Member Article

Employment scheme brings jobs joy to Blyth

An employment partnership between Work Programme provider Ingeus and a Blyth company has led to eleven people from the region getting jobs, and the two organisations are hopeful more unemployed people will follow in their footsteps.

The eleven, who range in age from 19 to 39, have recently joined document scanning and archive storage specialists Cleardata, based on the Riverside Business Park. They owe their success to the employment support they have received from Ingeus and the determination of Cleardata to ensure that local people are offered real job opportunities.

Cleardata is a fast growing UK business whose services are in high demand. The company focuses on helping businesses to reduce costs and go paperless through a range of digital document management and clever software solutions such as scanning, digital mailroom, automated invoice processing and scan-on-demand archiving.

“We have a need for keen, enthusiastic people who can show initiative and make a real difference to our business,” said bureau manager Andrew Rumney. “Working with Ingeus, we have been able to tap into a source of work-ready jobseekers, and all our new recruits have fulfilled that brief very well. The recruits work alongside an experienced team of staff, which provides support and guidance to ensure training needs are met and quality, security and compliance standards are adhered to.”

Two members of the new team are Joanne Dixon, 39, from Bedlington, and 20-year-old Daniel McLaughlin from Cowpen.

Joanne has spent the past two years without a job, and she readily admits the implications on her and her family have been considerable. “Of course, not being able to earn a wage and claiming benefits left a big hole in my finances, but the impact of being unemployed was greater than that. I lost my self-esteem, sense of worth and confidence, and felt as thought I had no value.”

Joanne, who now prepares data and ensures it is ready for scanning, estimates she applied for almost 2,000 jobs whilst unemployed and she became increasingly frustrated at her lack of success. “However, Ingeus helped me understand some of the reasons why I was not progressing, and showed me how to look for jobs that would make best use of my skills. As well as this, they helped me write a CV that employers would take notice of, and taught me how to respond in interviews. This all helped me rebuild my confidence, as I felt I was getting somewhere at last.”

For Daniel, his role as a warehouseman at Cleardata’s secure document storage facility is the first permanent job he’s had since leaving school. “I believe I am very fortunate - my colleagues take the time to show me what I need to know, and they encourage me all the way. I know I had, and still have, a lot to learn in life. However, I now have some structure to my days and a real purpose. It’s driving me on to do my best, for my employer, for my family and for myself.”

Deborah Mahoney from Ingeus works alongside employers in the North East, such as Cleardata, to understand their recruitment needs and ensure the people she shortlists for their jobs are suitable for the variety of roles they offer.

“The Work Programme is a real aid to employers. Free of charge, we provide a range of services - from CV-sifting to hosting full recruitment days, and then we continue to support new employees for up to two years once they start their new jobs,” she said. “Our aim is to help employers increase staff retention, and it means that more and more people from the North East are getting back into work.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ingeus .