There is no incentive for finding job seekers full-time work. In fact, incentives fall the other way. The entire employment industry is rewarded for splitting full-time positions into part-time positions.
This is how it works:
- A full-time job becomes available
- As an employment service provider I have a choice: offer the one job to one job seeker or split the job into two, three, four or five part-time jobs, depending on what I can get away with.
Here’s the rub …
Having complained about the perverse incentive arrangement for Disability Employment Services (DES) in the past, I feel the need to explain the numbers behind the complaint.
Bear with me. It’s complicated and unbelievably silly.
Problem 1:
DES providers are not necessarily rewarded for finding full-time work, no matter how capable the job candidate. We’re rewarded according to the number of jobs found. This creates the next problem.
Farming out the care of our own to others doesn’t work.
Why would we think it could?
When governments award contracts to for-profit providers from overseas, who is the main stakeholder in the deal?
I’m sick of conservatives in power basing their treatment of job seekers at least in part on the idea that ‘these people are malingerers’.
Surely this is the reason for the latest contract providing more of a stick than a carrot with demerit points lost for ‘misdemeanours’, such as missing appointments.