Zest

Aim

To deliver a high quality, neighbourhood based, free and impartial information advice and guidance service, to enable customers to make well informed and realistic decisions on their pathway to employment.

Objectives

1. To empower customers to become more self-reliant and better positioned to manage their personal circumstances, health and wellbeing in order to achieve their career goal.
2. To develop customers employability skills in line with their agreed career goal.
3. To facilitate volunteer & work placements to develop customer skills, knowledge and experience in line with their career goal.
4. To support customers to secure and sustain work, including continued career development.

 Priority customer groups are ‘out of work’ residents from the local communities within Netherthorpe Upperthorpe and Langsett. The service also supports ‘out of work’ residents from across Sheffield.

What customers should expect

An IAG service that:

• is free
• confidential
• individually tailored to meet their needs
• takes into account personal circumstances; a whole household approach
• provides information that is easy to access and understand, clear, relevant and up to date
• embeds equality and diversity throughout all of the provision
• treats everyone with respect
• provides a clean, safe and comfortable environment

IAG staff who:

• are experienced and qualified
• continually undertake relevant training to update their knowledge and understanding
• are friendly, helpful and professional

A minimum level of service that:

• will introduce them to the service and have an agreement with them about expectations
• provide customers with a personalised action plan which defines their career goal(s)
• ensures regular contact and reviews i.e. once a month face to face appointments
• tracks and measures personal progression
• facilitates a range of interventions to address their health needs including CBT courses, 1-2-1 lifestyle advice and peer to peer support
• offers mock interviews, voluntary opportunities and access to an IT suite for job searching and online training
• will work with employers to match customers to vacancies and facilitate ‘working interviews’.
• will provide support to customers whilst in work to help them stay in work and progress their career.
• will signpost customers to other services when it is beyond staffs expertise

An IAG service that will embed quality by:-

• undertaking service observations  to ensure we offer impartial, unbiased IAG
• auditing customer records to ensure that minimum service levels are being offered
• fostering partnerships to maximise the opportunities available to help customers progress
• retaining relevant quality standards including ISO and The Matrix Standard assessment.
• being a disability confident employer
• adopting a ‘test and learn’ approach

How you can work with us to co-design our service:

We will work with customers to:-

• ascertain and understand their IAG needs and how they think these can be best met
• welcome suggestions for improvement
• offer the chance to say what they think about the IAG and provision they were offered/given
• tell them who to contact and what to do if they are unhappy with any part of our service
• collate and analyse feedback from customer, volunteer and staff forums in a ‘you said, we did’ format

This service and policy is delivered in accordance with the principles of the nationally recognised matrix quality standard (www.matrixstandard.com)

You can view the signed version of this policy (PDF document).

Definitions of information, advice and guidance can be viewed here (PDF document).