I think the connection between these two factors is considerably under-estimated. I have set up and run a number of social enterprises in some very deprived areas of the country and the lack of skills locally has in all cases been a severely limiting factor. As a matter of course when interviewing for van driver jobs I give candidates an A-Z in order to check they can read (I have learnt the hard way – I was assaulted by a guy who couldn’t read) and I would make sure a person using a weigh scales could differentiate between lbs and kgs. And this extends beyond manual workers. When recruiting for supervisor grades I’ve needed to check that candidates had basic numeracy, could create simple spread sheets and could understand essential management data. The absence of such skills is a serious impediment to any business or organisation. It also requires the senior managers to go beyond their normal role as employer and act almost as teacher and parent too.
Ironically, the stress that such challenges often brought (drivers getting lost because they couldn’t read a map, staff paying out the wrong amount because they’d used the wrong weight scale) was also accompanied by an enormous sense of satisfaction. For where the average business manager seems to lack the patience for such difficulties I’ve found helping these people and watching them change and grow in front of me to be amongst the most rewarding experience of my life.
That’s why I am proposing in my upcoming book that social enterprise should lead in the regeneration of our most deprived locations. Because only people with empathy for their staff and the patience to help them and train them can really break the cycle of low skills, no jobs, no hope that so many communities find themselves in. Llocal social entrepreneurs know what’s needed in their area and they can create the jobs we need. If we can give them the support they need to get started and in turn to support and train their employees, we could rebuild the confidence of the let-down generation. And that confidence will pass down to their children and then finally we might see the skills and income gulf that characterises this country starting to close.
Can you help? I’m Using crowd funding to get my book ‘One Million Jobs’ printed in time for the party conference season. Any support you can give will be gratefully received visit http://authr.com/title/348/one-million-jobs_a-social-entrepreneur’s.html
“Whatever aches I suffer I will be acutely aware that I’m free and in the fresh air”
by Colin Crooks
On Thursday afternoon I start my annual cycling odyssey. Although I’m not climbing as much as last years madness I will be travelling a very long way! This year I plan to ride with a marvellous group of around 25 people more than 350 miles from the New Forest across to the Isle of Wight and round to Canterbury via Brighton. From Canterbury I will ride back into London. I’m looking forward to it although my training has been hampered by the terrible weather. This year I’m riding for two great causes. One is a UK charity that helps prisoners find new skills and to be creative. Called Fine Cell Work they have a very creative and imaginative, sterotype-breaking approach to prisoners welfare and equipping them with skills for when they are released. Prisoners in the UK spend far too long cooped up in their cell. They are cleary very limited in what they can do. Fine Cell Work trains male prisoners in embroidery and needlework. Their products are extremely good quality and are sold and exhibited across the UK. This is a really creative social enterprise breaking barriers and doing business. Whatever aches I suffer I will be acutely aware that I’m free and in the fresh air. My second charity this year is Afghan Aid which has been working in Afghani communities for more than 3 decades. They really know the country and its people and they enable them to help themselves in all sorts of ways. Both these charities appeal to the core of my approach to social enterprise: they help others help themselves……….
I’d really value your support. Please donate via one of these links
www.virginmoneygiving.com/team/Whoosh10
www.virginmoneygiving.com/team/Whoosh10Afghan
A people based policy for places without people?
I sometimes wonder whether the academics and researchers on whom we put so much trust have sufficient practical experience to offer solutions to the problems they analyse. On so many occasions, the solutions they promote seem disconnected from the issue that they are concerned with.
The other day I went to a conference at The Work Foundation entitled “Economic development: Innovating for local growth?” It was the usual sort of thing; four speakers reviewing where we are and what they thought could be done about it. The final speaker, Professor Henry Overman from the LSE pointed out that “area disparities are highly persistent” and continued with some bold assertions about the effectiveness of government intervention in deprived areas over the last 13+ years. We have to acknowledge, he went on to say, “…that 13 years of intervention effectively did nothing to address spatial differences”. He felt that the main reason that these interventions had been so ineffective was that they had focused on the area effects rather than the people. “All interventions should be on people not place,” he asserted.
I found myself nodding vigorously in agreement. All of my limited research has demonstrated that very few areas of high unemployment have seen significant improvements in employment rates. This is despite millions being spent on them through a raft of government schemes going back in some cases to the mid 1930s!
Here I thought was the platform that Professor Overman would use to call for a reform of public policy. To start investing, not in place, but in people. Optimistically I asked, what he thought we should do to help the millions of adults in this country that have no qualifications. By my calculations, there are between 8 and 10 million people in that situation i.e. one third of our workforce.
But instead of addressing this most serious of issues he preferred to push the problem out to future generations, as do so many other commentators in this field. He said we should, “invest in early year’s education.” How, I asked, does that help the people who have now left school with no qualifications and who need a job? “It doesn’t” he replied “and there’s nothing that can be done for them.” He went on to say that government investment should focus on the places where the market demands high skilled jobs and that many second tier towns would need to “dwindle in size”
Quite apart from the humanitarian issues that “letting places fail” raises, I was struck by how illogical this argument was. Firstly, if as Professor Overman says, “who you are is much more important than where you are” would you not develop a people centred programme? By this I mean a policy of investing in adult skills and employment designed around who the people are and not what you would like them to be. If several million people have very low skills I think you need to create jobs and skills training that is appropriate to those people. To talk about encouraging high skills and attracting advanced technical jobs flies in the face of reality for so much of our inner city population. Investment in adults is especially important when one considers that almost all the research shows environmental factors have by far the largest impact on a child’s likely educational attainment. It is estimated that schools themselves are responsible for less than 10% of a child’s achievement. Surely, if a child’s home life is the major determinant of its likely academic success then a major investment in adult skills and work is the best way of improving the educational achievements of today’s children?
Secondly, a policy of investing only in those places that have a chance of high skilled success sounds to me very much like a place policy not a people policy. It also seems to be a policy that will backfire if taken to its logical conclusion. If some towns should dwindle then where will those people go? They will be no more able to get high skilled jobs in the boom towns and they will continue to be a burden on the state – only now they will be rootless and dejected. One can only speculate on the social consequences of such a policy.
The uncomfortable truth for academics and for government is that we have to help the millions of unskilled, workless adults living in our country now. That means dealing with real people in real places. It is absurd to offer a people based policy for places without people.
By Colin Crooks
The warnings have been there for anyone to see. Last December the Yorkshire Post screamed out “One-third of Bradfordhomes hit by lifetime of no work” it went to explain, “The latest figures for 24 constituencies across the region show that in Bradford West almost one-third of households contain someone who has not worked.” Later the BBC told us “The number of people claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) in the Bradford West constituency has risen almost 33% to 4,926 over the last year”
While levels of deprivation have been climbing across the country, Bradford’s has been climbing fastest. In less than 3 years, Bradford has slipped 6 places to 26th most deprived authority in England Now more than 44% of its population live (or 222,000) in its poorest areas 16000 more people than in 2007.
When nearly a quarter of a million people live in very deprived areas it will come as no surprise to see that Bradford ranks 5th and 6th in terms of lowest income and lowest levels of employment inEngland.
Yet, in contrast,Bradfordhas nearly 30,000 people who live in the least deprived areas of the country. In fact, Bradford has the widest gulf between rich and poor inEngland.
When such levels of entrenched and indeed growing deprivation live cheek by jowl with wealth and prosperity it can hardly be surprising that people want to see things change and want to hear fresh ideas aimed at helping them.
The government continues to pursue what I call a supply side policy on employment. It insists that its Work Programme will give unemployed people the skills and motivation they need to get a job. This has been the mantra of every government for decades now – essentially, they seem to be saying that if the unemployed pick themselves up and get new skills they will walk into a job. Really?
Let us face the facts. I accept that many unemployed people have very low skill levels. But, assuming we could help them all reskill, what jobs will they do? In the autumn, Bradfordhad 2700 registered job vacancies. There were 17,000 registered unemployed. Add to them the number of people who want to work but can’t register and those who want full-time rather than part-time work, to allow them to make ends meet, and you get at least 2.5 times that figure. So, in reality more than 40,000 people are chasing those 2700 vacancies. No wonder we regularly hear stories of 50 or even a 100 people applying for each job vacancy!
We need a radical new approach and we need one quickly. We need to create jobs that people with low skills can do. Once they have a job we can work with them to build their skills. As social entrepreneur, I can see hundreds of opportunities to create real jobs that provide real services for local people. Jobs in maintenance, social care, education, health and even in entertainment. As I have researched my new book – coming out in the summer – it has become obvious that the main barrier to creating such jobs is not the energy of the local people or their lack of skills. It is not even money – it is something far more insidious.
At the heart of the problem of entrenched unemployment in specific areas is the obsession with “efficiency” – of getting the lowest price at the least risk. The result is that large, highly capitalised firms get the contracts to deliver local services that do not employ local people. The money is clearly there as government (local and national) spend millions in areas such as Bradford West. The challenge is to help local people find better ways of spending it, which benefits them.
Until we can offer something more tangible to the millions of workless people be prepared for more electoral turbulence.