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At the 62. Spring Congress (“Frühjahrskongress”) of the Society of Ergonomics and Work Science (GfA) Carmen Wolf (KIT) presented the current status on peer coaching in EmployID. The short paper (in German) on peer coaching written together with Gerd Gidion (KIT) was published in the digital conference proceedings. The presentation can be viewed here.In the fifteen minutes presentation the main aims of EmployID and the support through peer coaching to tackle these aims were introduced.

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At this year's LEARNTEC congress, Christine Kunzmann (Pontysysgu Ltd.), Andreas P. Schmidt (University of Applied Sciences) and Carmen Wolf (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology) presented the results of the peer coaching activities. Their presentation on “Mobiles Peer Coaching zur Verbesserung der europaweiten Teamarbeit und gegenseitige Unterstützung” (Mobile peer coaching to enhance europeanwide team work and mutual support) opened the congress and was attended by over 50 participants from a wide range of backgrounds, including science and education, employees of human resources and training centers, experts in e-learning in organizations and other interested LEARNTEC participants. The EmployID team handed out a newly printed leaflet.

LEARNTEC is a combination of congress and fair and is the major event on learning technologies in Germany. The EmployID team also got in contact with several other exhibitors at the fair and had interesting discussions on agile learning management systems. A highlight was one of the exhibitors who offered free German language courses for refugees in Germany for every interested visitor at their stand.

Read her paper at: http://wapes.org/en/system/files/employid_ess_article_for_wapes.pdf

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This last October, 62 representatives from EU countries including Austria, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, England, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Poland, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden attended a highly successful EU invitational Symposium held at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London. Susan Park, Work Services Director & Head of Operational Delivery Profession, Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), UK delivered an opening address outlining progress made in developing an in-house MOOC for PES work coaches to inform and support their practice. Wolfgang Müller, Bundesagentur für Arbeit, PES Network, gave a European PES perspective on emerging themes within PES organisations such as ‘bench-learning’, meeting the needs of changing customer groups, use of labour market intelligence/information and EU employer engagement strategies – visit: http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1100&langId=en. This was followed by a global perspective from Margareta Olsson Dahlgren, Consultant, from the Worldwide Association of Public Employment Services (WAPES) - visit: http://wapes.org. Margherta highlighted one of the challenges facing the PES is to provide effective long-term employment for people aged over 50, including transitions from one employment to another. She also gave examples of how representatives from PES in differing international settings are meeting for peer reviews, for example, Canada, Korea, Japan and Germany recently met in Bonn 13-14 October for the kick-off of a global peer review in the frame of WAPES. In a volatile labour market, Public Employment Services (PES) across Europe constantly need to adapt, become more resilient and innovative in their work. Dr Suzanne Kraatz who has longstanding experience of working within both the PES Network and European Lifelong Guidance Policy Network (ELGPN) shared some insights on practitioner competences and the support needed by PES managers and practitioners to develop skill sets, knowledge and competences that address the need for integration and activation of job seekers in fast changing labour markets

Peer coaching is emerging in PES across Europe as an important support mechanism for learning new skills and reflection on practice. Drawing on an extensive range of coaching, guidance and counselling literature, the EmployID team is currently looking at teaching others how to peer coach, what they can do to cultivate their own peer coaching network - a group of trusted people who can help each other by providing encouragement, a different perspective on obstacles and opportunities, and support to test out new and innovative ways of working. This is not a replacement for professional coaching, career guidance and/or counselling; instead, EmployID is co-creating with PES practitioners new approaches such as online communities of practice that enable PES practitioners to help each other in their efforts to deliver effective services to their varying client groups. Coaching,

The last decade has witnessed constantly changing public sector environments wherein revolutionary technologies are impacting on service design and delivery.

Ronald Maier and Andreas Schmidt together with Christine Kunzmann organized the special track Social Knowledge Management at I-KNOW 2015. With the advent of social media, knowledge manage­ment had to rethink its conceptual foundations on how knowledge develops on a collective level.

Andreas Schmidt opened the session with a look back on how the field has evolved. Ten years ago, at I-KNOW 2005, the very first version of the knowledge maturing model was presented, aiming at integrating diverse perspectives on knowledge, and since then, numerous cross-disciplinary research activities have contributed to the extension and refinement of the model. At the heart is the insight that knowledge develops along distinct phases in which its characteristics and thus requirements for support change. It brings to­gether different perspectives and provides a frame­work for analysis and design of interventions.

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As part of the symposium on Integrating ICT in employment and career practice: opportunities and challenges, Alan Brown, Jenny Bimrose & Deirdre Hughes presented a contribution that explored the impact of ICT on employment and careers work, some challenges and emerging opportunities. The validity of socially constructed knowledge and the influence on the training of employment and career practitioners were explored, through the use of closed private on-line learning programmes (using a MOOC learning platform) to support the continuing professional development and identity transformation of staff in public employment agencies in Europe. 

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Summer University was organized by Croatian Association for Supervision in cooperation with ANSE. Plenary lectures focused on the impact on crisis to professionals offering supervision mostly in social field. The workshops were more diverse, showing some creative methods, tackling diversity, evaluation process, secondary traumatization…  Attention was paid to the results and learning outcomes of International intervision processes that have been going on among ANSE members for more than 15 years now.

On 18^th August 2015 Barbara Gogala (ZRSZ) and Carmen Wolf (KIT) held a workshop together on “Tackling the challenges of employment counsellors with technology-enhanced Peer Coaching”. Barbara was there face-to-face as presenter and Carmen was connected via Skype. This technical challenges was an opportunity to try out another way of presenting material remote. The workshop was on the challenges the PES face and how EmployID is tackling these with Technology-Enhanced Peer Coaching/ Online Peer Coaching. Current works on concept, training and tools were presented and afterwards the advantages and disadvantages of doing peer coaching online were discussed. Advantages that were seen in Online Peer Coaching were: It might be better for some people to express themselves since they are able to take their time (“slow down – think first – write down”), social media is too unprofessional to use for the professional context, it is a part of nowadays society world (new media) and it should be seen as another tool for coaching instead of a concurrent method or approach. Disadvantages that were mentioned was the influence of sound (if with audio), missing contact and therefore the missing emotional connectivity. The question was raised, if persons using the peer coaching know each other before and blended-learning approaches were suggested so that people better understand each other and their concepts behind written language.

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Questions were raised about how coflection will be implemented in practice and if peer coaching or coflection provide lower outcome in comparison to individual coaching with a professional coach.