Employment & Skills
Looking for Employment, Skills or Training?
If you are looking for local employment then click here for contact details for the Corridor partners and further information on three employment initiatives, Aspire; Pathfinder and Future Jobs Fund. You will also find information about an exciting new project that may help you, The Works Manchester.
About the Employment & Skills Project
The Corridor is an area of high economic activity that provides for a GVA per employee in excess of £500,000, with a wealth of knowledge-based businesses and institutions on its doorstep. Perhaps it is surprising to learn that the Corridor also includes some of the most economically disadvantaged areas within the city. Ardwick, Hulme, Longsight, Moss Side and Rusholme are part of, or border with the Corridor and yet they are represented by high-levels of worklessness, unemployment and incapacity benefit.
According to the 2007 Index of Multiple Deprivation, over half of central Manchester’s Lower Super Output Areas are in the worst 5% of deprived neighbourhoods nationally, with 30% being in the 1% most deprived category. Altogether out-of-work benefit claimants make up 22.2% (May 2010) of the working age population in central Manchester. This is higher than any other area in the city and higher than the Manchester average of 18.0%. The highest numbers are in Moss Side (32.6%), Hulme (26.5%) and Ardwick (22.5%).
With diverse employment opportunities possible within the Corridor, the partnership wished to engage in a series of collaborative ventures with local communities to address issues of worklessness and the resultant disadvantages. The Corridor Manchester Employment & Skills Action Plan provided the catalyst to several initiatives that have resulted in circa 700 local people being supported into employment in the past two years. The work that has been undertaken via the programme has also attracted national interest as a model of good practice.
Corridor Manchester wants to ensure that the growth of the knowledge economy brings benefits to all. As such, we work with key employers and stakeholders to develop job, skills and training strategies that engage local unemployed people. If you would like to find out more about this important work, contact Steve Grant, assistant HR director at The University of Manchester on 0161 306 2040.
Many of the people helped by the work that Steve and his extended team have undertaken have very moving stories to tell. You can learn more about these people and their stories by downloading a copy of the Corridor Employment & Skills brochure, click here
To hear how the Corridor’s work earned Steve Grant an invitation to Clarence House click here
The Works Manchester
A previously under-utilised local housing office has been converted into a vibrant, employer-led skills centre called The Works Manchester – via a partnership between Corridor Manchester, City South Manchester Housing Trust, Work Solutions, Next Steps, Manchester Credit Union and Standguide, the welfare to work agency. The Works Manchester serves local people from its base in the heart of the Moss Side and Hulme communities.
The centre is a means of engaging workless people, raising aspiration and skills levels and delivering pre and post recruitment training to meet the skills needs of employers. The Works engage with a variety of public and private sector employers, in addition to the Corridor partners, so that route-ways into sustained employment become a realistic prospect in sectors such as retail and hospitality and with local employers such as the Royal Mail. As a skills centre, The Works take a holistic view of the Corridor, seeking to maximise local employment opportunities from investments being made within the Corridor. Developments such as Manchester Metropolitan Universities’ Birley Fields Campus will create the opportunity to deliver, in partnership with the appointed contractors, construction jobs and apprenticeships.
The centre creates an environment where employers can work alongside training providers to deliver pre-employment programmes, use the centre as a focus for some of their recruitment activity, and as a vehicle for engagement with people distant from the labour market. Several local employment and training providers will have a base at The Works that will enable them to interact with local employers and residents.
Only open since March 2011, The Works has already seen success; attracting local residents through the doors and helping them along the employment path.
You can visit The Works Manchester website by clicking here