Personalisation in practice? Two approaches to conducting benefits interviews in Jobcentre Plus

A clear trend towards a greater ‘personalisation’ of service provision has been evident in government reforms over the last decade.  This shift has been most overt within the NHS, where increasing patient choice has been a central policy initiative; but a similar discourse is evident in welfare policies, with Jobcentre Plus (JCP) claiming to provide “the job you want, the help you need”.  The media have been sceptical, even hostile, arguing that JCP does little more than process claimants through an impersonal and callous system. 

In this paper we step behind the rhetoric to explore what actually happens in JCP interviews.  Using conversation analysis to investigate the UK’s only sample of recorded adviser-claimant interactions (n=243), we show how the same activities (e.g. eliciting claimants’ job goals, advising on how to search for vacancies, providing information about support programmes) may be performed in two strikingly different ways: the first, which is claimant-focused, corresponds with the personalisation agenda; the second, which focuses on ticking the institutional boxes, corresponds more with the media’s counter-rhetoric.  We show the interactional consequences of taking each approach, illustrating how the latter risks missing opportunities to help claimants move towards work, but also considering why the personalisation agenda might be difficult to implement in routine practice.  We conclude by critically interrogating the implications of our findings and methodology for policy and practice – both within the JCP and the practice of an applied sociology, which aims to provide effective practice/policy recommendations.