“You Got to Make the Numbers Work”: Negotiating Managerial 
Reforms in the Provision of Employment Support Service 
 
Debbie Laliberte Rudman,1 Rebecca M. Aldrich,2 John Grundy,3 Melanie 
Stone,4 Suzanne Huot,5 and Awish Aslam 6 
 
ABSTRACT: Neoliberal activation logic has intensified in the 
employment services sector, accompanied by austerity measures and new 
public management (NPM). We report findings from the Canadian site 
of a collaborative ethnographic study addressing the negotiation of long-
term unemployment, specifically focusing on local-scale implications of 
administrative reforms to employment service delivery. Informed by 
street-level bureaucracy and governmentality, we demonstrate how the 
articulation of managerialism in activation-focused employment services 
and the emphasis on ‘making the numbers work’ results in a series of 
inter-related effects, including: work intensification; reconfiguration of 
key relationships; and heightened insecurity. Simultaneously, frontline 
staff engage in forms of service provision unaccounted for under official 
metrics, but central to their perceptions of service users’ needs. Our 
analysis confirms the necessity of ethnographic approaches to 
documenting street level enactment of, and resistance to, neoliberal 
governmentalities. 
                                                            
1 Debbie Laliberte Rudman is an Associate Professor, School of Occupational Therapy 
and Graduate Program in Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, University of Western 
Ontario. Email: drudman@uwo.ca 
2 Rebecca Aldrich is an Assistant Professor, Department of Occupational Science and 
Occupational Therapy, Saint Louis University. Email: raldrich@slu.edu 
3 John Grundy is a Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Political Science, York University. 
Email: grundy@yorku.ca 
4 Melanie Stone is a PhD candidate, Women’s Studies and Feminist Research, University 
of Western Ontario. Email: mstone33@uwo.ca 
5 Suzanne Huot is an Adjunct Professor, School of Occupational Therapy, University of 
Western Ontario. Email: shuot2@uwo.ca 
6 Awish Aslam is a PhD student, Department of Sociology, University of Western 
Ontario. Email: aaslam5@uwo.ca 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 47

mailto:drudman@uwo.ca
javascript:main.compose('new',%20't=raldrich@slu.edu')
mailto:mstone33@uwo.ca
mailto:shuot2@uwo.ca
mailto:aaslam5@uwo.ca


 
 

 
KEYWORDS: Neoliberalism; Precarity; Activation; Governmentality; 
Austerity 
 
Introduction 

Labour market policy in Canada has undergone profound 
reforms over the past several decades. Federal and provincial 
governments have embraced the activation framework of labour market 
policy, which entails disciplinary approaches to the unemployed. In the 
name of removing work-disincentives, and buttressed by a parallel rise in 
austerity measures, activating reforms emphasize limiting unemployed 
individuals’ access to income security programs such as Employment 
Insurance (EI) and enforcing their entry into paid employment through 
the adoption of rapid re-employment or ‘work-first’ employment service 
delivery models. Within service provision, there is an emphasis on 
interventions that enhance individuals’ employability and job-seeking 
efforts through changing client behaviours and attitudes (Grundy 2015a; 
Porter 2015). Such ‘work-first’ models are bolstered through the use of 
techniques of new public management (NPM) in service delivery, 
including the extensive use of performance-based contracting of service 
providers and outcomes-based accountability measures. Policy makers 
promote these techniques as maximizing the efficiency of client re-
employment and achieving greater value for money. Yet, as a growing 
body of critical social policy scholarship demonstrates, the adoption of 
NPM, as well as activation measures, can also be viewed as attempts to 
discipline managers, service providers, and clients’ conduct in ways 
consistent with neoliberal rationalities (Brodkin 2011; Soss et al. 2011).  
 Reporting findings from a broader ethnographic study of 
employment service provision and long-term unemployment in Canada 
and the United States, and drawing on street-level bureaucracy and 
governmentality literatures, this article examines the consequences of 

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NPM as a concealed track of welfare reform (Brodkin 2013) for service 
providers and service users. Building on recent scholarship that 
emphasizes the need to study what actually happens when 
governmentality practices ‘hit the ground’ or the ‘street level’ (Brady 
2011; Lipsky 1980/2010), our central claim is that the articulation of 
managerialism in employment service delivery, and the heightened 
pressure on staff to ‘make the numbers work’, results in series of inter-
related effects. These effects include work intensification for service 
providers; reconfiguration of the relation between service providers, 
funders, and clients; and heightened insecurity for service providers and 
service users. We also highlight instances of resistance and subversion 
that demonstrate the ways service delivery staff seek to work around or, 
at times, push back against narrow quantitative measures of service 
delivery, often assuming the risk of undertaking unaccounted work and 
pursuing invisible outcomes in the process. Following Brodkin (2011), 
we contend that these combined effects of activation measures and NPM 
are often not made visible through dominant ways of studying service 
delivery, such as examining legislation and administrative documents or 
tracking official metrics, but instead require investigating policy in action 
within the contexts of service delivery and everyday lives. Theoretically, 
we demonstrate how employing an ethnographic approach to examining 
governmentality, combined with a sensitivity to street level practices, 
enables moving beyond linear, all-pervading assertions regarding the 
effects of neoliberal governance toward more complex understandings of 
how activation and NPM measures are negotiated in everyday practices.   

Background and Theoretical Framework 
Among many member nations of the Organisation for Economic 

Cooperation and Development (OECD) employment policies and 
services have been significantly reconfigured according to the paradigm 
of neoliberal activation, and in many countries this reconfiguration has 
intensified since the 2008 recession (Boland 2015; Evans & Albo 2010; 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 49



 
 

Porter 2015; Soss et al. 2011). Activation policy has redefined the 
problem of unemployment. While for much of the post-war period, 
policy makers conceived of unemployment primarily as an economic 
problem to be addressed through macroeconomic policy promoting full 
employment, contemporary ‘activating’ approaches to unemployment 
place much more emphasis on modifying the behaviour and attitudes of 
unemployed individuals. Within an activation paradigm, unemployment 
is essentially a problem of the unemployed, one to be resolved through 
interventions that ‘activate’ and ‘responsibilize’ unemployed individuals 
(Grundy 2015a; Ilcan 2009). Activation approaches are purported to 
transform passive unemployment into active job-seeking, discursively 
locating the factors causing unemployment within the knowledge, skills, 
and attitudes of individuals (Boland 2015). In turn, those experiencing 
unemployment are increasingly expected to demonstrate responsible 
citizenship through engaging in a range of activities such as resume 
writing, interviews, and networking, which are held out as ways to 
enhance and market the self within the labour market. In addition, 
engagement in expected activities is often a condition of benefit receipt 
and/or maintenance of benefit eligibility. There is also an emphasis on 
finding the ‘quickest route to work’ and being open to the broadest range 
of employment opportunities possible, with increasingly less 
consideration of work precarity, under-employment, or wage 
replacement (Boland 2015; Porter 2015). Overall, activation-based 
approaches, consistent with neoliberal rationalities, individualize the 
problems of and solutions for unemployment, privileging measures 
aimed at transforming citizens ‘at risk’ of state dependency into self-
reliant, responsible, and productive citizens (Schram et al. 2010).  

Labour market policy in Canada has undergone profound 
reforms over the past several decades that have sought to activate the 
unemployed and re-shape service delivery models in ways that emphasize 
individual responsibility (Grundy 2015b; Porter 2015). Moreover, 
individualization and the focus on rapid re-employment have been 
exacerbated and shaped in more disciplinary ways within a broader 

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‘austerity’ response (Evans & Albo 2010; Ilcan 2009; Soss et al. 2011). As 
Porter (2015) demonstrates, changes to Employment Insurance 
implemented in 2012, including alterations to the definition of suitable 
employment and measures that promote acceptance of precarious low-
wage work, enact an austerity approach “aggressively moving to create 
conditions that would ensure a sizable low wage labour pool” (Porter 
2015; 38; see also Grundy & Laliberte Rudman 2016).  

The rise of neoliberal activation in labour market policies and 
austerity approaches has also been accompanied by the incorporation of 
NPM principles and practices purported to optimize the performance, 
efficiency, and effectiveness of employment services (Brodkin 2015; 
Grundy 2015a). Driven by overarching goals of ‘doing more, with less’ 
and re-making public bureaucracy in the image of the private sector 
(Baines et al. 2004), NPM focuses on the incorporation of market-based, 
competition-driven tactics to manage public services, such as using 
performance systems that monitor outcomes and emphasize 
accountability, establishing benchmarking systems, and employing 
competitive contracting mechanisms (Pollit & Bouckaert 2011; Soss et al. 
2011). With the incorporation of NPM by the federal Liberal government 
in Canada accelerating in the 1990s, the implementation of NPM has 
involved a shift away from process or input measures in the employment 
services sector towards quantitative outcomes measurement (Grundy 
2015a; Ilcan 2009). In an increasingly decentralized policy environment 
(Ilcan 2009), NPM has been drawn upon as a mechanism to delineate 
what activities and outcomes ‘count’ in the employment services sector; 
steer discretion in service provision processes; and optimize the fit of 
higher-level system goals with what occurs in street-level practices 
(Brodkin 2011; Schram et al. 2010).  

Drawing upon a governmentality perspective, within this study 
we conceptualize NPM and the performance management techniques it 
promotes as “neoliberal systems for disciplining service providers” (Soss 
et al. 2009; i205). As such, we frame managerial reforms in the 
employment services sector as techniques of governance aimed at 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 51



 
 

shaping the conduct of service providers at a distance in an increasingly 
decentralized system. These techniques attempt to establish a ‘chain of 
discipline’ inter-linking various levels of government, service 
organizations, front line staff, and clients, through which a 
responsibilizing ethos emphasizing self-government is promoted, shaped, 
and monitored. Such techniques do not necessarily require various actors 
to accept or take up a neoliberal worldview or rationality. Rather, they 
operate by organizing fields of practice, for example, via establishing 
outcomes to be achieved and reported and backed up by rewards and 
penalties, in ways that shape decision-making and self-discipline (llcan 
2009; Schram et al. 2010).  

However, research has challenged the assumption that NPM 
strategies achieve their intended effects unproblematically. According to 
Soss et al. (2011), attempts at discipline through NPM cannot be assumed 
to be easily achieved given that “disciplinary power of the NPM (new 
public management) shapes consciousness and behaviour in ways that 
are deep and far reaching yet also fractured, inconsistent and 
incomplete” (i205). Ethnographies of neoliberal governmentalities 
further highlight the importance of attending to failures and 
contradictions that become visible when such strategies unfold in service 
provision spaces (Brady 2011, 2014). Moreover, research that has 
expanded on Lipsky’s seminal work on street-level bureaucracy points to 
the importance of better understanding the “ways in which discretion 
interacts with managerial reforms and what that means for production of 
policy in everyday organizational life” (Brodkin 2011: i255). Thus, in this 
study we also draw upon Lipksy’s work, particularly as it has been taken 
up by contemporary scholars who use it to frame policy implementation 
as involving “complex interaction between reflexive subjects involved in 
multiple relations of power and objective factors that present both 
opportunities for and constraints on action” (Prior & Barnes 2011: 268).  

  In our research, we aim to demonstrate how service provision 
organizations and front-line service providers negotiate the effects of 
NPM in their everyday practices and discretionary capacities. Based on 

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the data analysed below, we offer a critique of NPM’s premises and 
promises by pointing to the contradictions, tensions, and ‘unintended’ 
implications that arise in its application (Brady 2011; Brodkin 2011).  

 
Methodology  

Findings presented in this article are drawn from a collaborative 
cross-site ethnography (Lassiter 2005; Lassiter & Campbell 2010) being 
conducted in Ontario, Canada and Missouri, U.S.A. that is funded by the 
Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. Ethics 
approval for this study was received from universities in both study sites. 
This study focuses on illuminating the boundaries and possibilities for 
service provision and the individual negotiation of long-term 
unemployment in everyday life, as shaped through contemporary policy 
and employment service provision approaches.  

In this article, we draw upon data from the Canadian site that 
focused on service provision processes and practices. In the Canadian 
site, the sample for this particular phase of the study consisted of 12 
participants (10 female, 2 male) associated with four employment service 
provision organizations. Ten participants provided direct services to 
clients, while 2 had shifted into managerial positions. In contrast to their 
counterparts from the U.S.A. study site, these service providers spoke at 
length about the effects of activation and austerity reforms on their 
everyday work practices. In particular, the Canadian service providers 
described actively negotiating performance management initiatives that 
shaped possibilities and boundaries for service delivery. We collected 
data with these participants over a five-month period via one to two 
audio-recorded semi-structured qualitative interviews and one to four 
workplace observation sessions per participant. Observations explored 
various aspects of service provision including individual meetings with 
clients, educational workshops for clients, and team case conferences. 
Data were recorded in written and/or audio-recorded field notes. In 
addition, we held a site-specific focus group at the end of individual data 
collection efforts to discuss preliminary analytical findings with a sub-

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 53



 
 

group of five service providers. Following verbatim transcription of 
interview audio recordings, we used open coding, focused coding, and 
critical discourse analysis (Cheek 2004; Laliberte Rudman 2013) to 
achieve a complex understanding of the data.  
 
Analytical Findings: The Negotiation and Implications of Managerial 
Reforms 

This study’s findings are interpreted in the context of changes to 
labour market policy in Canada. Austerity measures and policies have 
long been a driver of managerial reforms to employment service delivery 
in Canada. During the 1990s, the Canadian federal government 
significantly reduced public sector spending and simultaneously 
transferred increasing responsibility for employment support services to 
provinces via labour market partnerships (Ilcan 2009). In the mid-1990s, 
extensive budget cuts to Human Resources Development Canada, the 
federal department then responsible for delivering employment services, 
fueled the contracting out of service delivery to non-profit and some for-
profit agencies (Grundy 2015a; Ilcan 2009). At the same time, the federal 
government implemented a performance measurement regime known as 
the ‘Results-based Accountability Framework’ for employment service 
delivery, which held service providers accountable for the number of 
clients returned to work, and the amount of savings to the Employment 
Insurance (EI) fund as a result of employment service provision. There 
was widespread acknowledgement that these performance measures led 
to systemic pressure among providers to offer short-term, work-first 
services to those most job-ready, while further limiting services for non-
EI eligible clients (Grundy 2015b).   

The federal government began to transfer employment service 
delivery to the provinces in 1996. Yet, it was not until 2007 that Ontario 
assumed control of the bulk of labour market programming following the 
signing of a Labour Market Development Agreement that entailed the 
transfer of federal staff and resources to the province. A subsequent 
Canada-Ontario Labour Market Agreement (2008-2014) provided 

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additional federal funds for services directed at those ineligible for EI-
funded training, including immigrants, social assistance recipients, and 
the long-term unemployed (Ilcan 2009; Wood 2015). Within Ontario, 
the provincial employment service was branded as Employment Ontario 
(EO), intended as a comprehensive suite of employment supports 
including employment assistance services, labour market information, 
and job referral as well as training and apprenticeship programs. EO 
emphasizes a one-stop model with services delivered through 171 service 
providers located at over 300 sites (Ministry of Training, Colleges and 
Universities 2015). Extending the use of competitive contracting 
established by the federal government, the Ministry of Training, Colleges 
and Universities (MTCU), renamed the Ministry of Advanced Education 
and Skills Development (MAESD) in summer 2016, contracts for EO 
services mainly with non-profit agencies but also with publically and 
privately funded post-secondary institutions (EO 2011).  

Consistent with a NPM emphasis on promoting accountability 
and ensuring efficiency through benchmarks and delineated quantifiable 
outcomes, since 2010 the MTCU/MAESD has monitored the 
performance of agencies through the EO Information System – Case 
Management Systems (CAMS). This system was designed as a 
mechanism to systematize how service providers across the province 
initiate, design, and enact services with clients. Through its on-line 
platform, CAMS establishes, tracks, and reports predetermined, 
quantifiable outcomes (employment, training/education, or other) at 3, 6 
and 12-month time points for each ‘assisted service unit’ or client 
opened, commensurate with a ‘quickest route to work’ approach. Data 
that service providers are required to input through the system are used 
to track individual and organizational level performance, and are drawn 
upon to manage and organize the delivery and contracting of EO services 
(Employment Ontario Information System – CAMS, 2014). In its 
2014/15 ‘Results-Based Plan Briefing Book’, the performance 
measurement target set by the MTCU for EO was that “79 percent of 
Employment Service program clients will obtain employment or go on to 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 55



 
 

further education/training” (13).   
The condition of the Ontario labour market poses additional 

challenges for service providers. A lasting effect of the Great Recession 
has been a persistent spike in long-term unemployment. In Ontario, 
during April 2016, 20 percent of the unemployed were long-term 
unemployed (unemployed for 27 weeks or more), whereas during April 
2008 this figure was 13 percent (MAESD 2016). Beyond long-term 
unemployment, there are numerous indicators that precarious 
employment is spreading in the province’s labour market. The share of 
employees in Ontario earning the minimum wage has increased from 2.4 
to 11.9 percent between 1997 and 2014 (Block 2015: 2). The portion of 
Ontario employees earning within $4 of the minimum wage, that is, low-
wage workers, also increased during this time, from 19.8 percent of 
Ontario employees to 29.4 percent. As well, six in ten minimum wage 
earners and four in ten low-wage workers experienced unpredictable and 
erratic hours of work. The share of Ontario employees working less than 
40 hours a week is also increasing: in 1997 it was 42.5 and in 2014 it stood 
at 50.5, representing a 19 percent increase (Block 2015: 5). The greater 
prevalence of long-term unemployment and precarious employment 
makes the attainment of stable, high quality employment increasingly 
more difficult.   

Shifting to data collected in our study, service providers 
(identified below using pseudonyms) fore-fronted discussion of changes 
in the nature of their work related to the specific implementation of the 
CAMS system; policy, funding, and labour market conditions; and a 
more general push towards an outcome-based system in which they felt 
increasingly pressured to ‘make the numbers work’ for individual and 
organizational performance metrics. Although they acknowledged the 
importance of tracking outcomes, service providers raised concerns 
about the implications of increased emphases on narrowly-defined 
predetermined outcomes, work intensification related to the demands for 
tracking and reporting, and changed relationships within the sector. As 
well, service providers framed NPM initiatives as setting boundaries on 

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their abilities to support clients’ well-being and employability. In 
contradiction to the ultimate intended outcomes of enhanced 
employability or employment, service providers articulated that meeting 
demands to make their numbers work enhanced both their own precarity 
and that of their clients. Although service provides described how they 
complied with accountability measures, they also resisted their 
narrowing effects at times, raising concerns regarding how various types 
of outcomes they valued and needed to prioritize in their work with 
clients were made ‘invisible’ within existing metrics and framing 
themselves as obliged to engage in unaccounted work to support clients. 
Below, we illustrate these concerns and discuss them in relation to NPM 
as a technology of government, which is negotiated by service providers 
within employment service provision. 

 
Making the Numbers Work 

NPM measures aim to shape service providers’ discretionary 
practices through delineating what activities count as performance and 
what outcomes are valued and rewarded (Brodkin 2011). Service 
providers described experiencing a pervasive pressure to ‘make the 
numbers work’ within the overall movement towards outcomes-based 
funding and contracting of services in the sector. As stated by Nicole, 
“Going back to the Ministry, across the provincial government, 
everything is moving to outcomes based programming. And that’s not 
going to change.” Similarly, Courtney indicated,  

“There’s so much more expectation from the funder as 
far as accountability, right. How we’re spending the 
money. And trying to prove our worth and that we are 
doing our jobs, and by trying to provide those statistics 
to the funder to provide that. So there’s been so much of 
that since EO came into play.” 

This pressure to meet outcome expectations was further enhanced by the 
use of an approach in which service providers not only needed to show 
positive numbers but had to show continuous improvement: 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 57



 
 

“The thing with the policy is the Ministry doesn’t 
typically care what you are doing well, they want to 
know how you are going to improve the things that you 
are not doing well. So, because we are in a continuous 
improvement model you must always be continuously 
improving. Every quarter we have to report how we are 
doing well in our numbers or not” (Kevin). 

Given the disciplinary function of NPM (Schram et al. 2010), service 
providers found themselves having to work with their numbers in ways 
that allowed for the demands of funders to be met because “you can’t 
argue with the funder, the funder is who pays us” (Kevin).  

However, in their efforts to make the numbers work, service 
providers often subverted the intent of the system through re-arranging 
reporting to meet system expectations, while at the same time obscuring 
work that was not expected or that defied the ‘work first’ orientation. For 
example, Kevin shared how he managed his monthly case closings in 
ways that made the numbers work from the Ministry’s perspective, but at 
the same time resisted the Ministry’s demands in ways that protected 
himself and his organization: 

“Am I closing the ones [referring to cases] that are bad 
outcomes?...No, I’m gonna wait until next month when I 
have a little more because I’m only allowed a couple bad 
outcomes a month. Right? So I push the ones that don’t 
need to be closed this month...The numbers will work 
for the Ministry, no matter what.”  

Similarly, Kate shared that she and her colleagues always found a way to 
meet the funder’s expectations: “I would say sometimes those parameters 
that are set by our funders are challenging so, but, you know, we always 
make a way to turn it into a success no matter how we have to work to 
get that done.” 

Pointing to tensions, service providers described experiencing 
ethical conflicts associated with ‘playing’ the numbers, but experienced 
such actions as necessary given the need to ensure their own jobs and the 

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survival of the organizations they worked for. These sentiments are 
expressed in the following two quotes:  

“The writing was on the wall that it was becoming a 
much more outcomes based [system]. Just the 
accountability of these agencies that you have to show 
and prove what it is that you are doing with the funding 
dollars. But there are games that are played with that, 
right? That is the frustrating part ethically, if you are 
going to follow the rules compared to others that 
don’t…You got to make the numbers work” (Courtney). 
“The whole ticky box thing. It’s like, am I meeting the 
criteria? Am I meeting so many clients? Am I getting so 
many open files? Are there so many closed files? What is 
the outcome of that particular client?...And, of course, it 
almost seems mechanical where we have taken out the 
need of the client and we’re just kinda jumping through 
hoops so to speak, and that pulls on me sometimes” 
(Kate). 

Thus, ‘making the numbers work’ did not reflect an unproblematic 
compliance with outcomes measures established via the CAMS system, 
but also involved subverting the system in ways that allowed the 
appearance of meeting required metrics. Although service providers 
addressed the importance of tracking outcomes and tried to do so in 
ways that met system expectations, they pointed to associated work 
intensification as well as tensions created through the narrow definition 
of success in NPM measures. 

 
Work Intensification 

Service providers’ efforts to make the numbers work were 
associated with work intensification tied to caseload volumes, expected 
timelines, and inter-related tracking and documentation requirements. 
For example, in order to meet performance benchmarks, such as 20 
successful outcomes and 20 intakes each month, service providers took 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 59



 
 

on large caseloads that allowed them to make their individual numbers 
work: “It’s a really busy place…We’re looking to close – we want results 
for 20, and we want intake for 20, so we all sit around 80 to 100 clients. 
That’s manageable. It’s busy” (Emily). 

While sometimes described as manageable, increasing caseloads 
were also described as leading service providers away from a desired case 
management, client-centred approach towards crisis management. 
Combined with enhanced administrative burden tied to documentation 
requirements, service providers experienced increasing caseloads but 
decreasing client contact time:  

“Carrying a case load of 80 people is not my ideal 
world…it’s really just putting out little fires. I can never 
really get ahead of my caseload” (Kevin). 
“A large part of our job now is paperwork, whereas 
somebody else used to do that before computers came on 
our desk. We were much more directly counsellors then 
than we are now” (Emily). 

Another aspect connected to work intensification was the way in which 
the three-month time frame for outcome measurement set pressures to 
work intensively and quickly with clients, even if such an approach was 
seen as unrealistic for a client or not achievable within current labour 
market conditions: 

“So the expectation is, under CAMS, they come in, and 
they’re out in three months. And it just keeps 
rolling….But the reality is, if you don’t cycle through 
people quickly, you cannot meet your metrics” (Dwight). 
“Well, they want us to open and close the file…the 
shortest is three months. We can keep it open longer, but 
we have to justify reasons why we are. Overall, it sorta 
goes against their research if they’re saying six to eight 
months to become re-employed in a recessive market, 
and so the expectations there, I think, are unrealistic” 
(Emily). 

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Overall, service providers described having to do more work within a 
shorter time frame and connected work intensification and the broader 
influence of NPM to undesired changed relations in the sector at several 
levels. 
 
Changed Nature of Relations 

Service providers talked about the changed nature of 
relationships at several levels, including with clients, with other 
organizations, and with the Ministry. In relation to clients, many service 
providers emphasized how important it was to employ a client-centred 
approach to counselling, in which they took the time to understand each 
client’s perspective and needs in an individualized and holistic manner. 
However, they found that enacting this type of approach to counselling 
became increasingly challenging within current policies and systems. 
Sarah stated, “As a counselor, we need to be counselling, not only 
[getting people] employed…Honestly, we are getting sometimes very 
frustrated when we hear clients [talk about challenges].”  

According to Schram et al. (2010), NPM practices extend beyond 
making agents accountable to reconstituting agency. Such reconstitution 
was apparent in how service providers discussed changed 
communication practices with clients. For example, in attempting to 
negotiate large caseloads and documentation requirements, service 
providers noted the lack of time to build a relationship through multiple 
in-person meetings. Instead, service providers resorted to relying heavily 
on virtual modes of communication with clients even though they found 
such modes insufficient to meaningfully connect with clients: 

“Our caseloads are so high for the work that we do, [so] 
that [we] do a lot on email now. So I can talk a little bit 
on email, but it’s not the same as having them with me 
for an hour and it being a personal conversation…So 
we’re finding that the amount of people we’re seeing 
limits the amount of work we can do on those levels” 
(Emily). 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 61



 
 

“I’m doing much more mass communication…we don’t 
have time to build the relationship…I communicate 
through social media, text, or email” (Dwight). 
Service providers also highlighted other barriers to establishing 

meaningful relationships with clients, including a de-personalized 
approach stemming from the need to categorize or “cookie-cutter” 
(Courtney) clients and “call a person a unit” (Kevin). In addition, service 
providers discussed the challenge of constantly balancing the 
expectations and needs of funders and those of clients:  

“Is it you meeting the numbers, or the client? We need 
to focus on the individual. We need to focus on the 
support we give. We don’t need to be thinking in the 
amount of administrative jobs we need to do, because it’s 
a lot. Be careful with this…Use the data, but don’t 
pressure people with the data. Our mission is to give 
support and to produce results for the individuals and 
not for the government” (Teresa). 
“It’s important that they understand that I actually care 
about what’s going on with them, and this is not me just 
putting a notch on a piece of paper, you know, the whole 
ticky boxes that we have to put in place. Sometimes it 
can be a little bit overwhelming, and I don’t wanna lose 
my client focus. That’s extremely important to me…So I 
make sure that I take the time to let them know that 
you’re not just a number to me” (Kate). 

Nicole, who had previously provided front-line services to clients and 
now carried out middle management activities, pointed to ways that 
human resources had been shifted towards administrative tasks and away 
from direct client service, further creating a barrier to establishing 
effective relationships: “And that [referring to documentation 
requirements of CAMS] is why so much human resources have been 
taken away from client facing activity, is because of the CAMS system”. 
With respect to relations amongst organizations, consistent with NPM 

62 | Austerity Urbanism and the Social Economy



 
 

principles, service providers noted how time-bound contract funding in 
the employment service sector had fostered increasing pressure to 
compete amongst non-profit organizations in the sector: “The other 
thing is not being able easily to collaborate with other partners. Like the 
funders have set it up kind like a survival of the fittest type scenario 
where you have to fight with each other over your clients” (Kevin). 

In the same way service providers discussed trying to maintain 
positive relationships with clients in the face of de-personalizing systems 
and increasing work intensification, they also talked about how they 
attempted to maintain collaborative relationships with other 
organizations to meet clients’ needs, even if this meant they might take a 
‘hit’ on their personal numbers:  

“I have friends over at all the other agencies. So if I think 
they’re going to be better served at X [another 
employment support services provider], I call my 
friend…We have an informal network that we use quite 
regularly. Everything is statistically driven; everything is 
outcome driven. So I just need to realize that out of my 
20 for the month, I have four that are negative” 
(Dwight).  

Nicole also addressed changed relationships with the MTCU. She 
indicated that although the Ministry, as the primary funder of service, 
was talking a language of ‘partnership’, it had been increasingly 
unresponsive to the perspectives or input of employment support service 
organizations: “The Ministry does not partner with us on anything...They 
don’t do things with us. It’s gone, there’s no partnership whatsoever with 
the funder.”  

As in their attempts to make numbers work, service providers 
positioned themselves as in between the demands of the Ministry and the 
needs of clients. They struggled with the implications of meeting 
accountability demands of the Ministry for the relationships they could 
maintain with clients and other organizations. Within these struggles, a 
complex mix of compliance, subversion and resistance is revealed. The 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 63



 
 

findings demonstrate that NPM sometimes re-shaped their practice, as in 
shifting to virtual modes of communication, and sometimes was defied 
through actions such as collaborating with another organization to meet 
a client’s needs, the latter of which could have negative implications for a 
service provider’s performance assessment. 

  
Heightened Insecurity for Service Providers and Clients 

At the same time that service providers discussed ways they 
continued to push forward in providing services and working towards 
outcomes they viewed as important, they emphasized that doing so was 
increasingly challenging given a heightened sense of their own precarity. 
Demonstrating the disciplinary potential of NPM, service providers 
experienced boundaries on their exercise of discretion given that their 
own work security was connected to meeting funders’ outcome 
expectations (Schram et al. 2010). Speaking to the conditions of their 
own work, they described experiencing on-going stress associated with 
having to ensure their own survival and that of their organizations 
through their numbers. Natalie, who shared that “in the last five years, 
I’ve been laid off twice”, emphasized the on-going stress she experienced 
related to meeting the Ministry’s definition of success: 

“I’ve already been laid off from an organization once 
because we lost a contract. And this could be the same 
with this program…if it’s not successful in the eyes of the 
Ministry, then there could be another program that’s 
lost. So the pressure is on.” 

Teresa also spoke to the on-going stress experienced in relation to 
meeting performance metrics, indicating that this made it challenging to 
focus on a client’s needs: 

“Well, at some point, even if you keep your mind on the 
client, you are in the stress of the organization for being 
targets. So that is stressful. Sometimes, worrisome 
because you can lose your job. And that is the reality we 

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face every day…I would like to have less pressure for 
the numbers really.”  

This sense of on-going precarity ultimately disciplined service providers 
to make the numbers work, not only for their own survival but also for 
that of their organizations: 

“Okay, so our funding is based on if we hit our targets. 
So, we have monthly and yearly targets that we have to 
hit, which would be people that are, files that are 
employed or close…in training…If we didn’t, if we all 
just kind didn’t close that the files that we had to…our 
funding could not be given to us…our center would 
close” (Hillary). 

Critics of activation-based approaches that emphasize the quickest route 
to work have argued that people are unlikely to have sufficient time to 
find a job in the area they were trained or to upgrade their skills, leading 
to a situation in which persons experiencing cyclical unemployment are 
increasingly pushed into the low-wage precarious labour force (Porter, 
2015).  

Our informants also pointed to ways that the current system, 
with its use of time limits, prioritization of obtaining work as a successful 
outcome, and limited space for the provision of comprehensive 
employment support services, not only shaped precarity for themselves 
but also for clients. Kevin discussed how a ‘work first’ approach often 
meant clients were not matched with appropriate jobs:  

“They are looking to get people in and out as quickly as 
they can, which they should and I agree. I think that 
there are a lot of people who are not taking the right job 
fit because of the pressure to get them working right 
away” (Kevin). 

Emily and Sarah emphasized the frustration that resulted from narrowly 
defining success as a ‘survival’ or temporary job and the potential cycle of 
precarious employment and unemployment that could evolve:  

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 65



 
 

“So the Ministry sees them working in a survival [job] 
and the file is close because they’re working. So although 
the Ministry see it as a success…it’s not the intent when 
they came in and sat down with me” (Emily). 
“Then, after a few months, they will contact us when 

they lose a temporary job to look for another job. So for 
me, as a person, I don’t like to put that ticky point. Why? 
Because I want to help them to be in a stable career not 
only temporary” (Sarah). 

Dwight connected the Ministry’s use of short frames and focus on 
narrow outcomes to shaping a cycle of precarious employment for 
clients. He stated that “the timeframes attached to funding influence 
directly, affect how services are delivered as the entire process… is 
outcome based”, such that, “the problem I have on a personal level is I’ve 
opened the same client multiple times within 12 months. They go to 
precarious employment, temporary job, come back in three months. I get 
them to access another temporary job.”  Although these numbers could 
be tracked in the current system as indicative of multiple successes in 
relation to attaining an employment outcome, service providers pointed 
to enhanced precarity for clients.  
 
Subversion and Resistance Within Service Provision: ‘Invisible’ 
Outcomes and Unaccounted Work 

To summarize findings presented thus far, service providers 
discussed the pressure to ‘make the numbers work’ to meet the 
expectations of the Ministry. Service providers discussed being aware of 
ways NPM measures were being enacted so as to shape their conduct. Yet 
they also described how they did not always comply with the narrow 
vision of organizational activity embedded in the performance 
measurement system. As noted above, they discussed playing with the 
numbers in ways that simultaneously met the Ministry’s metrics while 
subverting its demands for timely reporting so as to extend service 
provision for clients and avoid the implications of reporting ‘negative’ 

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outcomes. They also discussed how they tried to establish individualized 
relationships with clients and collaborative relationships with other 
service organizations despite the barriers established by the setup of the 
system. In addition, service providers emphasized how they attempted to 
circumvent the shaping of services through NPM measures through 
working towards outcomes and enacting services not mandated nor 
counted in the CAMS, that is, toward outcomes beyond, as one 
participant put it, “they have a job or they’re in training for a job” 
(Kevin). Such forms of service delivery are important to highlight 
because they demonstrate how techniques of neoliberal governmentality, 
such as performance measurement, are not unproblematically deployed 
across social and organizational settings. 

Service providers were overtly critical of the many boundaries on 
service provision being shaped through the current EO model. In 
particular, they pointed to ways that current policies and accountability 
mechanisms meant that the needs of persons experiencing long-term 
unemployment or facing complex challenges to employment were often 
not adequately addressed. For example, Kevin and Emily were critical of 
the disincentives built into the system associated with providing long-
term services to clients,  

“Employment Ontario really doesn’t have any additional 
supports to help people move (out) of long [term 
unemployment]...Our points system is what 
marks…how well we do…If we take more than 90 days 
on particular item, actually hurts us...So, I guess just the 
way it was rated, like funded, kind of dictates that and 
long term really isn’t supported in that capacity.” (Kevin) 
“The people who really, regardless of how nice their 
resume looks or the interview skills look, they’re just not 
bought in, they don’t believe, they’ve given up…or 
there’s addictions, there’s things that we need to be 
working on with them and having them involved in 
before we ever open the file here because as we open a 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 67



 
 

file here, the Ministry needs to see action, and those 
aren’t even counted. It’s a referral out, but it’s a lost stat” 
(Emily). 

Megan emphasized that the focus on ‘work first’ meant that she could not 
provide adequate pre-employment skills training that some clients 
required: 

“But that pre life skills training, personal counseling is 
something that, I think, is really lacking here. And if we 
had that, then people could move forward to 
employment…But these are barriers that really need to 
be addressed.”  

It was therefore clear that service providers, and sometimes the 
organizations they worked for, held more complex understandings of the 
pathways to employment and client success than the practices and 
outcomes codified via CAMS, resulting in challenges and tensions at the 
level of service delivery. For example, Megan discussed particular 
challenges providing services to clients who were recent immigrants and 
whose paths to employment tended to be lengthy due to numerous 
barriers: “We get outcomes for in training or education or employed, so 
our numbers have to reflect that and it can be challenging”.  

Natalie discussed tensions that arose for her when working with 
clients who faced barriers and could not directly move forward to the 
Ministry’s outcomes, emphasizing she resisted the pressure to ‘push’ 
clients too early into a service even when this could have a negative 
impact on her own numbers: 

“The challenge I have is when things are out of my 
control, because I have stats I have to reach…when 
things are out of my control for whatever reason, it’s just 
not the right time for the plan or the barriers…they 
come back and have mental health issues, or drug 
addictions, alcohol addictions…So that’s, like it’s a 
person I’ve lost so it’s a stat that has gone, so I might 
explain myself. I am there for the client and I understand 

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that I have stats too, but I won’t just push somebody into 
a work experience when it’s not the right thing for 
them.” 

Thus, at the same time as describing the disciplinary effects of NPM on 
their behaviours (Soss et al. 2011) such that they were constrained in 
their ability to provide what they perceived to be essential services, 
service providers also described moving forward in achieving outcomes 
that remained unaccounted for given their understandings of clients’ 
needs and the values they held as service providers.   

A common concern expressed by service providers was that 
officially measured outcomes, that is, training, education or employed, 
were too narrow to capture many of the outcomes that providers did 
achieve with clients. Activities such as linking clients with personal 
counselling, getting a bus pass for clients, or securing housing, were often 
recognized as essential “baby steps” (Courtney), necessary to ensure well-
being and a stable foundation prior to addressing employment, education 
or training but rendered invisible through performance management 
mechanisms:   

“The organization wants a solid number, so like, 
employed, or, in training. So, they’re not going to go, 
‘Yay? You went and registered for a course’, or, ‘You 
went and grabbed your bus pass’, or ‘Oh, you were able 
to move forward and…get more secure housing.’ It 
doesn’t really – they don’t measure the little steps” 
(Hillary). 
“Sometimes when you're working with people that you're 
referring out to addictions counseling…to support 
groups… you see changes in them, that's incredible to 
me as a counselor, a success on a level that's not even 
coded. It’s considered a soft skill, so they wanna know 
are you working or are you in school” (Emily). 

Indeed, almost all service providers described work that they did that was 
essential but not counted in the metrics of the current system. Such work 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 69



 
 

was often framed as subversive, that is, as intentionally occurring out of 
view of the Ministry metrics and, in many cases, as not accounted for in 
considering a service provider’s work or quality of performance. For 
example, Hillary discussed how she continued to remain in touch with 
clients and “support them all the way through” even when the client case 
was officially closed in the Ministry system: “It’s closed. It’s not open sort 
of in the Ministry eyes. It’s a closed file, but I mean, I assist so many 
people that aren’t officially registered.”  

Natalie discussed working with her clients, who were mostly 
youth, on many “soft skills” that were necessary for them to move 
forward, acknowledging that this work was not counted or recognized: 
“There are so many steps that the youth make…But it doesn’t fit with the 
ticky boxes. So it’s not recognized by management. So you just have to 
find a way to push that to one side.” Nicole shared how service providers 
developed their own outcomes, which they celebrated collectively and 
which continued to motivate them in their work: 

 “I think it’s really important that we have our own 
measures to satisfy those other needs. And we do. We 
celebrate, like if a client can’t get out of bed and get into 
the office to attend a workshop, and they overcome that 
hurdle, we do celebrate those things….That’s what fills 
our gas tanks…The bottom line is I don’t get warm and 
fuzzy because I met my numbers, I get teary eyes when I 
see something amazing happen for a client.”  

While staff used their discretion to provide services based on their values 
and beliefs regarding best practices and their perceptions of clients’ 
needs, such workarounds were not without personal or professional costs 
to staff, costs which are undoubtedly exacerbated by their own labour 
market and organizational insecurities. As explained by Dwight, “I have 
seen my team members bend over backwards taking their own time, their 
own personal energies.” Working towards outcomes not valued in the 
system but valued by service providers and clients required personal 
investment: “And at the pace we’re going…you’ve got to be really 

70 | Austerity Urbanism and the Social Economy



 
 

invested and wanting to help. Our caseloads are way too high for the 
amount of work we do.” Thus, as responsibilities and accountabilities are 
downloaded to the level of service provision, service providers are acutely 
aware of the costs of discretion, particularly forms of discretion that resist 
and subvert the aims and rules of NPM measures. In turn, these costs, 
such as work intensification that involves not only ‘visible’ work expected 
within the system but ‘invisible’ work that resists the limits of the system, 
may set boundaries on the extent to which service providers can incur 
the risks associated with such actions.  
 
Discussion and Conclusion 

The integration of NPM into the employment services sector has 
been one means to establish ‘governing at a distance’ through a chain of 
disciplinary relationships running from the provincial government, to 
organizations dependent on government contracts, to frontline workers 
and to clients (Schram et al. 2011; Soss et al. 2011). Within the context of 
this study, performance monitoring through CAMS attempts to enlist 
organizations and service providers in enacting a management culture in 
which pre-determined outcomes are tracked to reward or rebuke service 
providers on the basis of their performance. As recent ethnographies of 
neoliberal governmentality in employment service delivery demonstrate, 
however, technologies such as performance measurement do not 
completely determine what service providers do, given their many 
contradictions and inconsistencies (Brady 2011; Huot 2013; Soss et al 
2011). Moving beyond textual based methods that often result in an 
account of the coherence and disciplinary effects of various forms of 
power, ethnographies of governmentality can capture the complex ways 
power operates including resistance, evasions and unintended effects of 
governmental techniques (Brady 2011). Through examining how service 
providers understand, enact, and negotiate NPM within the 
contemporary policy, funding and labour market conditions in Ontario, 
Canada, this study highlights both the disciplinary effects and cracks 
associated with the interweaving of activation, austerity, and NPM. 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 71



 
 

Pointing out such cracks serves to reveal not only problematic ‘facts’, but 
also opens up the possibility “for doing things differently” (McDonald & 
Martson 2005:379).   

In many ways, this study’s findings support critical scholarship 
on NPM that has suggested a tendency of performance management to 
prompt organizations, and front-line service providers, to make the 
numbers work in ways that may actually be contradictory to intended 
processes (Grundy 2015a; Soss et al. 2011). These findings illustrate how 
the articulation of managerialism in activation-based employment 
support services can lead to an emphasis on ‘making the numbers work’, 
such that service providers are disciplined to account for system-defined 
outcomes. However, given the narrow definition of successful outcomes, 
service providers simultaneously manage the numbers and exercise 
discretion so that they can achieve other outcomes that are preparatory 
for system-defined outcomes and are needed by clients in the complexity 
of everyday life. As the sector has become increasingly de-centralized 
(Ilcan 2009), NPM has been implemented in ways that download costs 
and insecurities to street level organizations and their employees (Baines 
et al. 2014; Phillips & Levasseur 2004). In this study, the costs and 
insecurities have been work intensification, barriers to establishing 
collaborative relationships, engagement in unaccounted work to achieve 
outcomes not visible in performance metrics, a pervasive sense of 
precarity for service providers, and an uneasiness about perpetuating 
precarity for clients. 

The implementation of NPM within the employment service 
sector has been purported as a means to enhance service delivery 
outcomes through promoting efficiencies, enhancing accountability, and 
ensuring a ‘work first’ orientation (Brodkin 2015). However, highlighting 
how such measures can work against providing equitable, quality service, 
service providers underlined the ways in which the existing metrics and 
reporting demands set boundaries on who was served and what types of 
services could be provided. In particular, service providers’ descriptions 
of their daily negotiations at the street-level raise concerns regarding how 

72 | Austerity Urbanism and the Social Economy



 
 

such dynamics make it increasingly hard, as well as risky to service 
providers, to meet the needs of clients facing complex challenges such as 
long-term unemployment. At the same time, the 2012 EI reforms have 
further limited protections for persons experiencing labour market 
insecurities and have promoted the creation of a low-wage labour pool 
(Grundy & Laliberte Rudman 2016; Porter 2015), increasing 
entrenchment of particular types of workers in precarious labour. 
Addressing these contradictory effects arising out of the misfit between 
client needs and the organization of services and income security is 
essential to promote systems that enable service providers to respond 
more effectively to the heterogeneous nature of persons experiencing 
unemployment, many of whom are not ‘work or training ready’ given 
their life circumstances and conditions. 

These findings also highlight the importance of going beyond an 
overall valuing of numerical performance targets to critical 
considerations of what ‘outcomes’ come to be valued and counted and 
who has a say in defining outcomes (Brodkin 2011; Grundy 2015a). 
Although service providers did not negate the importance of outcomes 
related to education, training and return to employment, the findings 
demonstrate concerns regarding the limits of such outcomes. For 
example, setting such outcomes within a time-limited service frame 
appeared to promote a ‘work first’ orientation, even when this was 
associated with perpetuating a cycle of low-wage, precarious work. As 
well, it also promoted unaccounted work addressing a series of other 
outcomes viewed as successes by service providers, such as securing 
transportation or acquiring needed food and housing resources. Without 
acknowledgement of the importance of such outcomes, and the work 
that is required to attain them, the needs of particular client groups may 
become increasingly marginalized and invisible and the working lives of 
service providers may increasingly be characterized by ethical conflict, 
stress and frustration. As argued by Phillips and Levasseur (2004), it is of 
concern that increasing pressures to conform to particular processes and 
outcomes implemented through NPM accountability frameworks can 

“You Got to Make the Numbers Work" | 73



 
 

promote “thinking small and inside the box” (458) in ways that stifle risk 
taking and innovation in service delivery. Moreover, service providers’ 
experiences of precarity, work intensification, and tensions between what 
they can do and what they think and feel they should do raise concerns 
about the effects of such work on service providers’ well-being and 
tenure in the employment support services sector (Eikenberry & Kluver 
2004; Curtis 2006).  

As Brodie (2008) reminds us, “[p]reviously cultivated identities, 
political consensus, and cultural ideals...constitute obstacles to the 
promotion of a new governing order, and its particular way of 
representing and intervening” (148). Drawing together governmentality 
and street-level bureaucracy literatures, this article examined both the 
implementation of, and resistance to, NPM in employment service 
provision. The findings support an understanding of service providers as 
‘situated agents’ who act in contexts shaped by NPM as reflexive actors 
who interpret a range of structural, interactional and personal factors 
(Prior & Barnes 2001). In this study, service providers did express that 
NPM strategies had set the rules of the game (Brodkin 2011), but they 
simultaneously enacted discretion in ways that sometimes worked 
around, subverted and resisted such rules in creative and often hidden 
ways.  Positioning themselves as intimately experiencing and negotiating 
the clash of clients’ social needs and system pressures and boundaries on 
a daily basis (Schram et al. 2010), these service providers described 
challenges that evolved out of having to work in a business model while 
valuing their work as counsellors. Work-arounds often occurred when 
service providers experienced ethical tensions, or tensions between their 
own beliefs about service provision and their assessments of clients’ 
needs with the forms of service provision valued and accounted for 
within the systems in which they worked.  

However, while exercising discretion and engaging in work-
arounds that subverted limits in service, service providers often had to do 
so at a personal cost, such as doing work that was not accounted for, 
putting their own numbers ‘at risk’, enhancing work intensification, or 

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drawing on their own personal time and resources to support clients. 
Ultimately, within the context of a system guided by a logic of activation 
and imbued with NPM, service provider discretion was limited by a sense 
of the precarity of their own jobs as well as the precarity of the 
organizations they worked through. As such, although the findings show 
moments of resistance and subversion, they also show the disciplinary 
power of NPM upon service providers. Theoretically, these findings 
point to the need for further studies that attend to how service level 
discretion happens within contexts of new managerialism as a means to 
expand upon Lipksy’s original work that occurred in a historically 
different managerial context (Ellis 2011).  

The implications of managerial reforms as a part of activation-
based employment services have remained largely opaque to researchers 
because they cannot be apprehended through traditional sources of 
information such as formal policies, expenditure data, or outcome 
measures (Brodkin, 2011). Revealing such implications requires 
extending upon governmentality-informed textual analysis to examining 
how policies and techniques are experienced and negotiated in action 
(Brady 2011; Grundy 2015a; McDonald & Marston 2005). This study 
supports the contention that employing critical ethnography at the level 
of service provision is a fruitful way forward to illuminate the 
implications, and limitations, of the intersections of activation, austerity 
and NPM. As one example, the findings support questioning the 
sustainability of systems shaped through NPM and an activation logic 
which provoke mistrust and uncertainty as opposed to collaboration and 
shared responsibility, and which require service providers to transgress 
in order to ensure clients have access to foundational resources (Phillips 
& Levasseur 2004). In turn, there is a need for further attention to, and 
dialogue about, the types of partnership and management models that 
can support positive, collaborative relationships at various levels and 
more sustainable approaches to addressing accountability (Baines et al. 
2014; Phillips & Levasseur 2004). As such, further ethnographic studies 
of street-level organizations can add to a counter history of activation 

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(Grundy 2015b) and thereby provide a “foundation for developing 
alternatives to it” (Brodkin 2011: i.253). 
 
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