Fifth PES Forum held today



The fifth Forum of public employment services, jointly organised by the Labour and Employment Agency of BiH and the Youth Employment Project (YEP) and supported by the Government of Switzerland, was held today on the topic of “Technical Support Projects for Public Employment Services”.

The Forum gathered representatives of international donor community/organisations that have financed different projects aimed at improving the work of public employment services, as well as PES representatives as beneficiaries of these technical support projects.

Donor representatives mentioned the projects that were, from their point of view, crucial in the employment sector and shared their experience on how PES can best prepare to benefit from these projects.  On the other hand, PES representatives voiced their support needs and results achieved by these projects in view of enhancement of service quality and the functioning of public employment services, as well as their impacts on job seekers and employers.

The purpose of the Forum was to identify key challenges in technical support projects and lessons learnt from them and how to make them more efficient in the future.

The Forum offered several conclusions.  First of all, Bosnia and Herzegovina must have a strategic framework for the field of employment in order to gain an easier access to donor funding.  Also, public employment services must be prepared for accessing donor funding. To that effect, they must prioritise projects they want to participate in in order to avoid overlapping of project activities and participation in the projects that have no direct links with employment which may exhaust already weak PES resources.  Furthermore, it was concluded that a clear definition of mandates and sharing of responsibilities among the institutions involved is essential prerequisite for a successful project implementation. Also, based on the transfer of lessons learnt by colleagues from Croatia and Slovakia, it is obvious that continuous investment in developing PES capacities is required whereby the role of counsellor is transformed into the role of case manager and responsibility of job seeker and a proactive stance is brought to the forefront of job seeker’s activation. Synergy between donors to avoid overlapping of project activities does matter, but at the same time the institutions must take over the responsibility in project management and priority setting that is based on employment strategies.  In concrete terms, there is a need to create a project database in the employment sector that would sum up all documented knowledge and experience. This would be helpful in the implementation of future projects that would come as an upgrade.