The power of the peer group in employment services

Blog posts

27 Feb 2025

Emily Kramers, Research Fellow

In a world where working lives are increasingly spent at one degree of separation from real people, establishing connections with others is critical. The power of peer group relationships has emerged across a number of ReAct Partnership research projects focusing on DWP’s Restart scheme. Whether it’s a group of participants gathering to develop their job search skills, or a group of employment advisers getting together to discuss challenging cases and share success stories, in every scenario the opportunity to meet with peers has been cited as a mechanism that contributes to learning and development as well as providing social and psychological support.

Both cultivated and organic peer groups have been widely recognised as beneficial in connecting those undergoing similar experiences across many areas of life, from living with long-term health conditions to becoming a new parent and as such have been the focus of many research studies (for example; Peer support: What it is and does it work?). At their heart, they provide an informal opportunity to find comfort from a similarity of experience as well as learn from others. Facilitated peer groups offer a structure for this learning, by providing conversational topic prompts, and ensuring groups are inclusive of all contributors. This can make them a productive route to learning for many organisations.

Having seen how they work when they are used in Restart, and the value they have elsewhere, I was surprised to find they are not being used more often.

Peer groups for staff members

In Maximising Adviser Impact: Supporting Workforce Development (IES, 2024), 79% of employment advisers on the Restart programme who responded to our survey question about routes to support agreed or strongly agreed that peer-to-peer support was very important in helping them perform their role better, with over 80% saying this was because they were able to share best practice with their peers. This points to the importance of regular opportunities for advisers on Restart to have opportunities to interact among themselves and share ideas, discuss challenges and engage in learning.

The importance of the peer group was also evident when we talked to line managers of advisers in a focus group setting, who similarly identified the value of having opportunities to share experiences and best practice with those in comparable roles across the programme.

Peer groups for participants in employment services

Roll on to our latest ReAct research project, where we’ve been looking at the experiences of those on the Restart programme who are highly qualified either through education or through extensive experience, and we see a similar pattern. Across a number of different organisations, we talked to providers and participants about the different programmes and support they had experienced.

There are some innovative and creative solutions that have been, or are being developed, by organisations delivering Restart across the country and our research paper describes some of the common strengths of those approaches. But one element that came up was that being introduced to a peer group of those with similar experiences led to a number of benefits:

1. Reduces feelings of isolation and helps participants understand that they aren’t alone.
2. Practicing skills such as networking with others develops useful job-search and workplace skills.
3. Produces opportunities to practice team-work and co-working, which can be particularly helpful to people who may have been out of the workplace for a significant period of time.
4. Extends the value of the learning by empowering a group to continue the work beyond the limited life of the set programme. This might entail supporting each other with presentation and interview practice, reading through and giving feedback on cover letters and CVs.
5. Establishes rapport and connection between people who may come from a diverse range of backgrounds and sectors of the workforce.

Some of these findings point to the psychological benefits of peer groups whilst the others are clearly leaning towards learning and skill-based benefits that can make a difference to the effectiveness of the programme that these participants are on. Of course, there is the need for co-ordination and giving space and time to establish these groups, which can be a burden on already stretched providers, and naturally there needs to be a clear remit of what the peer group is there to support and that dictates who attends.

But given the enthusiasm we’ve encountered now for these groups across the last two research projects, it feels like the value of gathering and sharing with your peers is something to be explored further. Whether it is online or in person, getting together and learning from each other can be a great way to expand horizons. 

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Any views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Institute as a whole.