What does “employable” really mean -and who gets to decide?
There’s a line in the recent research on UK employability programmes that quietly stopped me in my tracks:
"Less than 1% move off the benefit each month."
That’s not a statistic. It’s a sentence full of stuckness. Of people waiting, looping, being told to try harder with a system that was never designed for them to succeed.
It’s easy to write about employability in abstract terms - programmes, ROI, labour market participation. But when you strip back the jargon, what you’re left with is a deep and recurring tension: between people trying to survive, and systems trying to optimise.
And we need to talk about it.
We say “support”, they experience surveillance
The phrase “person-centred” appears throughout the documentation - particularly in Scotland’s “No One Left Behind” strategy. And in theory, it’s promising. Flexible, localised, integrated support. Acknowledgement of barriers beyond the CV. A commitment to equity.
But here’s the trouble. A person-centred system can’t just be about intent. It has to be about design. And when programme structures are built around compliance, conditionality (having to meet strict rules to keep receiving support), and incentives that reward the easy wins, that “support” begins to feel a lot like surveillance.
Participants in these schemes speak of being bounced between work coaches, given one-size-fits-all advice, punished for not applying to the ‘right’ jobs, and offered placements that neither reflect their potential nor address their real barriers. The system says, “We’re here to help.” But the experience often says, “Prove you deserve it.”
What do we really mean by ‘employable’?
Underneath all this is a question we don’t ask often enough: what counts as being “employable” - and who gets to decide?
The official definitions are full of talk about “capability”, “skills”, and “adaptability”. But it’s striking how often that capability is framed as an individual deficit to be corrected. Fix your mindset. Improve your CV. Say the right things in the interview.
The wider conditions - the local job market, your housing insecurity, caring responsibilities, health, racism, class bias - those are side notes, if they’re acknowledged at all.
This is where public perception hits hard. That visceral phrase from the research - “pointless, lazy, bureaucratic, cash syphoning con” ..... doesn’t come out of nowhere. It comes from years of watching schemes that promise dignity on paper, but feel hollow in practice. From frontline workers spending more time on reporting systems than relationships. From funding cycles that measure outputs, not outcomes.
And crucially, from the growing sense that these programmes are more about managing the unemployed than investing in people’s lives.
It’s not that people don’t want to work. It’s that they want it to matter.
This is the other lie we’ve swallowed: that people are “work-shy” and need to be nudged into productivity.
What the data actually shows is that many of those furthest from the labour market want to work. But not at any cost. They want work that is stable, safe, and meaningful. That doesn't grind them down or contradict their values. They want to contribute, yes - but also to be well.
And when employability support centres short-term job entry over long-term development, it actively undermines that desire. The “revolving door” phenomenon - where people are pushed into insecure jobs they quickly leave - isn’t a failure of effort. It’s a failure of imagination.
So what would a truly human system look like?
This isn’t just about better policy. It’s about shifting the lens altogether.
A truly human employability system would start with listening. Deep, relational, non-transactional listening. It would build trust over time, recognising that confidence, wellbeing, and agency don’t come from mandatory workshops or tick-box interventions.
It would be designed with - not just for — those it seeks to support. It would prioritise consistency in support relationships. It would invest in frontline staff not as administrators, but as coaches, connectors, and companions.
And crucially, it would stop seeing employment as the only meaningful outcome. Sometimes, dignity looks like rest. Or care. Or education. Or contribution in non-market forms. If we really believe in people’s worth, we need to stop measuring it only in payslips.
What now? What next?
If you’re a policymaker, a funder, or a provider, the question isn’t “How can we get better outcomes?” It’s “Whose outcomes are we really serving?”
And here’s a thought - maybe it’s time we stopped measuring outcomes altogether. Outcomes are neat. Predictable. Easily graphed. But real change rarely unfolds that way. Progress tends to look more like messy, hard-won milestones - someone showing up for the third appointment when they nearly bailed on the first. A flicker of confidence. The moment someone says, “I never thought I could do that.”
That’s where the shift happens. Not in numbers, but in moments.
And if we’re serious about supporting transformation, we also need to make room for something systems aren’t very good at: creativity. Not just in art or enterprise, but in how we solve problems, build relationships, imagine futures. Whether it’s a support worker helping someone build a path no policy foresaw, or a community centre turning shared meals into micro-internships - creativity gets things moving when the system stalls.
So let’s stop trying to force human growth into performance metrics. Let’s notice, honour, and invest in the milestones instead.
Call to Reflect
Here are a few questions to sit with, or use in your work:
What assumptions do I hold about “employability”? Where did they come from?
How much of my organisation’s time is spent on relational work, and how much on proving it?
What would change if we valued care, healing, and learning as much as economic activity?
What might a “person-centred” system look like if it were co-designed from the ground up?
If I had to build an employability programme from scratch, what would I leave out entirely?
#HumanFirstWork
#SocialSystemsDesign
#DignityOverData
#EmploymentWithPurpose
#ValuesLedLeadership
Clackmannanshire Economic Regeneration Trust #CERT #Clackmannanshire #employability #nooneleftbehind
