Benefits system deters the young from trying to find job, says M&S boss

 
Concerned: Tanith Dodge addressed the Lords on youth unemployment
19 December 2013

Britain's welfare system is acting like “treacle” by hampering young people’s attempts to get a job and reject a life on benefits, a Marks & Spencer chief warned today.

Human resources director Tanith Dodge also stressed that some young people brought up in jobless families are being deterred from taking up apprenticeships because it would mean cutting the benefits “umbilical cord”.

She said the retail giant was increasingly finding unemployed youngsters joining its Make Your Mark scheme are from families jobless for generations. “They live in a community where when they go back at the end of the day it is frowned upon,” Ms Dodge told a Lords inquiry into youth unemployment.

“When we talk to some of these young people, their biggest barriers are the first few weeks when they go back to an environment where nobody works.”

The company set up “communities” of young recruits to its stores so they can talk to each other about their experience and don’t feel “ostracised or alienated” when they go home.

Giving evidence to the Lord committee, she also highlighted the difficulties faced by young people in the wider economy in turning their back on benefits to move towards a job.

“If they have grown up in a family where everybody is on benefits and they are given the opportunity for work experience, they do not know if it is going to work out,” she said.

“They have to come off benefits and that is a deterrent for some young people as they do not want to cut the umbilical cord.”

She added that the Government’s flagship universal credit reforms, to simplify benefits and ensure work pays, would help to encourage youngsters into jobs — partly by cutting red tape, which has hampered people moving between welfare and work.

“But I think there will still be quite a lot of treacle there,” she added.

Make Your Mark is a training and job placement programme for candidates aged 16-25, designed to address the skills and experience gap that prevents young people from finding work.

Jez Langhorn, senior vice-president for people at McDonald’s, told the committee that companies should help workers gain academic qualifications, such as in maths and English, if those people wished to pursue that route.

“An 18 year-old is very different from a 16 year-old,” he said. “Gaining that qualification not only boosts their skills but their confidence.

“That is very important for young people. In many situations, that en- ables them then to get back into traditional academic routes as well.”

Terry Morgan, chairman of Crossrail, urged Britain to develop a German-style attitude towards apprenticeships, where some companies offer hundreds of them.

All three of the firms giving evidence said about four out of five people whom they hire are UK nationals.

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