As a DWP Approved Gateway, you are the not just the administrative function between Employers and the DWP, there is so much more that goes into this such as account management, contract gathering, verifying bank accounts and issuing payments.
The role of the Approved Gateway, which has now been closed to any further applicants, must also judge the feasibility of an employer’s application being approved for funding before they even have to submit the famous Job Vacancy template with all of its restricted values.
We spoke with five Approved Gateways who have faced their fair share of approvals and rejections and who collectively represent hundreds of successful employers to understand how to increase a Gateway’s chances of approval at both the employer submission stage and Job Vacancy submission stage.
1. Take an extra two minutes to check companies house / the charity commission website:
Be sure to validate the employer’s Companies House or Charity number by typing it in on their respective websites.
Ensure the address is exactly as listed on their application. Don’t just make the changes on the employer’s application be sure to reach out to them to ask why there is a difference. This is good due diligence.
Note: Companies registered in Scotland will have SC before their name so do not limit any forms you have to numbers only.
Note: If you copy and paste registration numbers into Excel, be sure you are copying them into a ‘Text’ field otherwise the first 0 will go missing from your data!
Our Kickstart Gateway Platform has a validated, mobile-friendly, online form that gathers this information and automatically gives you a link in our system to go directly to your employer’s Companies House or Charity Commission page enabling you to validate their data in seconds, not minutes.
2. When making new applications or submitting your job adverts, use the right batch number
When completing the excel spreadsheet embedded within the word document, (you know the one!) the first column asks you for the batch number. Don’t leave this blank thinking it is a ‘DWP use only’ field. Instead complete this number using the “Ref:” number in the top right-hand side on page one of your grant offer letter.
We have pre-loaded both the word and the excel document into our system enabling you load all the data into the documents to the highest of standards all with the click of one button.
3. Before submitting Job Advert Templates, ensure you have a contract signed with the employer otherwise the DWP will not release payment.
Gateways must ensure they have a signed contract with each employer using ‘Attachment 2’ in their grant offer letter as soon as possible from signing their own Gateway grant offer letter with the DWP. The DWP will not make any payments to your organisation for any employer you represent until you confirm to them in writing that you have entered into an Employer Agreement with the employer and hold a valid copy about it.
Watch our product demo on how we have pre-loaded the contract and automated this entire process with our Kickstart Gateway Platform.
4. Keep to the limitations/validations of the Job Vacancy Template
The Job Vacancy Template is a protected word document that an employer must fill out for every position they are looking to hire. You will notice lots of grey boxes called “Microsoft Form Fields” that have validations in them such as character limits to ensure the data can be easily transferred to the DWP system. Gateways have found that as over 60% of web browsing is now done on smart phones and not every employer has Microsoft Word which can cost £79.99 a year there has been challenges in getting these vacancies completed on time. This results in employers being taken off and their grant revoked.
We have found sending employers a mobile-friendly online form, like this one here, with all the same field validations/restrictions has not only increased the number of responses from employers but also the quality of the data and the turnaround is much quicker. The data from the form is then ready to export to the Approved Template at the click of the button. Magic!
There is still more to be learnt at this stage – we do not have enough data to know why vacancy templates are being returned from the DWP. We believe it is always worth ensuring the Data is free from spelling mistakes, Job titles are appropriate, and the employability support element of the template should be well thought out and aligned with the DWP’s employability outcomes for the young people on the scheme.
5. Talk to other Approved Gateways
As of writing this, we have identified over 300 Approved Gateways after all the unapproved ones were removed from the “Find a Gateway” site. We are sure there are more approved who will be added in the next couple of weeks.
We have created this closed LinkedIn group purely for Gateway providers with our partner, Offploy – An approved Gateway that helps ex-offenders get back into employment. Be sure to join the group and post any questions and connect with members in here who will all be Approved Kickstart Gateways.
This is designed to be safe, supportive group to help all Gateways support as many young people as possible.
We’ve built our platform to help Gateways increase their impact, save them time and reduce their costs. If you have any Gateway questions or would like to find out more about our platform, please do get in touch.
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