Public Employment Services

1
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• Distinct identity for vocational/career guidance
  in the PES context
• Unique characteristics and attributes that
  include a focused route to implementation
  strategies of the career choice process.
• The International Labour Office (ILO) Model
• Free, publicly managed, standards for staffing
  and organisation
• Typical PES was hierarchical-Head Office/Regions
• LMI/Voc guidance/sectoral specialists
• European Employment Guidelines-Modernisation

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Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• Modernisation of PES
• Fundamental Shift- 6month threshold for lt25 yrs
  and 12 months for gt25 yrs
• ILO 1997 Private Employment Services (PRES)
• Australia- contracting out. Payment based on
  performance
• Profiling
• ICT-Paradigm shift

3
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• The centrality of good career/vocational guidance
  to the activation and modernisation processes
• Greater awareness among management that career
  guidance approaches and tools should be more
  embedded in the work of all advisers and not just
  the role of a specialist cadre of staff that may
  not be quite in tune with the realities of the
  modern labour market.
• In line with this approach, the Irish PES in 1998
  introduced in-service training in guidance and
  counselling for all PES advisers. This ranges
  from a general introductory course in guidance
  and counselling, to a two year graduate/post
  graduate course in guidance and counselling,
  delivered by the National University of Ireland.
• ANPE approach

4
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• So what are the fundamentals in the PES approach
  to guidance and counselling?
• Main differences in the approach of the PES
  guidance practitioner and a traditional
  schools-based guidance counsellor is an
  epistemological one, in that the training of many
  guidance counsellors is focused mainly on
  humanistic counselling theory with a focus on the
  individual and practiced in a predefined way.
• PES guidance practitioners are more akin to the
  applied psychologist. This is because the PES
  practitioners draw on a variety of
  socio-psychological perspectives and research
  results that work/fit in their applied context,
  in this case career development and jobseeking

5
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• Traditional theoretical approaches to career
  guidance rarely consider the politics, power
  relationships, and ambiguity that surround the
  job-seeking process.
• The PES approach does include these latter
  perspectives through its research based approach
  while also accepting socio-psychological
  perspectives.
• Access to this wider perspective can help to
  prevent, or rectify the more serious pathology of
  unemployment related depression and its negative
  effects upon the individual and their social
  network.
• The focus of the PES practitioner is to assist,
  enhance optimise and accelerate re-employment to
  the most appropriate level of employment
  reflective of individual skills and potential.

6
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• The factors causing career implementation
  difficulties to individuals and that are
  typically addressed in a PES context, include the
  fact that-
• The nature characteristics of work (and allied
  life-long learning opportunities) have changed
  faster than the average individuals understanding
  of these new organisational needs and the
  corresponding changes to the job seeking process.
  
• Some modern methods of work can generate high
  levels of tacit knowledge and automatic learning.
  This can result in a highly skilled or qualified
  person simply not being aware, or has difficulty
  articulating or describing their employable worth
  and skills.
• Personal awareness of work competencies is a
  primary factor in self esteem, confidence, self
  image, and social standing. To elicit such
  awareness assists in the holistic development of
  the person, and the enrichment of their
  existence, and gradually, the social fabric of
  the community.

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Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• The Irish PES is one of the few EU/worldwide PES
  that are part of a wider training and employment
  agency (FAS). This has allowed it to develop a
  perspective on its guidance role and work in the
  context of what is in effect a national life-long
  learning institute that provides training for
  both the unemployed and to the employed .
• This is life-long guidance at its practical best
  with a deep foundation in implementation
  strategies and routes available with the wider
  community but also a huge body of LLL practical
  possibilities within FAS itself both in FAS
  training centres and through contracted external
  trainers.

8
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• The Services to Business division within FAS is
  tasked with the up-skilling of people already as
  at work. This it does though inter-alia, the One
  Step Up programme. .
• This is designed to provide finance to
  individuals for training and education courses
  that provide new skills in the context of their
  working environment. This is negotiated jointly
  between the client, the employer and FAS.
• The brokerage role played by the FAS advisers
  (higher skills) and basic skills for work
  coordinators(in the case of basic literacy
  training), is a critical component in the
  delivery of the training.

9
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• Within that context the PES recently tested out
  the concept of workforce guidance and counselling
  through a pilot in one region.
• The initial response to the idea and offer was
  good but follow-through by employers was weak.
  The reluctance of the employers to engage in the
  release of workers for a guidance intervention
  during work hours would seem to indicate that the
  option of outof-work -hours one to one
  provision is more likely to succeed.
• On the evidence to date it appears that where
  workforce career guidance is linked into a
  particular in-company training initiative, it is
  more likely to be accepted by employers as part
  of the total package - perhaps in their mind as a
  way to screen out unsuitable candidates for
  in-company training. But that is of course not
  the result desired by us.

10
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• It seems therefore that pure guidance provision
  is more likely to happen outside
  business/industry hours
• The lessons learned from the pilot are not
  entirely conclusive and so we intend running
  another pilot to test other ways of approaching
  employers to see if we can be more effective in
  our approaches to employers.
• We also intend to pursue a multi-channel approach

11
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• Upgrade our on-line guidance and self assessment
  provision to allow for significant initial
  self-assessment through password protected
  interest inventories and motivational
  questionnaires. These will allow for a
  preparatory guidance on-line phase similar to
  that available in the private sector
  HR/Guidance/coaching consultancies
• Telephone support service through our contact
  centre where dedicated trained guidance staff
  will take calls and will also be able to access
  the clients profile where agreed by the client
• Further one-to one provision for the more
  disadvantaged workers may be provided on an
  appointment basis that we may contract out to
  guidance professionals and/or in collaboration
  with any publicly funded adult guidance provision
  available in the catchment areas.

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Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• Such contracted advisers would be tasked with
  applying the PES applied research guidance model
  to the implementation of strategies developed in
  the workforce guidance process We may also offer
  career guidance vouchers that can be used to buy
  career guidance one to one services in the
  private sector.
• Delivery of implementation support would be
  through web based on-line resources, telephony
  and one to one provision where required

13
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• We look to using leading edge ICT based solutions
  to provide the implementation channels.
• We are experimenting with a fully virtual
  offering where the interaction will be face to
  face through the use of new video/ICTechnologies
  that will allow for a virtual real-time guidance
  interaction for clients.
• This could in the first instance be provided to
  clients that are facing difficulties though
  remoteness of their location or issues such as
  disabilities that might create travel or
  technology barriers.

14
Public Employment Services Workforce Guidance
and Development

• It is clear that PES practitioners draw on a
  variety of socio-psychological perspectives and
  research results that work/fit in their applied
  context.
• Access to these wider perspectives facilitates
  practical career guidance where outcomes can be
  translated into guided actions.
• The PES brings this unique perspective to
  workforce guidance and is well placed to be the
  facilitator of innovation in its delivery.