MPs hear from outgoing provider that firms on WCA will find hiring staff difficult
Atos, the firm that faced scathing attacks for its delivery of the government’s controversial Work Capability Assessments (WCA), has warned that the next provider to take on the contract is likely to face similar problems.
The company had been due to renew its WCA contract in August 2015, but after serious criticism over its health assessments and overly long waiting times it decided to end the agreement early.
Giving evidence to a House of Commons select committee, members of the provider’s senior team said their staff had worked hard to deliver government policy but that they had been “vilified” for it.
Vice president Lisa Coleman told MPs that while Atos had not got everything right, the organisation had been a “lightning rod” for public fury. She said that it was “overly simplistic” to think that changing provider would fix the issues and that in fact the process needed to be revised before the public would accept the fitness-to work assessments.
Helen Hall, the firm's head of communications and customer relations, said a quarter of the firm's fitness assessors had left their role after being abused and treated with contempt by people dubious about the purpose of the assessments.
The provider reported there had been 163 incident of public abuse against its employees.
Hall said: "They are professional trained people. They care about the job they do. They are doing a very good job of applying the legislation the government has laid out and despite that they are being vilified for it.
"The level of intimidation, the level of negative coverage about professional people, I'm not sure that's an issue that can be resolved by a new provider just throwing money at it."
Coleman added that more communication and education was needed around the fitness to work assessment so people could understand the process better and its potential outcomes.
“We often find that when somebody makes a comment that Atos has done an assessment incorrectly, actually, against the policy, what has happened has been right, she said.
"It is very difficult to understand that somebody with a very challenging or quite a difficult condition doesn't go through the process as you might expect."