Employability and making work accessible for all

The UK’s employability challenge is urgent, complex and deeply human. 

As Government programmes such as Future Employment Support (FES) take shape, there is an opportunity to bring together the strengths of local delivery partners, employers, and technology to help more people move into good, sustained work. Sopra Steria is keen to play its part in strengthening the sector and deliver employability outcomes for FES. We want to speak to local delivery partners about what we might be able to achieve together. 

 

The economic inactivity challenge

The UK labour market is becoming more complex and more polarised.

 Delivery partners work hard: supporting people with complex barriers, navigating fragmented services, and building trusted relationships in local communities. Nevertheless, even the strongest frontline delivery can be held back when insight, data, and referral pathways are not connected. 

Rethinking employability for a more complex labour market

Employability is no longer only about moving people from unemployment into vacancies. It is about understanding capability, confidence, health, local labour market opportunity and employer demand in a more joined-up way. The challenge is not simply a lack of talent; it is that talent is often hard to identify, hard to support holistically, and hard to connect to the right opportunity at the right time.

This calls for a different approach: one that gives delivery partners, employers and commissioners better visibility of needs, barriers and opportunities, while protecting the space for specialist, personalised support. 

Intelligent matching at the core

Leveraging our experience filling thousands of jobs in our Resourcing business we know that data and insight can help make skills, barriers and opportunities more visible across the employment support ecosystem. Used carefully, this can strengthen decision-making, improve targeting and help focus support where it is most likely to make a sustained difference.

 

 

Built for FES, delivered with partners

Future Employment Support (FES) will succeed through partnership. Sopra Steria brings technology, data and large-scale resourcing experience for government; but local expertise, trusted relationships and specialist support will be critical to delivery.

We want to work with partners to shape approaches that are locally grounded, practical and focused on sustained outcomes, with detailed design developed collaboratively and discussed directly where appropriate. 

Already shaping the agenda: Keep Britain Working

We’re already helping to shape national policy. Sopra Steria has been chosen by the DWP as a vanguard organisation for Keep Britain Working, the independent review into the role employers play in tackling health-related economic inactivity and helping people stay in work.

As a vanguard, we’re contributing our expertise to the development of a new ‘healthy working lifecycle’ standard. We were chosen for this on the strength of credentials that count in this field: our status as a Disability Confident Leader (Level 3), our proactive employee disability network, active membership of the Business Disability Forum and our large-scale resourcing experience, which includes the National CIPD Award-winning Work Coach recruitment programme.

We sit on the disability taskforce, helping shape policy at a national level. So, when we talk about connecting people to work, we do so as an organisation already helping to write the standards others will follow.

The value is practical; better visibility of skills, barriers, employer demand and progression pathways; stronger evidence to support decision-making; and more time to focus on personalised, human support. Helping partners extend their impact, not dilute their role.

The opportunity to improve employability outcomes by creating a more joined-up view of people, skills, barriers, training needs and labour market demand. For delivery partners, that means clearer routes into commissioning conversations, stronger alignment with local priorities, and better evidence of the outcomes they help achieve. 

AI and data are already reshaping how organisations recruit and operate, but the priority for employability should be thoughtful system design rather than technology for its own sake. 

A more connected employability ecosystem: one where people’s potential is easier to understand, and sustained work becomes the measure of success.

Our thinking

| Fiona Christie

From consultation to change: one year on from the consultation response to ‘Pathways to Work’
The UK’s employability system enters its next phase of reform at a moment of both continuity and change. 

| Nikki Hayford

Looking beyond the obvious to maximise potential
If we are serious about addressing unemployment at scale, we need to do more than bring employers and jobseekers closer together.

| Nick Heckscher

Optimising the workforce strategy for smarter hiring
The UK has an unemployment challenge and despite sustained intervention, we are not materially shifting the dial. 
Response to DWP’s Pathways to Work: Reforming Benefits and Support to Get Britain Working
This document sets out the response of Sopra Steria to the Pathways to Work open consultation  on reforming the welfare system to support and encourage a thriving and inclusive labour market.
Read the submission

What is Future Employment Support (FES)?

FES is the DWP’s framework, part of the Get Britain Working agenda, to reduce economic inactivity and help unemployed jobseekers into sustained employment. It is co-designed locally with Combined Authorities rather than run as a single national programme.

 

What does Sopra Steria provide?

Technology, data and large-scale resourcing experience to support employment programmes in partnership with specialist frontline providers. Our role helps create the conditions for partners to deliver effectively at scale, with the detailed model shaped collaboratively as Future Employment Support develops.

What large-scale recruitment has Sopra Steria delivered for government?

Among other government recruitment campaigns, we provided the technology and recruitment capability behind the hiring of 13,500 DWP work coaches.

How does this relate to Get Britain Working and the Jobs and Careers Service?

FES is a core delivery pillar of Get Britain Working and is designed to align with the government’s overhauled Jobs and Careers Service.

Is Sopra Steria involved in shaping national employment policy?

Yes. Sopra Steria is a DWP-selected vanguard organisation for the Keep Britain Working review and sits on its disability taskforce, contributing to a new ‘healthy working lifecycle’ standard for keeping people with health conditions and disabilities in work.

Talk to us about partnering on FES

We’re building partnerships for Future Employment Support. If you’re a delivery organisation, specialist provider or local partner with proven employability expertise, we’d welcome a conversation about collaborating. 

Nick Heckscher
Nick Heckscher
Chief Experience Officer, Resourcing and Skills
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Fiona Christie
Fiona Christie
Market Engagement Director
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