Background:

A4e was a major provider in the Welfare-to-Work industry, providing government tendered contracts on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions.  In 2011, the new coalition government terminated a number of legacy welfare contracts and replaced them with a single new UK Work Programme contract.  Adam Davey led the People Workstream for the implementation of this new contract, which required the closure of 5 nationwide legacy contracts and set-up of 5 Prime and 5 Sub-Prime new contracts affecting approximately 1,500 employees and with a Total Contract Value of c£700m.

As the strategic lead for the People Workstream, reporting directly to the company’s Management and Programme Boards, responsibilities included the bidding, transitioning and implementation of the Work Programme contracts, leading a team of 20 HR and associated professionals.  Adam’s responsibility was to determine the approach that would ultimately achieve A4e’s objectives of timely operational go-live, with minimal risk and an engaged workforce, all with the employer brand in tact.  In addition to this, A4e had contractual performance obligations to meet from day 1 of the new contract meaning that the all offices had to be fully operational with employees in place, equipped to deliver a brand new service provision.

Some of the challenges faced during this complex transition were:

• The management of internal and external stakeholders.
• A highly complex large scale TUPE transfers across 65 different providers, with some legacy contracts ending after the new contracts had commenced.
• Large scale collective redundancies and individually negotiated exits.
• Internal and external assessment centres, both bulk and individual, to recruit into leadership and frontline roles.
• The creation of brand new roles and organisation structure.
• The creation of a new frontline incentive scheme.
• Compliance with the Fair Deal for Pensions provisions.

Detailed Facts & Figures:</h4

• TUPE-in to A4e of 385.
• TUPE-out of A4e of 340.
• Started with an overall TUPE List (in the areas where A4e had won Work Programme contracts) of 2000+.
• TUPE’d in and out between 65 different providers.
• Facilitated the TUPE transfer of 306 employees into A4e’s supply chain partners.
• Ran 2 separate collective redundancy consultation processes:
  • One with staff working on the NDDP (New Deal for Disabled People) and Pathways contracts – this was being run given the uncertainty surrounding the ending of these contracts; the rest of the industry making their staff redundant and uncertainty in A4e that we would be able to successfully TUPE staff out in areas where they didn’t win WP contracts.
  • One with Flexible New Deal and New Deal staff – this was being run given the fact that A4e had more people than roles.
• 220 employees made redundant.
• 150 people exited through individually negotiated agreements (in the main, where we had been unable to enact TUPE-out due to issues in the wider industry).
• We took 250+ people through assessment for A4e Leadership roles.
• We took over 2,000 people through assessment for A4e frontline roles.
• We managed 108 ER cases from end-to-end (grievances and redundancy dismissal appeals).
• At the same time, we had to close down ESF funded contracts where the contracts came to a natural end with no continued service provision, which resulted in additional redundancies.  We also had to manage a similar exercise with the CTF (Community Task Force) contracts which it had been determined would not ‘TUPE over’ to the new MWA (Mandatory Work Activity) contracts.

All of the above was delivered in the period 1^st April – 31^st October 2011.

Results:

Not only was the go-live achieved on time (tender results announced on 1^st April; contract go-live between 1^st May and 1^st September) but also all contractual obligations were met.  The transition was delivered under budget and risks were mitigated effectively.  This was recognised externally (including by the CBI) as one of the most complex contract set-up scenarios encountered and the successful completion of the project was recognised by the company as a huge success.