12,500 hours of admin saved, given back to participants

Reed in Partnership delivers the Restart Scheme on behalf of the DWP, offering tailored support to people who've been out of work for over six months.

Employment advisers deliver that support. They get to know each participant, build their confidence, and help them work through whatever's standing in the way of a job.

Alongside all of that, they write up case notes and an action-plan for every participant interaction, to meet the Restart Scheme's compliance standards.

That paperwork took time that could be better spent building relationships with participants. With Beam Notes, Reed in Partnership has been able to save advisers an estimated 12,500 hours.

The challenge

Balancing participant support with documentation

Advisers needed to capture detailed notes during an appointment, while still listening to the participant in front of them.

After each appointment, those notes had to be reviewed, tidied up and logged to meet DWP compliance requirements. But advisers often moved straight from one appointment to the next, so there wasn’t always time to do the admin between sessions.

They found ways to manage it by taking notes during appointments, catching up at the end of the day, or finishing notes in their own time. But spending time on admin meant less time for the work that could help someone move towards employment, whether that was searching for relevant jobs or building their participants a CV.

The approach

In September 2024, Reed in Partnership began a two-month pilot of Notes within the DWP's Work and Health Programme, commissioned by the South London Partnership. A group of advisers used Notes to record appointments, generate summaries and complete case records.

During the pilot, Reed’s advisers and managers gave feedback to shape how they wanted the tool to work. Beam built bespoke templates that could automatically turn meeting transcriptions into completed case notes, job applications and CVs.

Following the successful pilot, in October 2025, Beam Notes was launched to 33 sites across Reed in Partnership’s delivery of the Restart Scheme in the Home Counties and Northeast, with a further 10 sites in May 2026 for its delivery of the Connect to Work, Youth Jobs Guarantee and Restart Scheme services in South London and Derbyshire. Beam Notes now supports 545 employment advisers and their caseloads.

Following the rollout, advisers and managers continued to give feedback and work with Beam on tailoring Beam Notes to their workflows. Together we built Beam Knowledge Base, which advisers could use to match participants to local job vacancies in the Notes dashboard.

The impact 

Less time on paperwork

With Beam Notes advisers reduced the time spent writing notes after appointments by 64%. Instead of writing up conversations from memory, they had a structured summary after each session.

To date, advisers have recorded over 150,000 notes, saving an estimated 12,500 hours! That time has been reinvested in supporting participants.

Better conversations

With the notetaking handled, advisers could focus fully on the conversation. 80% said they can now concentrate more on the participant and build better relationships, including one adviser who said it helped her “build a stronger emotional connection" with the people she supports.”

Increased participant engagement

More and better-quality time with participants has led to higher engagement on the service. At Reed in Partnership’s Huntingdon and Ely sites, attendance has risen from 79% to 84%. And two early adopters of Notes have reached 88% attendance, with a 15% increase in job starts over the last quarter. This is due to a combination of factors which Notes played a key part of.

Note quality

Every adviser's notes now get the same level of detail and consistency. That's shown up in note quality across the business. At Ely and Huntingdon, for example, file check ratings have gone from "Good" to "Outstanding."

Supporting neurodiverse advisers

Jessica Bain, an employment adviser at Reed in Partnership, is autistic. She said Beam Notes gives her more space to listen and engage directly with participants during telephone appointments, rather than concentrating on taking notes.

Looking ahead

Beam Notes has returned several hours to advisers each week. However, advisers continue to support participants facing increasingly complex barriers to employment.

So, we’re looking at more ways to work together. Reed in Partnership is testing Interpret, to cut the cost and delay of booking an interpreter for participants who speak English as an additional language. And Talk, Beam's voice agent, will support participants beyond the appointment itself, starting with interview prep.

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