Laurie Russell - Wise Group

ePolitix.com speaks to Laurie Russell, chief executive of the Wise Group about supporting unemployed people into work

Question: Can you tell me about the work of the Wise Group?

Laurie Russell: The Wise Group is a social enterprise that focuses on getting the people outside the labour market into work through a variety of projects. We manage government employability programmes such as the New Deal and Employment Zone. We are the prime contractors for those (projects) in various regions in Scotland and the North-East of England.

This involvement in mainstream employment programmes also provides us with the income to then develop our own creative ideas aimed at getting people into work. For example, we have a project, Routes out of Prison, aimed at getting short-term ex-prisoners into employment and training and we have employer-led projects such as Working for Health, a project aimed at getting people into jobs in the health service.

The second area in which we work is again related to jobs: we carry out regeneration projects in communities doing construction and environmental work, employing unemployed people to carry out the work. So the participants get some training, work experience and support to find a permanent job in the labour market.

The third area in which we work is sustainable development. We deliver significant energy savings advice contracts, and are expanding our involvement in renewable energy and waste recycling.

So, there are three main areas of activity: employability, regeneration and sustainable development, with employment being the core of all three.

Question: The Wise Group’s 25th anniversary is in 2008. How will you be marking this and what have been some of the company’s highlights over the last 25 years.

Laurie Russell: In tracing back the history of the organisation, we have opened up social networking websites to try to make contact with people who have either worked for us over the years or have been clients or trainees with us so that we could look back on how somebody’s life has changed as a result of the programme they took part in or the contact, which they have had with us. That’s one thing.

Secondly, we are holding an awards dinner where we are presenting  awards for people that have been associated with the Wise Group over the years.

Thirdly, we are going to have a seminar programme with speakers talking about the issues that we are concerned with: employability, regeneration and sustainable development. We have calculated how many people we have got into work over the 25 years and it is just over 25,000.

We have found the person who is the 25,000th person that we have helped into work and we celebrated that on June 25 with Shona Robison the minister for public health.

As this is our 25th year we have been thinking about PR events we can run throughout the year to highlight our work. For a social enterprise to have lasted for 25 years and to increase and grow over that time is fairly unusual.  Very recently we were awarded the Scottish Charity of the Year Award as a result of our 25 years of work.

Question: What does the future hold the organisation? Do you have any plans for the next 25 years?

Laurie Russell: We have been rethinking our long-term strategy recently and we have prepared a strategic document that is being considered and finalised by our board of directors. That looks at how we can grow our three main activities: employability, regeneration and sustainable development.

We have scope for growth and have been reviewing the detail and targets attached to each of our activities. We have been looking at the way in which we work with other social enterprises and the private sector to increase the volume of work that we can access, and therefore, work with more clients and get more people into work.

We have quite ambitious aspirations for the next five years - to double the size of the organisation - and we have quite detailed plans about how we are going to do that.

There is a new investment fund for social enterprises, which has just been launched in Scotland and I hope that it will be a source of financial investment. To achieve what we want to achieve we need to further invest in our business systems, research and development and improve some of our properties.

It is dependent on investment because our employability work is market-led and contracts are awarded by competitive tendering. For example, a lot depends on how well we can fare in the next round of the DWP competitive tendering for the Flexible New Deal.

Question: You’re best known for the work you do supporting unemployed people into work, but you are also very active in community regeneration and sustainable development. What kind of activities do you deliver in these areas?

Laurie Russell: In community regeneration we develop relationships with housing associations and local authorities. We will carry out work for them using the local unemployed people.

For example, one of our partner housing associations has a seven-year ‘new build’ programme. We will be involved in different aspects of that programme from the beginning right to the end. At the beginning it will be demolishing the old houses, clearing the houses, and other work relating to that.

The main contractor will be required to work with us on those aspects of the contract where we can use semi-skilled and low-skilled trainees to support the work. Some of the work is likely to be construction; most of it will be ground works and landscaping.

We are also looking at providing some other employability services to that community as it redevelops. It is an existing community; the people will be decanted from their houses and then will move back in. 

This is an area with high levels of poverty and unemployment so we want to provide a holistic service to the families when they move back into a new house. We will look to help family members find jobs or get into training positions.

All areas of our work complement each other. For example, in sustainable development we are currently looking at how we can support smaller social enterprises in Glasgow which are involved in recycling.

We will be working with a range of organisations on furniture, IT equipment and white goods recycling in Glasgow.

Question: There have been a number of significant changes to Welfare to Work policy over recent years. How have these affected the Wise Group and the work you do?

Laurie Russell: The main effect has been the introduction of competitive tendering, which, I think, is an accepted way of managing contracts now. We have just had to adapt to that changing world, as well as the fact that the DWP’s new commissioning strategy is seeking to work with a smaller number of large-scale prime contractors across the UK.

That has been a little difficult for us as, essentially, we are a regional social enterprise. We work in Scotland and the North of England and we currently do not have an aspiration to cover the whole of the UK. 

If we look just at the regions in which we work, we would certainly be among the top providers. But if across the UK, we do not quite fit into the top 10 or 12, the number of prime contractors the DWP wants to work with.

This regional presence is something that I do not think the current commissioning strategy takes that into account. There are several other organisations like ours across the UK that might just want to work within a certain region or a number of regions in the UK. The DWP commissioning strategy does not really take the large-scale regional organisations into account.

We have been around for 25 years; we work with a network of other agencies and organisations. We know the clients, we know the issues, and we know the public and private organisation in the regions in which we work. We think that this ensures that we keep the quality of our service provision high.

But we are adapting. We have not made complaints about the new commissioning strategy or the way in which contracts are tendered. We comment when policies are out for consultation and feedback on the impacts of policies through the appropriate mechanisms, but once a decision is taken we have to adapt to that like every other organisation.

Probably, the biggest change for us in the last six months or so has been that we have entered into a very constructive dialogue with a number of larger scale private sector providers. We started thinking about that with a bit of trepidation but it turned out to be an extremely positive exercise. These links are developing very constructively and positively, and in a way which I do not think we would have predicted.

I think we have realised that what we have as a social enterprise, is something which can complement what other, private sector, providers can provide and they can complement what we do. If respect, understanding and trust are built up early on in the relationships then, hopefully, that will translate into good quality contracting arrangements at the end of the day.

Question: Does being a social enterprise differentiate you from other organisations working in your field?

Laurie Russell: It does and it doesn’t. It doesn’t in the sense that we have to meet the performance targets and deal with projects in the time scales set out in the contracts that we deliver. If it is a regeneration project we will do it in the same timescale and to the same standard as a private sector company. 

If it is an employability contract we will get at least the percentage of people into jobs we are expected to. In that sense, it does not make any difference that is the enterprise part of the social enterprise.

The social part that makes us different is about values, although any company can have social values. I think what differentiates us is that any surplus we make is reinvested in the organisation. It is not distributed to a group of shareholders or an individual owner. 

The surpluses are re-invested in helping us grow the company and in providing high quality, added value services, beyond the stipulations of our contracts, to our clients. This is the main difference.