Best Wishes from Working Links

Many thanks to the colleague for sending me that upbeat New Year message from Phil Andrew, Chief Executive, Working Links. Lovely to see them expanding into Saudi Arabia! Here it is in full, together with a local Napo response:-

Welcome back! 

Let me start by wishing you a Happy New Year. 

I hope you’ve had a restful, enjoyable Christmas and you’re ready for 2016 which promises to be another important year for us. 

And if last year was anything to go by I know how well you will respond to the challenge to continue to make the future a success. 

It’s fair to say 2015 was a significant year for Working Links. On the 1 April we celebrated our 15th anniversary, taking stock of our achievements and evaluating how far we’ve come in a relatively short space of time. We then set about looking towards what we can accomplish in the next 15 years. 

It was a year of enormous change, as we welcomed our colleagues in justice following the completion of the Transforming Rehabilitation share sale – which allowed us to take ownership of three Community Rehabilitation Companies (CRCs) in Dorset, Devon and Cornwall; Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset and Wiltshire; and Wales. 

This is crucial to our ambition of broadening our support to a much wider proportion of society and helping a million people to progress their lives in some meaningful way. 

Given our success, and in line with our strategic plan, we began working on a transformation and integration programme to look at how we can integrate different parts of the business and continue to grow our organisation in a way that ensures we remain efficient and flexible. And this will remain our big focus in 2016. 

We’ve been busy creating one end-to-end social intervention model, which means we’re going to be much more closely integrated between employability and justice, and we’re going to be much more integrated between front line and support services, operating in shared environments. That creates huge opportunities for us but it needs to be very carefully managed and we need everyone to contribute to make it a success. 

The company also grew organically. It started way back in January when we won Every Day, or ‘Bob Dydd’ in Welsh, a small Jobcentre Plus (JCP) contract open to jobseekers in Swansea who have completed their allotted time on the Work Programme and returned to JCP. This was followed by winning the Flexible Support Fund (FSF) in Wales, to deliver employment support to the over 50s in South East Wales, TESS, a 20-week voluntary programme for JCP customers funded by the FSF, and an ESA contract, helping to support ESA customers into sustainable employment. 

We brought one of our Work Programme sub-contracts in house in Scotland – from PeoplePlus (formerly A4e) – and our five Work Choice contracts were extended for 18 months. 

We saw major expansion internationally – something I’m really proud of. We launched Turas Nua to deliver the JobPath programme. Turas Nua sees us employing the best part of 450 people, open 37 new offices across Ireland and provide the long-term unemployed in Ireland their first opportunity to get targeted detailed assistance to help them get into employment. And so far it’s going really, really well. Another major growth area for us has been our international business in the Middle East. We’re doing some pioneering work with our partners in Kuwait and that’s working very well.

In Saudi Arabia, we’ve gone from being one of the smallest providers in the Kingdom to now having an established team of over 20 people out there providing operational consultancy services to government funded organisations. Our work in Saudi is producing a whole new business stream for us that is developing quickly, which is a tremendously exciting phase for us as we go into 2016 and beyond. 

We gained some important accreditations and awards over the last 12 months, including Investors in Diversity, and we successfully maintained our ISO 27001:2013 accreditation following an audit on information security and compliance with the standard. 

I’m really pleased James Bamford, one of our Senior Probation Officers was presented with a prestigious Butler Trust Award by the Butler Trust’s Patron, HRH The Princess Royal and BGSW CRC and ss Great Britain won the Partnership award at the Redemption and Justice Awards. 

And we developed some key partnerships – notably with Innovation Wessex to help us to deliver Transforming Rehabilitation (TR) across the three CRCs. 

Sadly, we also saw some of our contracts come to an end after a very successful term. The Enterprise Coaching programme ended after five years, having helped more than 300 businesses start up in Plymouth. European Social Fund (ESF) Family Support came to an end, having helped more than 8,000 families across the East Midlands. Our Greater London Authority (GLA) SWITCH Direction programme ended having helped young people with convictions to find education, training or employment opportunities on release from prison. Moving On finished after five years which improved the employment prospects of people with convictions in London, both in custody and in the community. And after three successful years we ended our management of Bad Boys’ Bakery – the social enterprise inside HM Prison Brixton made famous by Gordon Ramsey, which helps people with convictions to improve their skills to enable them to reintegrate into society and employment on release. 

Whilst 2015 was a year of mobilisation and stabilisation, it’s very important that we don’t forget that we need to grow our business really quickly from 2016 onwards and therefore a big focus of this year will be on our business development. 

We’ve got some really exciting bids coming up. We have the European Social Fund (ESF) and Skills Funding Agency (SFA) contracts – and we’re very excited about those. The business development team are working hard to design new programmes which meet the needs of our funders. 

We also now know more about the Department for Work and Pensions’ (DWP) replacement for Work Programme and Work Choice. This will be called the Work and Health Programme and, whilst smaller in funding than Work Programme, it goes to the heart of our skills to help the hardest to help which will also include those out of work for more than two years. 

To prepare for this, in England we’re continuing our programme of stakeholder engagement; and our team in Wales have been busy building relationships with Welsh politicians, government ministers and senior civil servants to ensure that we are best placed should the Welsh government play an active role in co-commissioning the programme. 

In Scotland it’s slightly different as responsibility for what replaces Work Programme is being devolved to the Scottish government. We’ve been working very closely with our colleagues at the Scottish government over the last two years to bring our experience and expertise to the policy and programmes design processes. 

We want to further expand our work in the justice arena over the next year too. We’re looking at working in partnership with organisations to provide resettlement services as part of the government’s major new prison reform programme – which includes plans to build nine new prisons. One of these prisons is in Wrexham, North Wales, and we are already having very positive discussions with NOMS in Wales about this. This will provide us with an excellent platform to showcase our innovation and expertise in through the gate services.

A key part of our business development strategy going forward is to expand our footprint across the UK. We have opportunities in London, the Midlands, the North East and a variety of other places where we think we can create some really innovative work with some of the partners we’re talking to at the moment to make a step change to really finding a way to help people progress in life, whatever that means for that individual. 

In 2015 we helped as many people or more than we expected to and that’s a fantastic position to be in. Last year you continued to change lives: we put nearly 14,500 people back into work, supported a further 26,000 to make changes, and on average, had just under 18,500 service users a month accessing our services as part of their rehabilitation journey.

And there is much on the horizon in 2016. There will be challenges ahead, but ultimately I know we will continue to focus on our customers and service users to help them progress towards a more positive future. My challenge to you is, how many more people’s lives can we collectively change in the next year? 

Happy New Year 

Phil Andrew, Chief Executive

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Dear Members,

Another e mail on your first day back from the holidays my apologies. As we gear up for the continued difficulties that we all face together, whatever, your role or grade.

Working Links the Company in their planned proposals for hubs and relocations of essential service provisions have still not released any of the material details on how they are to float the service design. We are a little surprised therefore, to read what I think is the first all staff bulletin from Mr Andrews. Talking up Working links the company and references to international and European activity. Whilst this may be interesting to some, what your Unions are actively doing is looking to ensure their planned jobs cuts are not a ruse to funnelling away monies on other business ventures from your real jobs which would be at members and taxpayers expense.

Napo local reps recent experiences have not been good and the current state of some aspects of the management's process has made things difficult. It is nothing that we are not recording and will be used in due course but getting any reliable information is not helped when you read a briefing like this and not one word to our members on the situation that Mr Andrews operating team have planned our membership dismissals.

It may be a new style or management, up-beat on commentary but absent of critical issues does nothing to inspire good prospects and a safe working future in an organisation that needs the full staff backing and future commitment.

In the meantime, as we look more carefully at what will no doubt become a continued propaganda exercise, if todays release is anything to go by. Napo is working for you, our members for potential events to come. Working Links The company continue to advance their plans and we shall continue to ensure we challenge and take all necessary actions to protect you. On record there are to be not cuts to PO grade staff and so some can take stock in that but that does not mean to say pay roles and duties will not be changed and so your concerns will continue.

We expect this will worry all members to some degree, for further information please get in touch or send us some questions. All members will be facing uncertainties this year and so solidarity in numbers approach and collective thinking will help.

In that spirit the branch will be organising grade and team location meetings for all members to survey and canvas views and inform you of what NAPO will be doing and asking for you to protect your interest. Look out for the dates for branches and special office based meetings. Some of which the National General Secretary Ian Lawrence will attend as will Mike National Napo official.

Regards

Dino Peros Branch Chair JNCC Napo Rep

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Some may ask 'who is Phil Andrew?'
From Working Links website:-



Working Links is pleased to announce the appointment of a new Chief Executive.

Phil Andrew is to join the organisation in April from Sodexo UK & Ireland, where he is currently Chief Financial Officer.

Phil joins Working Links with a wealth of experience contracting with government in the UK and overseas, having more than 20 years’ experience in operational and finance roles. As well as his current role, he has held a number of positions in the UK and France, including Managing Director of Sodexo Justice Services, which runs rehabilitation and custodial services.

Phil worked in a number of international businesses based in the UK, Ireland, Asia and Russia. Phil is a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Marketer and qualified treasurer.

On his appointment, Phil said: “I am extremely excited to be joining Working Links. Making a social difference is a key motivation for me so I am very pleased to be joining a company with such a strong social purpose. I am looking forward to bringing my operational and commercial experience into Working Links at such a key point in the development of the market.”

Commenting on his appointment, Chairman Millie Banerjee said: “I am delighted to announce Phil as our new Chief Executive. Phil brings a wealth of expertise and experience to Working Links and I look forward to working together to help us move more people away from social exclusion."