European Guidance and Counselling Research Forum

What has been the impact of ICT on the delivery of IAG services?

As ICT becomes more sophisticated and accessible, so ever more aspects of our lives are affected. The provision of IAG services has not been exempt from this process. The client-practitioner relationship based upon the “traditional” face-to-face, one-to-one situation is increasingly being supplemented by telephone services or standardised web-based services. Although I`m sure there will continue to be a need for highly localised and personalised services, including those delivered by the community and voluntary sector, the bigger players like Jobcentre Plus and learndirect are able to exploit the market potential of ICT to deliver high profile, high volume services. Examples of these include the jobseekers` website and the recently launched e-telephone guidance service. These ICT-based developments recognise that not all clients will want to make an appointment for a full and in-depth guidance session, and that other, more abbreviated services need to be available at times and in ways convenient to the user. For example, Careers Scotland has made this recognition fully explicit by adopting a differentiated service delivery model to re-structure and shape their provision into “self-help”, “assisted” and “in-depth” services. The availability of a telephone help line and increasingly differentiated web-based services further strengthen this approach.

How effective are ICT-based services compared to other delivery methods?

We know that ICT-based solutions are an important way of extending both the range of IAG services on offer and their accessibility, but how effective and cost-effective are they? There is some research evidence, mostly from the USA , to indicate that although one-to-one guidance brought about the greatest gain for the individual client in the shortest amount of his/her time invested, computer-based and class-based interventions were more effective in providing the greatest gain for the greatest number of clients per unit of practitioner time. There is only minimal research evidence on the effectiveness and efficiency of career interventions by telephone and by e-mail , although interventions by telephone appear to be shorter than face-to-face interventions and together with queuing facilities, this is likely to mean that more efficient use is made of staff time.

What can we learn from the e-telephone guidance initiative recently launched by learndirect?

 learndirect`s e-telephone guidance initiative, and the associated major evaluation study, should yield some fascinating in-depth results both in terms of the effectiveness of the new service but also in terms of its unit costs relative to alternative provision. One could argue that there are a number of reasons why this initiative might be particularly effective. It uses technology that is arguably especially effective in targeting and reaching its clientele, ie telephone supported by television advertising and website. In addition, it is a national initiative drawing upon a huge resource and so economies of scale are likely to apply. For example, the cost of learndirect`s current national television advertising campaign is relative to the potentially huge market it supports, and its contractual arrangements for the delivery of its telephone services means it can take advantage of competitive call centre practices. Although we await the results of the evaluation of this learndirect initiative, I would be very interested to hear what colleagues think about any of these issues. In particular, I would be very interested to hear from learndirect colleagues about the progress to date of the new e-telephone guidance service, its prospects for the future and the extent to which unit-cost calculations will feature within the evaluation.

Deirdre Hughes, Centre for Guidance Studies