Employing initiative

Redcliffe Catering in Birmingham has a heartwarming "thank you" letter for giving a recruit the chance to train as a breakfast chef. The man, in his forties, had previously been out of work for more than five years.

In the letter the chef says: "I was taken off the scrap heap, cleaned up, had my rough corners smoothed, and then was highly trained to a standard I have yet to see equalled. You gave me the opportunity to broaden my horizons and gave me back my self-respect. You enabled me to prove to myself that I can work like anyone else - that I could still fit into society after being in the wilderness for five years."

He adds: "Confidence and self-respect soon disappear when you are out of work. Had anyone told me 18 months ago I would be a breakfast chef I would have laughed at them."

Clive Stone, founder and managing director of Redcliffe Catering, says: "We nearly cried when we got the letter. A copy is framed and on the wall in our office."

The company aims to do its bit to reduce unemployment. Its target is to recruit at least 10% of its 200 full-time and part-time staff from the dole queue. Many of this 10% are long-term unemployed. Stone is frank in admitting that these people often have trouble adjusting to working life - and that many cannot.

When the company was planning the opening of its conference and banqueting facility, the Centennial Centre, five years ago, it advertised for unemployed recruits. It had 200 applicants and offered Government-funded training and work experience to 84 of them. Of those, only 24 stayed on the scheme to complete their City & Guilds exams, and only 22 were then given full-time posts.

"The management had to battle against a lack of a work ethos and scepticism. Sometimes carrots have to be dangled and sometimes there needs to be strong discipline," says Stone.

Problems include late arrival at work - sometimes not just hours, but days late. "Timekeeping has been appalling - absolutely horrifying in fact," says Stone. Another problem might be having to relearn how to take orders from a boss.

"You have to be very, very patient," says Stone. "You have to sit down with the worker and find out what is going on. Unemployed people have often been hurt and told that because they are unemployed they are unemployable. It takes a lot to break that attitude."

Marketing director at the Hotel and Catering Training Company (HCTC) Mike Fellowes adds that long-term unemployed people may have hidden problems that have contributed to their unemployment, such as drugs or homelessness. "All these issues have to be dealt with," he says.

So why bother with this group of people? Redcliffe - which also runs the conference and banqueting centre at the Birmingham Botanical Gardens, and a franchise of Harry Ramsden's, the fish and chip restaurant - has found that its perseverance has brought rewards. As well as gratitude, the management also reports some real success stories - four of its 10 supervisors used to be unemployed. Stone comments: "We are perceived by our staff to be a caring employer, which helps reduce our turnover."

Harry Ramsden's aims to recruit one in five of its workers from the ranks of the long-term unemployed. Personnel development manager Jill Hillard says that in some areas the company does not have to make an effort to achieve this. In the Gateshead restaurant it was "automatic" because of the area's high unemployment.

She also warns that it is important to be gentle with unemployed recruits. "It is sometimes easy to lose sight of the fact they have not held a job for maybe several years. You have to accept they may be difficult initially."

Lewis Butler, bar manager at Beefeater's Wightgate Inn in Manchester, was recruited after 18 months on the dole. Beefeater has a policy of carefully considering unemployed job applicants.

Butler had moved down from Newcastle in search of work but had no initial luck. "I was fed up before I joined," he says. His self-confidence was low, he adds, and he was living in a freezing cold house, infested with mice.

Although desperate for work, he stresses that it would have been hard to take a very low-paid job. "When you are unemployed you get your rent and community charge paid for you. If you leave that to take a low-paid job you can easily get into financial difficulties."

Butler, who has now passed a course with the British Institute of Innkeepers, proclaims: "I am definitely on a career ladder now. Everything has gone my way." He has moved house, too.

Paul Lucken, operations manager at Devon and Cornwall Training and Enterprise Council, says there should be more employers like Redcliffe, Harry Ramsden's and Beefeater: "Employers often have an in-built resistance to looking at the long-term unemployed but many people have been out of work for a long time through no fault of their own. Although they may take a while to come up to speed, they should be given a chance."

A scheme proposed at the Conservative party conference by social security secretary Peter Lilley is for cash bonuses of up to £1,000 to be given to the unemployed in reward for them taking part-time work - fewer than 16 hours a week. The money would only be handed out once a part-time job had become full-time.

"This would be an excellent deal for the economy as it gets more people back to work," Lilley declared.

Many long-term unemployed people reach employers through the Government scheme Training for Work, which offers placements and free training to people out of work for more than six months. It is administered by Training and Enterprise Councils and much of the training is run by the HCTC.

The Government also offers the long-term unemployed a scheme called Employment on Trial. This means people can take a job and if they do not like it within 12 weeks they can leave - without losing their right to benefits.

But during the past 18 months there have been widespread rumours that the Government is considering a less sympathetic scheme known as Workfare. This simply, means long-term unemployed are made to work for their benefits.

The scheme forces long-term unemployed to do jobs, for little or no pay, that are otherwise hard to fill. If they do not, their benefits will be cut. New Department of Employment's statistics show that 11% of employers now have jobs that are hard to fill compared with 6% last year (Skills Needs In Britain). Catering tasks such as kitchen portering have often been cited as typical examples of hard-to-fill jobs because they are underpaid and involve unsociable hours.

There are potentially big pitfalls with the idea of Workfare. Apart from the obvious cry that it is exploitative, unscrupulous employers may use Workfare labour to replace permanent paid jobs.

However, a trial Workfare-style scheme has been operating in Norfolk for the past year, on a voluntary basis. The scheme has offered placements in the voluntary and public sector, for an extra £10 a week. The long-term unemployed have also been offered interviews with trained counsellors to solve problems that are stopping them getting back to work.

Experience in the catering sector indicates that these problems are far from insuperable.