Motorola Task Force evaluation: final report (revised)

The Motorola Task Force was set up in response to the announcement of the closure of the Motorola plant at Easter Inch in West Lothian with the objective of overseeing the action plan to specifically meet the needs of the Motorola workers. The evaluation aims to assess the performance of the task force in its redundancy response.

The methodology consisted of: desk research, analysis of management reports, labour market analysis, benchmarking, consultations and an employee survey.

It is suggested that the task force partners deserve great credit for responding so quickly and energetically to put services in place, although the process could have been less onerous if certain things had been done better. On redeployment, the task force is on track to achieve the 6 month target and the redeployment rate should continue to improve for another 6-9 months. Customer satisfaction ratings are generally positive, although they fall short of the target. Only a minority of the secondary (activity) targets have been met. There was a big shortfall against many of the lower volume targets, indicating that the task force had overestimated the demand for services and underestimated the employability of the workforce.

A number of recommendations for future redundancy responses are made, including: a detailed contingency plan should be prepared; immediate priority should be given to securing the active involvement of the company in the design, planning and delivery of the redundancy response; firms should be encouraged to use outplacement consultants to help with redeployment; the Lothian partners should ensure that all future local redundancy responses are properly documented, assessed and (where appropriate) evaluated; the range of services available to redundant workers should be determined in advance and set out in the contingency plan; and individuals who are most at risk of unemployment should be identified early.