The Mutual Learning programme

Transcription

1 EUROPEAN COMMISSION Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities Unit D3: Employment Services and Labour Mobility The Mutual Learning programme Peer Review on "Systematic Preventive Integration Approach (Support) for Jobseekers and Unemployed", October in Berlin, Germany 1. National and European policies have triggered a significant reorganisation and modernisation of many Public Employment Services in Europe Many of the Public Employment Services (PES) in Europe have undergone significant changes during the last decade. Considerable reforms of welfare states were followed by institutional reforms of PES since the 1990s. They were inspired by a transformation from passive to active employment and social policies on the one hand and a new management concept for public administration. As consequence many PES in Europe were reshaped from administrative authorities to customer and client-oriented service agencies. Some common trends or developments can be identified like faster job offers, fastening routes back to employment and wide ranging reforms of operational policies (decentralisation, marketisation by contracting out, the creation of integrated service units as well as, introduction of new public management instruments and techniques (contract management, performance measurement, benchmarking, management by objectives, quality management). While operational reforms are often considered by policymakers being technical and apolitical" because they aim to create more efficient administrative organisations (better and cheaper), depoliticising operational or governance reforms neglects the wide-ranging consequences. Intended or unintended, these reforms often have fundamental implications for service delivery agencies, front-line workers and the unemployed, briefly for the implementation of policies in practice. 1 From the very beginning the European Employment Strategy has acknowledged that the PES have an important role for policy implementation and therefore should be strengthened. As a first milestone can be considered the European Commission Communication which in 1998 defined a programme for concerted action to modernise and empower the Public Employment Services 2. As consequence, a policy of strengthening PES makes part of the current Employment Guidelines: For its part, Guideline 20 addresses PES directly to "Improve matching of labour market needs" through the modernisation and strengthening of labour market institutions, notably employment services 3 also with a view to ensuring greater transparency of employment and training opportunities at national and European level, removing obstacles to mobility for workers across Europe within the framework of the Treaties, a better anticipation of skill needs, labour market shortages and bottlenecks, appropriate management of economic migration." 1 Flemming, L. and van Berkel, Rik (2009): The new Governance and Implementation of Labour Market Policies, Copenhagen, 2 Communication "Modernising Public Employment Services", COM(98) 641 final. 3 Council decision on guidelines for the employment policies of the Member States (Brussels, 7 July 2008, 10614/2/08). 1

2 The economic crisis has placed much greater demands on Public Employment Services (PES) and tested their institutional adaptation and activation capacity, whilst also putting them in the centre stage in the fight against unemployment. Despite budgetary constraints as a result of the economic downturn, many EU governments have invested resources and expanded the size of the PES workforce in order to deal with the increase in case load and to help the unemployed to find a job. Overall, PES have demonstrated a clear level of adaptation and flexibility in their operating strategies. 4 For its part, the last OECD meeting of labour and social ministers comforted the Commission's views and concluded that PES are indeed instrumental in fighting the negative effects of the crisis on employment as "effective re-employment services can make a real difference in tackling the jobs crisis." 5 The new Europe 2020 strategy therefore underlines how important it will be in the years to come to equip employment services with adequate resources given a situation where a significant number of Public Employment Services are confronted with increasing budget constraints. According to the proposal for the Employment Guideline 7 "Employment services play an important role in activation and matching and they should therefore be strengthened with personalised services and active and preventive labour market measures at an early stage, open to all, including young people, those threatened by unemployment, and those furthest away from the labour market." In order to enhance the modernisation of PES in Europe, the European network of Heads of Public Employment Services (HoPES) was created in The network aims to promote co-operation, exchange and mutual learning between its member organisations 6. Its overall aim is to support the modernisation of employment service delivery systems to optimise the PES contribution to increasing labour market participation. The European Commission works very closely and intensively with the HoPES network which has produced important results like the contribution of PES to flexicurity (end of 2008) as well as to New Skills for New Jobs (end of 2009) 7. It can be considered a milestone that all members of the network of Heads of PES agreed on a common understanding about shared objectives and priorities for action which is reflected in their Mission Statement for further modernisation (Lahti 2006). Moreover, the six-point programme for action does not only show a modern self-understanding, but also puts a strong focus on the issue of this Peer Review: Prevention early identification of needs and intervention: 1. A clear customer focus (demand-led ways of working, anticipation of labour market changes, good relations with employers), 2. Early identification and intervention (including activation, i.e. guidance, training and support), 3. Modernising service delivery (use of multi-channelling to assign staff resources to those in need for more intensive support), 4. Partnerships and networking (strategic and operational partnerships, contracting out. EURES), 5. Effectiveness and quality (regular assessment and evaluation, development of performance indicators, staff competences) 4 Joint EMCO-COM Paper: The employment crisis: policy responses, their effectiveness and the way ahead (Brussels, 31 st May The network comprises the PES of the EU Member States, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein (EEA). 7 COM information note for EMCO, April

3 6. Transfer of learning (building upon existing structures like Peer Reviews, HoPES, EURES, WAPES World Association of Public Employment Services, staff exchange etc.). Prevention will become even more important in the future this was the finding from a recent survey among Public Employment Services in Europe. As a lesson learnt from the economic crisis, a number of PES plan to further strengthen prevention and early intervention, building upon the experience of "rapid response mechanisms" for employees and employers. As many PES shape their mission for the next decade under the auspices of the demographic change and the "skills challenge", there will be a tendency to have a stronger focus on vulnerable groups and inactive persons, on offering services to new groups like employed in case of job change or groups at risk like low-skilled, intensifying services for employers, developing career guidance services and on facilitating access to training Prevention and early intervention help to avoid unemployment 9 Recently, several countries have introduced early intervention (sometimes in collaboration between PES and other labour market partners) that offer a set of services to the jobseeker in an early stage of the job seeking process. While some countries like Germany and the United Kingdom had introduced early intervention before a job loss already before the crises,, several countries have intensified these services or introduced additional measures with the increasing number of dismissals during the economic downturn. These measures aim usually at earlier interventions helping some workers into new jobs before they have lost their current job or bringing intervention forward in the unemployment spell (e.g. UK, FI). A number of PES have been reorganised, for example into mobility centres. Further, several actors involved in providing re-employment or other support services for employees at risk of dismissal as well as for the companies have merged together (FI, NL). As the evidence from performance measurement shows these measures have helped to avoid unemployment by facilitating direct transitions from job to job. UK: Between November 2008 and April 2010 about employers used the Rapid Response Schemes and according to estimations as a result of the measures introduced by the program around fewer people than expected have become unemployed in UK. NL: As a result of the operation of the mobility centres people found a new job in 2009: work-to-work and people found a new job within 3 months time. In 2010 around found a job within 3 months, of them from job to job. DE: In Germany, where early intervention is enforced by law jobseekers changed from job to job after a notification DG EMPL, unit D3: PES 2020 Mapping visions and directions for future development, Brussels 8 th June 2010, survey for members of the network of Heads of PES (HoPES) in November/December The following two points are based upon: Joint EMCO-COM Paper: The employment crisis: policy responses, their effectiveness and the way ahead (Brussels, 31 st May 2010; Joint EMCO-COM Paper: Joint EMCO-COM Paper: The choice of effective employment policies to mitigate a jobless recovery in times of fiscal austerity, EMCO/50/160910/EN. 10 BA 2010: Geschäftsbericht

4 Although national PES do not apply identical early intervention strategies, a number of key components can be drawn from a previous Peer Review process, conducted by WAPES (World Association of Public Employment Services) with support from the European Commission in 2007/08 11 : If early intervention and registering with PES are voluntary, jobseekers can be attracted to PES by communication campaigns or by a direct approach in cases where this information is available. In general, countries applying early intervention offer immediate matching services and work with action plans leading to binding mutual agreements. These are based upon the results of profiling, information and counselling during a longer intake interview. The intensity of counselling depends on the degree to which the jobseeker is self-steering. Innovative approaches such as the increasing use of web-based services for e-profiling, the development of an e-workbook or even e-coaching, could reduce resource-intensive face-toface services. PES should also be aware that a good relationship with the employers is as important as early intervention in order to make the placement into a new job sustainable. All countries emphasised the importance of a thorough and correct analysis of the situation of the client in a first contact, and as early as possible. If the client profiling is of high quality, the risk of providing special services to jobseekers who don't need them and vice versa, is low so that scarce resources are used in a more efficient way. The quality of the assessment of the client situation including an appropriate documentation as well as empowering of staff are considered as key success factors. However, due to the organisational context and legal regulations of Labour Market policies, guidance and counselling services in PES reveal some specifics and employment advisors are confronted with a number of challenges. 3. Career guidance and employment guidance in PES reveals a mixed picture According to the European council resolution (2004), career guidance refers to " all kind of activities (e.g. information, advice giving, counselling, competence assessment, teaching decision-making and career management skills) that enable citizens of any age and at any point of their lives to identify their capacities, competences and interests, to make educational, training and occupational decisions and to manage their individual life paths in learning, work and other settings in which these capacities and competences are learned and/or used." Thus career guidance should not be only limited to the first transition from school to education, vocational training or work, but also should be conceived as an iterative process during the whole lifespan to cope with the challenges of increasingly discontinuous work biographies and rapidly changing skills requirements. 12 While all employment advisors offer job counselling (i.e. employment guidance) and all PES offer labour market information, it depends on the national business model in which intensity, for which target groups and in which quality, the employment guidance and specialised career guidance services are delivered. More specialised career guidance is in many cases contracted out or referred to specialised providers (e.g. deepened assessment, vocational guidance and orientation for young persons, career guidance for employed or, case management for complex integration processes in case of multiple obstacles). 11 WAPES (2008): Peer Review on Early Intervention. Toolkit. 12 Council Resolution (2004) on Strengthening policies, systems and practices in the field of guidance throughout life (Doc. 9286/04), 4

5 Due to the specific setting of PES, employment advisors have to cope with certain tensions. Hence, they have to combine a client-oriented role with administrative tasks like registration, monitoring of the individual action plan and eventually sanctioning. In some PES employment advisers are at the same time responsible for payments (mean-testing, calculation of benefits and allowances). During the crisis not only their work load has grown, but in a number of countries increasing levels of commitment have also been required from job seekers who have to accept job offers with lower qualification and payment. This requires specific counselling skills in order to be able to manage these tensions in a face-to-face interaction. As recent research has shown, the picture is mixed in terms of quality of these personalised services. Most PES are innovative when it comes to the development of web-based services and integrated multi-channelling concepts, combining e-services with call centres and faceto-face services in the local agencies. These innovations help to make services more easily accessible while at the same time reserving more resource-intensive guidance services for those with special needs. Moreover, in many PES, there has been a systematic use of group sessions and workshops in order to enhance motivation or job search skills. Some PES offer specialised services for women returners from care leaves and professional case management for long-term unemployed or disabled. Several PES have developed new concepts for staff training or services to improve the quality of guidance, above all related to upskilling, training and career development. However, there are challenges related to staff training. In many cases, the training is only limited to basic induction programmes after job entrance, and not always including guidance or counselling aspects. This holds also true for competences and skills how to work best with web-based or IT tools in the concrete face-to-face interviews, or how to cope with the tensions resulting from the diversity of roles. Moreover, the time schedule for interviews is partly very tight. This can lead to an incomplete or wrong assessment of needs and consequently to an inappropriate individual action plan. For example, if a need for skills upgrading or other support is recognised this can hinder the integration process, if the selected measure is not appropriate this implies a waste of scarce resources Going ahead: European support and some questions for discussion To conclude from recent news and reporting by PES in a number of countries, PES will have to offer "more for less". This means to maintain services for an increased number of clients, to achieve the targets while resources will be cut by 10 to 25 %. The European Commission will continue to support PES in their development to cope with the challenges of the future. Beyond the exchange of experience and mutual learning in the network of Heads of Public Employment Services, the European Commission has recently started a particular mutual learning programme for PES the "PES to PES dialogue". This programme will be dedicated exclusively to more operational issues like service concepts and processes, or the development of specific tools. Another specialised network, the European Lifelong Guidance Network (ELGPN), aims to enhance the development of comprehensive and coordinated lifelong guidance policies, systems and services in Europe in the field of education and employment. Although some progress has been made, it will be a task for the future to attract more representatives from labour ministries to achieve a more equal participation from both sectors. 13 E.g. FAS Ireland, VDAB, PES Germany, see European Commission (R. Sultana/ A. Watts) 2005: European Public Employment Services and Career Guidance: Report Lifelong Guidance for Jobseekers (PROGRESS VP/2007/015), Cedefop: Professionalising career guidance