European Public Employment Services (PES) are key agents in supporting Europe’s strategic goal of high levels of employability during a period of economic turbulence and demographic change. The increased demands on these public services have precipitated a need for transformation and continuous development. For managers and practitioners to perform successfully in their job and to support their own, and their clients’/claimants’, career adaptability and resilience, they each need to acquire a set of new transversal skills and competencies, as well as embed a professional culture of continuous improvement.
EmployID is a major EU-funded four-year project which aims to support PES staff to develop appropriate competences that address the need for integration and activation of job seekers in fast changing labour markets. It builds upon career adaptability and resilience in practice, including quality and evidence-based frameworks for enhanced individual and organisational learning. It also supports the learning process of PES practitioners and managers in their professional identity development by supporting the efficient use of technologies to provide advanced coaching, reflection, networking and learning support services as well as MOOCs. The project focuses on scalable and cost effective technological developments that empower individuals and organisations to engage in transformative learning practices, assisting their capability to adapt to rapidly changing pressures and demands.
The aim of the project is to support PES practitioners and their organisations in engaging actively in professional identity transformation processes via facilitating the following activities:
- Reflecting/revisiting their experiences as "perspective taking and perspective making"
- Networking/participating in wider communities and engage with others in the co-construction of their new professional identities
- Diffusing lessons learned, especially through new approaches such as Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) and creating of structures
- Adopting new skills set, with a focus on facilitating the learning of others in a move from traditional supervision-based models to peer-models of intervision (i.e., strengthening the role of peers through peer coaching)
- Measuring, collecting, analysing and reporting data about practitioners and their diverse contexts in order to optimise learning about the processes of identity transformation across Europe and to link identity transformation to organisational performance (and existing performance measurement systems)
EmployID will deliver comprehensive, sustainable, and cost-effective support for the facilitation of professional identity transformation as a complex and continuous learning process, on an individual, organisational and European network level using a holistic tool suite combining and linking eCoaching, reflection, MOOCs, networking, analytical and learning support tools, leading to improved individual and organisational performance on employment counselling.
Expected Outcome:
It is expected that the project results will help PES practitioners to increase their efficiency and effectiveness by adapting to rapidly changing pressures and demands. It is also supposed to support PES organizations in effectively managing the up-skilling of their staff and delivery of key aspects of their services.
The EmployID tool suite will based on open source solutions and include tools for reflection, e-coaching, creativity, networked learning structuring and measuring impact. PES across Europe are considered the main beneficiaries, but exploitation could reach beyond these organisations.
In terms of training and capacity building special training material will be available for PES practitioners as well as IT providers of PES. A series of high quality MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) will complement the EmployID offer.
A comprehensive and empirically validated indicator framework for PES organizations adaptable to their needs shall support the development of a performance improvement culture in the future.
Runtime: 2014 - 2018
Program Scheme: EU Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration
Promoter: ZSI Center for Social Innovation / Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences, Germany
Website: Employ ID