Exploring the Change of Frequency in the Jobseekers

Signing Regime; Do Weekly Work Search Review Meetings

Result In Improved Employment Outcomes?

Mark Langdon and Simon Clay

Department for Work and Pensions

10 September 2015

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What we aim to cover

• An evidence summary on the impact of the Fortnightly Work Search Reviews (WRS). 

• An overview of a trial with JSA claimants comparing the impact of two JSA signing regimes and;

• An overview of the early analysis.

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What does DWP do?“The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) is responsible for

welfare, pensions and child maintenance policy. As the UK’s biggest public service department it administers the State Pension

and a range of working age, disability and ill health benefits to over 22 million claimants and customers”

Our priorities are:• helping to reduce poverty and

improve social justice• helping people to find and stay

in work• enabling disabled people to

fulfil their potential • helping people save more for

their retirement through workplace pensions and making the State Pension simpler and fairer

• recognising the importance of family in providing the foundation of every child’s life

• improving services to the public by providing value for money and reducing fraud and error

• Working Age Benefits costs the Tax Payer £24.6bn

• Of which £5.3bn is JSA (Unemployment Benefit)

2013/4 financial statement

http://www.google.co.uk/imgres?imgurl=https://dtsft.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/fullmonty3.jphttp://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CAcQjRxqFQoTCJSo-Z2358cCFWmd2wodduAEWg&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fnews%2Fuk-17201799&psig=AFQjCNFXwDptO2AtH1YXXa7ZxcrFEXc2Iw&ust=1441801422492126g

The fortnightly WSR has been a core component of the UK Government Active Labour Market policy for many years…

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But it has transformed from this…

… to this…

The Jobcentre Plus support offer is effective, supporting many claimants into work.

JSA off-flow 16-64

100.0%

56.0%

17.8%

8.4%5.6%

12.2%

0.0%

10.0%

20.0%

30.0%

40.0%

50.0%

60.0%

70.0%

80.0%

90.0%

100.0%

Full Item 0-13 Weeks 13-26 Weeks 26-39 Weeks 39-52 Weeks(18-24's move towork programme)

Still on after 52weeks (25+ move

to workprogramme)

Duration on JSA

% o

f C

laim

an

ts

June 11 - 12

The majority of claimants leave JSA within 13 weeks. The Fortnightly WSR is a key component of that support in those early weeks…

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Different variations of the JSA signing regime were trialled. These trials and their finding are summarised as follows:• Exemption of ‘signing’ for the first 13 weeks, with a random call-in

for the first 11 weeks of the JSA claim. Participants spending an additional 6.1 days on JSA.

• Exemption of ‘signing’ for the first 7 weeks, with a random call-in for the first 5 weeks of the JSA claim. This led to participants spending an additional 5.8 days on JSA.

• Fortnightly telephone ‘signing’, with a random call-in for the first 13 weeks of the JSA claim. This led to participants spending an additional 6.6 days on JSA. 

• A shortened WSR, but still at fortnightly frequency No significant impact was observed.

• Group signing, but still at fortnightly frequency No significant impact was observed but the sample sizes were small.

Previous Research on the Work Search Review… a series of experiments (2005-6)

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• People will stay on JSA for longer if there is no ‘Signing’ Regime

• The impact was larger for men than it was for women

• The duration of the WSR did not matter

• Rather, it is the face to face element of the WSR that leads to more rapid benefit exit

So what did this show…

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• From April 2014 - 50% of JSA Caseload will have Weekly WSRs

• Work Coach (WC) discretion will determine which Claimants undertake Weekly WSRs

• The number of the Weekly WSR is also at the discretion of the WC

• JCP Offices are funded and resourced to ensure the capacity to deliver Weekly WSRs for 50% of JSA Claimants

• An new trial to test the impact of the change

A new policy… a new opportunity

Does increasing the frequency of the Work Search Review increase the JSA benefit

off-flow rate?

The Trial…Addressing two key questions

What Works for Whom? Which claimants are most likely to be helped by

weekly and fortnightly Work Search Review meetings?

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The Trial…JCP OFFICES

27 across UKEligible Population:

Those individuals making a new Claim

for Job Seekers Allowance (JSA)

Target Sample Size

27,000 (Achieved 26,006)

Recruitment between 22nd September 14

and 19th Feb 15.

Refusal Rate For Survey

Completion:

10%

Excluded from the trial;• Work Programme Returners• Those with history of non-compliance with

the JSA regime• Those exempt from fortnightly signing• Not considered to be capably of providing

informed consent

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The Trial Process…

New JSA Claimant Interview with JCP

Work Coach

Interview Conducted as normal – about

2/3 through the Work Coach introduces the

survey data collection tool

(requests claimant to consent to complete the survey and allow data matching with DWP Administrative

data

Claimant Agrees - completes the

survey

Work Coach completes their questions in the

survey

Claimant Declines the survey

Random Allocation

Algorithm informs the Work Coach of the claimants Signing Regime

Survey Tool automatically encrypts and emails the

record of Claimant consent, the survey data and the trial arm allocation. (All records

are then automatically deleted from the Work Coaches IT system)

Intervention Group

Claimant undertakes weekly signing for a block of 13 weeks

Control GroupClaimant undertakes Fortnightly signing for a block of 13 weeks

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An overview of the survey tool

Exclusions ConsentClaimant questions

Advisor questions

Assignment

In general, all new claimants to JSA were

included.

Where claimants must be excluded;

Those escaping domestic violence

Those who are not able to give informed

consent, or;

Those, who would be required to attend a

JCP office on a more frequent basis – in line with Business As Usual

practice.

We collected informed consent from claimants

to collect information from them for research

purposes

WC read the statement to the claimant and ask whether they agree to

this.

Those who do not consent are still part of the trial but won’t have data collected about

them.

A response must be given for all questions, but the claimant may opt for ‘prefer not to

answer’

WC read out the question to the

claimant, and then the claimant fill in their

answer

WC then turn their screens away from the

claimant to answer their questions confidentially

Once all questions answered, the tool

assigns the claimant to Weekly or Fortnightly WSR for 13 weeks. It

emailed data to the analytical team.

Advisers then inform the claimant of the frequency by which

they will need to attend the JCP office.

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The Trial Management…

The Trial Team undertook the

following…

Developed the Guidance Notes for JCP Staff

Identified a SPOC for each site – and set up an induction day for them.

On site training for all 27 offices

Performance Dashboard - weekly

Weekly SPOC meetings to feedback on performance, deal with issues and questions and to share experiences

Each site visited, at least once, during live running. Observed the process in action to ensure compliance with the trial design.

Feedback to sites on individual Work Coach performance

A trial Newsletter emailed to all Work Coaches and Managers involved in the Trial

Semi-formal interviews with staff

The Analysis

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Achieved Sample Size

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  WeeklySigning

Fortnightly signing

Claims 12,724 13,282

Claimants 12,197 12,647

The total sample size was 26,006 claims to JSA made by 24,844 claimants (some of whom made two or more claims in the trial period).

Claimants were put into the weekly signing or fortnightly signing groups depending on whether the last three digits of their National Insurance Number (NINO) were between 000 and 499 or between 500 and 999.

Analysis

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The effects of weekly signing…To see whether weekly signing has an effect on the time spent on benefit, a straightforward technique is to plot the percentage of claimants still on benefit as a function of the number of days after their claim.

Does signing regime have an effect on time on benefit?

0

50

100

-100 0 100 200Days after claim

% o

n b

en

efi

t

Fortnightly

Weekly

-6

-4

-2

0

2

-100 0 100 200

Days after claim

Ch

an

ge

in

% o

n

be

ne

fit

mo

vin

g t

o

we

ek

ly s

ign

ing

…yes – about four days less on benefit on average

Does signing regime have an effect on time on benefit?

So what does this mean?

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By around two weeks the percentage of the weekly signing group still on benefit is around 2 percentage points lower than those in the fortnightly signing group.

This difference is statistically significant from around a week after claim, but there was no statistically significant difference before the claim.

From this we can conclude that there was no significant difference between the benefit-related behaviour of the weekly and fortnightly signing groups before their claim, and that weekly signing has a significant effect on reducing the time spent on benefit compared to fortnightly signing.

Sub Group Analysis – which claimants respond most positively to weekly WSR’s

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• Variables that appear to have an effect• % of time spent in employment• % time spent on benefit• living arrangements (particularly

partners)• Disability

Early Analysis – treat with caution

Conclusion

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• At this point, results should only be considered preliminary because there has not been enough time for all claimants to flow off benefit.

• Weekly signing appears to produce a reduction in time on benefit of four days for the population at large.

• It is possible to choose a segment of around half the sample for whom the reduction in time on benefit is six days.

• We are continuing to work on the segmentation model.

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Thanks for your attention