It’s been an interesting couple of days .. I’ve been trying to follow all the comments on this debate across various blogs, LinkedIn and Twitter and it’s fascinating to see the visceral reaction that the debate has provoked.
So what happened?
Yesterday morning James put the slaves.ie site live. The domain was registered by me back in February of this year, but,like so many side projects of ours, had been put to one side..Put on a virtual shelf ..
Where did this idea come from?
Earlier this year a few of us were chatting about how some companies abuse the concept of interns.
Paul created a twitter account
Both James and Stewart have blogged on the subject. I don’t agree with everything the others have been saying, and I sincerely doubt they all agree with each other on everything either. However there are some points where I think we all agree.
I hadn’t written about my views until now, (though I have ended up doing an interview or two about it in the last couple of days)
First things first.
I do not have an issue with the concept of interns and a lot of companies and organisations respect how internships can work for the benefit of all parties involved. However some companies abuse the “system”. And that, in my opinion, is not right. I don’t think it’s ethical.
Running a business is not cheap and one of the biggest costs is staffing. However, staff are, in many respects, a company’s single biggest assets. If you hire the right people and treat them properly then you can reap the rewards, but if you hire the wrong people and/ or treat them badly I don’t see how it can work out well for anyone.
An intern should, in my view, gain from their time working in a company. A company obviously has to get something out of the relationship as well, even if it is just relatively cheap labour. However, and this is the key for me, an intern should not replace a “normal” employee. In fact if you look at the terms associated with “Job Bridge“, for example, it’s pretty clear what you can and can’t use the system for:
The host organisation may not provide an internship opportunity under the Scheme to an individual they have existing employment relationship with
So you can’t lay somebody off and re-hire them as an intern.
The host organisation currently may not have vacancies in the area of activity in which the internship is offered.
The internship will not be provided to displace an employee. The scheme administrator reserves the right to review cases where it is reported that this is the case.
So you can’t replace your paid employees with interns or take on an intern instead of the more expensive staff member that you advertised last week ..
In our case, for example, we have an “intern” who works for us. He’s doing things that our “normal” staff never get round to and we try to keep the work as varied as possible for him, so that he doesn’t get bored. We didn’t look for him – he came to us looking for the work. And we pay him properly.
Taking on an intern, for us at least, is not an easy thing to do. Most of the roles in the company require specialised knowledge. If we hire someone for our customer service team it can easily take 2 or 3 months for them to fully trained and able to work without close supervision. During that initial training period they’re going to cost We’re not going to take someone on for 2 or 3 months for that kind of role. We might take someone on for a contract job, but again, most of those types of roles are specialised.
The problem arises when companies take the idea of an “intern” and abuse it.
Advertising a full-time job or a contract job and calling it an “internship” is, in my opinion, an abuse.
Here’s the kind of advert that annoys me:
There are plenty of qualified and skilled people out there who could fill that role, but expecting anyone to do all that without paying them? Not even a stipend .. nothing?
Of course, as several people have pointed out, nobody is forcing anyone to take up a position with a company if they feel that the conditions are unreasonable. However, it still doesn’t make it right.
And using the defence that it’s “creating opportunities” is incredibly weak. If you have an open position in your company, then why don’t you simply hire someone to fill it?
And as for the LinkedIn discussion / debate / heated argument .. It’s well worth reading through all the comments. Some of the points being raised by both sides of the debate are very valid and it’s a healthy discussion. Unfortunately some people have descended into name calling, which I think is unfortunate.
As for the website and the hashtag .. It’s provocative and some of the people using the hashtag are saying things that I’d never agree with, but that’s the nature of hashtags or the internet in general. Once the “genie” is out of the bottle it’s very hard to put it back in.
All in all it’s an interesting debate and there’s been some very healthy discussion.
Feel free to continue it (politely) in the comments below.
Being James and partially behind the site I’m honestly wowed by some of the responses that the site has gotten. Obviously it’s something that people feel strongly about. I’m starting to see some negative aspects of it as well though and that needs to be addressed in some way. We’re linking to a hashtag and tonight I really really didn’t agree with someones criticism of the hashtag.
Unfortunately this means that we’re going to have to monitor things that bit extra I guess. But we can’t be online 24/7
James
We can’t control what people tweet with a hashtag. Trying to do so is impossible and I wouldn’t even want to try.
Michele
These are balanced and reasonable comments, & this is a debate that needs to be had. I agree that the concept of internships isn’t problematic, but there are clearly some companies taking advantage. Clear criteria to determine the difference could be a useful output from this debate.
Just one comment on this piece. It is correct that no one is forced to take up an internship. Currently. But the way ‘activation’ policy for unemployed people is going, this may not be the case for long. Such an initiative would unfortunately rob the scheme of almost all of it’s value.
Camille
As I’ve been saying – it’s not the concept that’s an issue, but when it’s abused.
As for “activation” – could you expand on that?
Michele
An employee is someone who you pay to fill a role in a company, to help them grow with the organisation and mutually benefit from the organisations success.
An intern is someone who you bring in on a short term to let them see and experience how the organisation grows, and hopefully inspire them go on to do something in the field themselves later on, perhaps even with the organisation that gave them an internship.
The lines between these two definitions are blurred when companies post internship programs that essentially describe full employee-type roles. The intern isn’t growing with the company, because s/he is going to be gone soon. And they won’t be hired. The notion that “we hire lots of interns when they’re done” is a fallacy.
A friend of mine did an internship in a PR company recently and had to leave. They were request 7 day shifts and back-breaking work. Literally slave labour. She didn’t learn anything, grow as a person or experience the company ethos and understand how it works. Instead she was made do tasks completely unrelated to her interests because no one in the office wanted to. I won’t name the company because my information is not my own experience, but they are one that everyone would know (it’s not Zesty, before anyone quips!).
This is good summary of events here Michele.
I’m happy that there has been some great debate about this topic, but there seems that there was an element of people using it to take pot shots at people & companies or just when they don’t know all the facts.
Personally I’ve had some great experience with internships, but they were all paid and I was given the opportunity to learn while having responsibility for the work I was performing.
Michele, apologies for the jargon!
‘Activation’ is shorthand for a wide range of measures intended to help unemployed people get back into work. It covers pretty much everything from job search monitoring to education to retrain people with labour market relevant skills. A focus on ‘activation’ should represent a shift from simply paying ‘passive’ income supports to actively intervening with jobseekers to maximise their chances of getting back to work.
Some measures are low cost e.g. calling jobseekers to interview to check up on how actively they are seeking work, but can also involve significant costs e.g. good education and training programmes. Some countries are pretty good at this – Denmark is an example that is frequently cited in labour market literature, and indeed Denmark spends more on this than most European countries. Recent German intitiatives also provide quite a good example: they really focused on subsidised short time working combined with industry relevant training. This minimised the number of people who became completely unemployed, and (very cleverly in my view) was combined with training so that when the economy picks up again, the German labour force has upskilled and is ready to deliver higher productivity. Germany currently has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the EU (which is clearly not just due to these activation measures, but is also related to the strength of the German economy etc.)
Internships would be on the lower cost end of the scale of activation measures – public employment services don’t have to employ staff to train people etc., they rely on private companies providing good experience/training to interns, at a minimal €50 additional cost (on top of welfare payments) per person (per week). This can be good – most evaluations of activation measures show that those that are closest to the open labour market are best at getting people back into jobs – but also carries dangers, e.g. if the internships are not properly monitored, some unscrupulous companies will simply use them for free labour, without improving the job prospects of interns. They may even displace genuine job creation.
Activation can involve compulsory participation on certain measures. For example, some countries require mandatory participation after a certain period of time (e.g. in Denmark, I think it’s after a year). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing either – if, and only if, the measures people are required to participate in are genuinely helping people get work.
I don’t feel confident about this in the Irish context. A recent ESRI evaluation of Ireland’s activation process found that participants were 17% less likely to get a job than those who didn’t participate. Yes, you read that right, jobseekers who engaged with Ireland’s public employment service had lower chances of getting back to work than those who didn’t – and this was during the job rich Celtic Tiger days! (The report is available here http://www.esri.ie/publications/latest_publications/view/index.xml?id=3144). This got almost no coverage in Irish media – especially compared to the FAS expenses scandals, and the recent debate about 70 days’ paid leave for FAS employees in the last two years before retirement. Yet the waste of public funds, not to mention human potential, is of a far greater order.
There have been a number of media comments about unemployed people making ‘lifestyle choices’ and being ‘work shy’. My concern is that this is intended to shift the debate away from the efficacy of how the Irish state responds to unemployment, by creating the impression that the ‘real’ problem is that unemployed people are just not bothering to find work. It is then only a small step to require that jobseekers take up an internship, rather than it being optional. In the context of the concerns being expressed about the abuse of internships by some, I am worried that this relatively low cost ‘activation’ measure is pushed on jobseekers as the solution to their problems, but without taking the steps necessary to ensure that internships do indeed provide relevant experience to help people get real jobs. (As it’s a cheaper, relatively low effort measure for the Irish state, it’s an obvious contender in that regard).
The Irish state has a poor record in providing effective measure to help unemployed people get back to work. During the boom years, no substantive efforts were made to improve our systems. Consequently when massive job loss ensued, we didn’t have the tools to respond. The increase in unemployment here was higher than practically any other state.
Apologies for the length of this post! Hope this explains where I’m coming from.
Well done on setting up the site – better debate how best to address Irish unemployment is badly needed.
Camille
Thanks for the clarification 🙂
As an employer I tried using FAS to recruit staff in the past. It was a disaster.
I remember dealing with them years ago when I was unemployed and it was horrible ..
Do you think the new entity that is meant to be replacing FAS will be any better?
Thanks for your comment
Michele
Michele,
Anecdotally I’ve heard many employers had the same experience of FAS in securing staff – I’d be very interested in hearing more about your (and others) experiences in this regard. (I’m doing a part-time PhD in social policy on the labour market at the moment, hence my nerdy interest! But years back (during the last unemployment crisis) I used to work for the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed, and positive feedback from unemployed people on FAS was … rare!)
The Dept. of Social Protection has just published its plan for establishing a National Employment & Entitlements Service (of which JobBridge is part of). I’m working my way through that report at the moment, so I’ll get back to you if that’s OK, with views on that.
Moving employment services in with benefit administration is something that’s been done in a lot of countries under the activation banner. In principle, it’s a good idea. It remains to be seen whether its more than a rebranding exercise.
Camille
Could someone clarify something for me please. Does “unpaid” mean really unpaid – the person receives absolutely nothing, nada, zero, zip? Or does it mean that they continue to qualify for their unemployment benefit which is paid by the government during the period of their internship?
Rob
If the internship is run through a recognised scheme such as “Job Bridge” then they’d have their social welfare payments. If it’s not then they’d only have whatever the employer gave them, which might be nothing at all ..
HTH
Michele
Rob,
JobBridge also pays a €50 weekly top up in addition to social welfare entitlements.
Maximum Jobseeker Allowance for someone aged 18-21 is €100; for 22-24, €144; and €188 pw for those over 25 years.
Camille
Screw this! Do you know how much money buisnesss will save! We have already pushed through the drop in the minimum wage for the poor, so lets get all the other suckers who pay taxes and vote. Your lucky to work spongers!