Australian unemployed workers’ experiences of being parked and creamed by employment providers

Abstract

This research examines the experiences of unemployed workers who report they have been parked or creamed by their employment services provider. Using focus group methodology, the research findings suggest that the experiences of being parked or creamed do not simply reflect quantitative metrics such as appointment frequency, and are experienced primarily as reflections of the quality of the transactions that occur in appointments. The findings suggest that parking and creaming are pervasive with harmful consequences for unemployed workers. Parking, on the one hand, appears to exacerbate the scarring effect of unemployment. Creaming, on the other hand, is not experienced as a benefit because rapid placement into employment is likely to be directed toward underemployment or precarious employment rather than sustainable employment. A second type of creaming is also described, where providers seek to take credit, sometimes coercively, for unemployed workers finding their own jobs. The findings also suggest that the Department of Employment's actions to date to curb the practices have not been successful and could be improved if unemployed workers were more clearly recognised as having a stake in the provision of high-quality employment services and given suitable mechanisms to identify and select providers that will not park or cream them.

Australia’s Disability Employment Services Program: Participant Perspectives on Factors Influencing Access to Work

“…This proposed program change requires more analysis of how this may influence employment outcomes, with research demonstrating job-seekers with disabilities feel less well-supported within the mainstream employment program [ 24 , 46 ]. More broadly, the even more stringent mutual obligations placed on mainstream employment participants have been found to undermine the well-being and confidence of participants to actively engage in the program and labour market [ 29 , 39 ]. While this proposed policy change may lead to desired cost-savings for the DES program, it is likely that these savings will be shifted to the mainstream employment program and potentially onto to other systems such as health because of the unintended consequences of participants having to work with providers less skilled in working with people with disability.…”

“…This may indicate that these participants were not only more ‘job-ready’ but received correspondingly better services and supports from their DES provider. Again, this highlights that more needs to be done to understand how DES funding models may influence provider behaviour and risk selection (i.e., ‘creaming and parking’ less easy to place job seekers) [ 28 , 29 ]. Indeed, the recommended tightening of eligibility for the DES program that may exclude volunteer participants that have somehow been deemed less able to ‘succeed’ in DES could be seen as a systems-level form of ‘creaming’.…”

“…The 2018 reforms were also intended to correct incentives within the funding model that contributed to unintended risk selection behaviour, commonly referred to as ‘creaming and parking’: whereby providers focus attention on easier to place participants in order to maximise financial returns, while providing minimal service to others perceived to be less likely to achieve employment outcomes [ 28 , 29 ]. To address this, the 2018 reforms introduced a new ‘risk-adjusted funding model’, weighting funding on ‘complexity’ of clients and away from servicing and towards educational and sustained employment outcomes achieved.…”

Towards digital dole parole: A review of digital self‐service initiatives in Australian employment services

“…To that end, there have been successive reviews and subsequent changes to the contract conditions for employment services programmes, such as those that accompanied the transition from the original Job Network to the Job Services Australia model, and more recently to the jobactive model. Yet, these have not resulted in the elimination of unintended practices like “creaming” the most job‐ready candidates and neglecting the least job‐ready candidates who are “parked” (Considine, et al, 2011, 2019; O’Halloran, et al, 2020).…”

Introduction to the Special Issue on Big Data and Social Policy in Australia

“…All of these topics have been the focus of research published in the AJSI in recent years (e.g. Adams et al, 2020; Chesters, 2018; Christensen et al, 2021; Huang et al, 2016; Jarvis et al, 2018; Marks & Phillips, 2020; McDonald et al, 2019; O'Halloran et al, 2020; Perry et al, 2019; Peterie et al, 2020; Wilson et al, 2021; Zhou et al, 2019).…”