Introduction

If active labour market policies are to mean more than disciplining and nudging claiming working-age benefits, the questions of how and under what circumstances employers are more or less willing to hire non-employed benefit claimants of working age, and how this is affected by claimants’ ascribed social characteristics, are crucial ones. Over the last decade a growing body of work has provided fruitful insights into employer preferences and behaviour with respect to engagement in employment services (Ingold and Stuart, 2015; Ingold and Valizade, 2017; Bredgaard, 2018). This chapter considers and compares employer engagement in national-level active labour market programmes (ALMP) in the UK and Germany through examination of a selection of government-commissioned research into public programmes intended to integrate a variety of claimant groups (long-term and short-term unemployed; lone parents; sick and disabled people; older jobseekers; newly arrived refugees) into the labour market. The chapter is organized as follows. The first section provides a brief overview of the organization of the public employment service (PES) and changing patterns of employment participation during the last 40 years. The second section considers employers’ views of benefit claimants and the PES. The third section outlines the types of policy tools used to activate claimants into the labour market and foster employer engagement. The fourth section explores the integrative capacity of employers, namely whether they are willing and/or able to recruit benefit claimants and/or participate in the services offered by the PES to facilitate this.

Labour market trends and employment service Institutions

Over the last 40 years the size of the labour force aged 16–64 in employment in the UK has expanded considerably, rising from a low point of around 23.2 million in 1983 to 31.6 million by the end of 2019 (ONS, 2021b). The overall growth in employment has been mirrored by an increase in the employment rate for people aged 16–64, albeit subject to fluctuation with recessionary periods and their aftermath. Prior to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020/ 21, the UK economy had experienced three recessions during this period – 1980–81; 1990–91 and 2008–09.

Introduction

There is a growing interest in the role of employers in the delivery and success of activation policies. In this chapter, we put forward a typology of policy approaches to employer engagement in activation policies. We identify three main policy approaches: regulation, facilitation and negotiation. The policy approaches rely on different assumed problems and different target groups of unemployed and apply different types of governance and policy instruments. The typology that we put forward can be used to classify national policy approaches in the emerging field of employer engagement in activation policies.

The chapter begins with a discussion of the growing attention for employer engagement in activation policies and research. In the second section, we describe the typology of policy approaches to employer engagement. The third section illustrates the typology by analysing and comparing recent developments in activation policies aimed at strengthening the role of employers in the UK, Denmark and The Netherlands. We conclude with a discussion of our contribution to debates about the role of employers in activation policies.

Activation policies and employer engagement

In more than three decades of active welfare state and labour market reforms, and a vast associated scholarly literature, the role of employers has received surprisingly little attention in policies, debates and research. Since the early 1990s, when the diffusion of active labour market policies accelerated across a range of countries, activation policies have mainly focused on the supply side of the labour market. Their objectives have been to motivate unemployed people through supportive and disciplinary measures to actively look for jobs, develop their skills and competences and be more flexible with respect to the kinds of jobs they are willing to accept (Dingeldey, 2007; Bonoli, 2013; Ingold and Stuart, 2015; Bredgaard, 2018).

Similarly, activation researchers have mainly focused on the supply side. Scholars have been preoccupied with classifying and categorizing different types of (supply-side) activation policies, such as workfare versus enabling regimes (Dingeldey, 2007); labour market attachment versus human capital approaches (Lødemel and Trickey, 2000); and liberal versus universal types (Barbier and Ludwig-Mayerhofer, 2004).

Introduction

For many years the labour market model in the UK was bound up with a predominant concern with job quantity, but with considerably less attention to job quality (Lauder, 1999). Recently however, there has been a shift in policymaking towards a greater concern with the idea of ‘good work’. In active labour market policy (ALMP) the shift is most readily seen in a growing interest in labour market progression, and a process of policy searching for how employment services might support greater labour market mobility.

Within this context, this chapter explores ALMP approaches and practice in the UK alongside a wider national discourse about increasing good work. The chapter evaluates the extent to which ALMP is a weak link in seeking progress towards good work: firstly, as a result of the historically embedded nature of the employer engagement function within particular types of networks of employers with basic labour demand needs; and secondly how this has been supported by a work-first system in which jobseekers are encouraged, and can be mandated, to accept available opportunities. The argument is made that within this system there is only limited scope for public employment services to engage with a good work agenda, or to exert upward institutional pressure on job quality. However, the current context of labour and skills shortages offers ALMP an opportunity to capitalize on some upward pressures on job quality.

The chapter is structured as follows. The labour market context in the UK is described initially, followed by an appraisal of recent developments around the good work agenda and a discussion of the labour market trends which frame current opportunities. The following sections then provide a discussion of the evolution of ALMP in the UK, and the role of employer engagement within ALMP set against a changing policy context: but one in which work-first remains largely embedded. The final section provides a discussion of what this evidence suggests about the relationship between ALMP and job quality.

Context

Historically, the focus of employment policy in the UK has been on reducing unemployment. Hence, the quantity of jobs available has been a primary concern.

Premiering at Perth Festival in 2020, Hecate is the first stage adaptation of Shakespearean work, in this case Macbeth, to be performed entirely in one Aboriginal language from Australia, specifically the Noongar language from Western Australia’s southwest. Australia is home to hundreds of Aboriginal languages, most of which are endangered due to settler-colonial suppression of Aboriginal culture. Today, although there are over 30,000 Noongar people, the Noongar language is rarely heard spoken in full sentences. More than being a significant artistic achievement, presenting Shakespeare in Noongar has provided a rare opportunity for Noongar and other people to actively engage with the Noongar language in deep and lasting ways. As a nation with a noted cultural cringe, Australia places high cultural value on Shakespeare. The opportunity to develop Hecate as a Noongar-language work arose because engaging with the English literary tradition – and particularly Shakespeare – attracted the necessary government and philanthropic support, media attention and audience interest. In Hecate, Shakespeare’s venerated status has been subversively used as a chink in the settler-colonial armour through which Noongar cultural activism, and deeper ‘felt’ intercultural understanding has been achieved via various collaborative processes, most importantly in developing a Noongar language-speaking ensemble of Noongar actors.

Shakespeare education is being reimagined around the world. This book delves into the important role of collaborative projects in this extraordinary transformation. Over twenty innovative Shakespeare partnerships from the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East, Europe and South America are critically explored by their leaders and participants. Structured into thematic sections covering engagement with schools, universities, the public, the digital and performance, this book offers vivid insights into what it means to teach, learn and experience Shakespeare in collaboration with others. Diversity, equality, identity, incarceration, disability, community and culture are key factors in these initiatives, which together reveal how complex and humane Shakespeare education can be. Whether you are interested in practice or theory, this collection showcases an abundance of rich, inspiring and informative perspectives on Shakespeare education in our contemporary world.

This chapter describes an innovative collaborative teaching model developed by colleagues Paul Prescott (Warwick), Fiona Gregory (Monash) and Gabriel García Ochoa (Monash) using what is known as ‘the international portal space’, a state-of-the-art teleconferencing system developed by the University of Warwick, England and Monash University, Australia. This technology is fundamentally different to platforms such as Zoom and Microsoft Teams, the use of which became widespread during the COVID-19 global pandemic of 2020. Unlike Zoom, portal pedagogy is predicated on in-person learning that it combines with digital technology to allow students from different institutions to work together in real time (in our case, early morning in the United Kingdom and evening in Australia) and in real spaces on a shared syllabus. In the unit ‘Local and Global Shakespeares’, offered in 2016 and 2017, students on opposite sides of the globe were able to engage with Shakespeare, building their own and a shared knowledge of Shakespearean performance in local and global frameworks. Working alongside students from a different cultural context also forced students to reconsider their understanding of the ‘natural’ and ‘given’ in relation to Shakespeare, and thus, in relation to their understanding of culture more broadly. This chapter examines the application of portal pedagogy and other strategies that we employed to show how this unit sought to reimagine the possibilities of internationally collaborative Shakespearean teaching and learning.