Government
Our journey so far
esg. a leading supplier of vocational skills and welfare to work services across the UK. Working alongside our partners we touch the lives of over 40,000 people and their communities each year. Embedded in over 100 locations we support our diverse range of learners and jobseekers to break down barriers and reach their goals, whether that is to gain a vocational qualification or find a job.
We bring together the experience and expertise of four businesses that have been delivering employment related services and skills provision, on behalf of government, for over 25 years. Read more about our history.
We provide an integrated skills and employment solution for people often from the most disadvantaged areas of Great Britain, changing lives for the better and helping people to rejoin society. We do this through our successful delivery of pre-employment skills, brokerage into sustainable employment and career advancement through vocational skills courses and accredited training and qualifications. And we work closely with our network of over 12,000 UK employers.
Inventive thinking
We use inventive thinking without limitation to ensure we bring something different to the welfare to work and skills markets. Through research we’re finding new ways of doing things and responding innovatively to policy to help break the cycle of welfare dependency and re-offending, resolve our national skills shortage and reduce youth unemployment.
Our values sit at the heart of everything that we do, and our mission is to help our customers gain the skills they need to change their lives and reach their goals. We want to ensure no one is left behind and that all of our customers are supported so that they are empowered to realise their potential. Read more about our values.
Policy, research and responses
esg. has been delivering welfare to work and skills services since the beginning of the New Deal era. Despite over a decade of initiatives such as Pathways, Employment Zone and FND, the UK still has approximately 5 million people on out-of-work benefits. And, according to the UKCES we’re still a long way from the desired 95% of people having at least ‘low’ skill levels.
Whilst some programmes have been more effective than others, the reality is that not enough long-term unemployed people have been moved from unemployment into sustainable work. However, statistics do not tell the whole story. As an experienced provider esg. believes that employment services can fulfill their true potential if policy creates the right environment to change participant behavior and the welfare to work industry innovates its delivery to service users.
Here you will find our latest responses to government consultations and copies of our research reports.
First item for research: esg. and CESI are employing BELIEF
Employing BELIEF: Applying behavioural economics to welfare to work
The welfare to work industry is undergoing huge change. The creation of new measures for sustainability and the cash-flow implications for outcome based funding has created a new top tier of potential contractors for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). Whilst this rationalisation and risk transfer creates welcomed efficiency; esg. believes that at the provision level the impact of long-term Incapacity Benefit claimants entering “the market” for the first time will require Prime Contractors to deliver a very different service from the predominate Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) led provision of the past. Innovation will be fundamental if we are to move this cohort towards the labour market and sustained work.
The recommendations of this research can be transformational if they are adopted and applied imaginatively by the welfare to work industry and translated into original service lines and interventions. esg. believes that new ways of working will be one of the keys to breaking the cycle of benefit dependency especially for our hardest to help customers.
View the CESI report, 'Employing BELIEF', here, sponsored and supported
by esg. Download PDF