Hundreds of Jobcentre staff received leadership coaching at a cost to the taxpayer of nearly £2 million.
The Department for Work and Pensions paid for nearly 600 employees to undertake a course called Managers Who Deliver - Leaders Who Inspire between September and 2007 and March 2009, which has angered some people who question the government logic of closing 54 job centres last year, reports the Daily Telegraph.
Latest unemployment figures due to be released today (August 12th) are expected to show another rise in jobless rates as the economic downturn continues to put pressure on firms around the country.
The Conservatives accused the government of squandering money which should have been spent helping those without a job into work.
Theresa May, the shadow work and pensions secretary, told the news provider: "I would like to know how the government justify this as value for money.
"Surely taxpayers' cash would have been better spent keeping open the 54 job centres the government closed last year while unemployment was rising."
Mel Groves, acting chief executive of Jobcentre Plus, said that the courses were designed to improve management skills.
According to the latest unemployment statistics from the Office for National Statistics, the unemployment rate was 7.6 per cent for the three months to May 2009 in the UK.
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Comments
I've had some past experience of using Job Centre plus and although the staff were friendly they couldn't help me. I think extra training is helpful. They also closed our local office and put it into the library which was a poor move as any privacy went out of the door....
I don't really get the position on this to be honest. Management training is a good thing. They're employed by the government. Who should be paying for it? :)
Hi Andrea - I agree that if there is a need for managers to be trained then they should get it whether they work for the Government (with us picking up the tab) or not. I'm sure there would be plenty of complaints if they found out managers didn't get any training!
Of course the real challenge is whether over £3,000 per manager was value for money but there isn't enough detail to judge.
If some of the managers who were trained had to leave because of the closures at least their skills sets should have been better, thus enabling them to have more chance in finding a job elsewhere and reducing the cost of benefits to support them :-)
I agree that a legitimate question, is whether the £3K per head was value for money. However, as the previous contributor has argued, there is far too little information to judge this. Were these 2 year part time executive MBA courses, 1 year DMS, or single day courses, or Chartered Manager accreditations? I would expect that some evaluation of the value for money would have been made during the procurement process. I would also expect that some assessment of the impact on the individuals benefiting was made immediately after the training and at a reasonable period after its delivery.
Management and leadership training is essential in organisations and highly undervalued in far too many. It helps improve productivity and performance.
The explosive and continuing rise in unemployment over the last year, set to continue for up to as much as another year, represents one of the most significant and largest management and change challenges in any government department currently; arguably alongside financial services reform. The DWP is the Department with lead responsibility for this.
I mention not the pensions time-bomb, which the department also has to deal with too.
The Department has a planned headcount of over 107,000 people in the current year. The proportion that have received this support seems very modest in proportion.
Should the debate not be about whether enough people have been trained with sufficient leadership and management skills for the current challenges and those to come over the next year, or so?
Just to add to my previous comment.
A few small further details on the Leadership and Management Programme may be obtained from the attached link, following a question, raised by Justine Greening, Conservative MP, as long ago as 20 May.
I am not quite sure why the matter has only just been escalated now in the media, some nearly 3 months later.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmhansrd/cm090520/text...
It probably only hit the media now because they drip out negative stuff on a constant basis and don't want to use it all in one go - there was obviously a quiet week for bad news (assuming you accept their slant on it!).
It does smack a bit of political opportunisim by Theresa May. You'd hope that they'd be above such posturing but I guess not.
This is quite frankly a pathetic indictment of our political system. If those taking a swipe here had ever worked in DWP they would realise the organisation works under huge pressures and helping to train people within it at whatever level is as important as it is within commercial enterprises.
What is a bad use of taxpayers money is keeping a load of people in jobs as MP's who couldn't make it in business as they would be forced to deliver something of value that was measured and the expenses are more stringently administered.