EmployID members Carmen Wolf from KIT and Andreas Schmidt from Karlsruhe University of Applied Sciences had the opportunity of meeting key representatives of the Swedish Public Employment Service in Stockholm on June 2, 2015 for mutual exchange and learning on current developments. Mr. Jorge Manco, Strategist of Employment Services at the Swedish PES and Ms. Ana-Lena Larsson, Operation Coordinator International Affairs were kindly welcoming EmployID for a fruitful day of presentations and discussions.
After presenting EmployID’s main objectives, the challenge of re-learning (or: “un-learning”) was discussed concerning forgetting about old identity elements and be supported by digital tools “to look at the world in a new way”. This is closely related to EmployID focal topic on supporting professional identity transformation as leaving behind old behaviours often requires a transformation process.
As for many PES, the Swedish PES is currently undergoing a major strategic realignment, so that this aspect has been highlighted to be of particular importance.
For EmployID interesting was a project that was started within the Swedish PES on online meetings and online application processes supporting employers in quickly screening possible candidates (“speed dating”) which was presented by Mr. Björn Norestig and Mr. John Tetteris. The idea behind is to provide multiple channels that attach to the needs of the customers instead of going over to self-service only and still have a “human touch”. Within these online meetings there is the possibility to use either chat, video-conferencing or both. The PES practitioner is able to see the clients screen to support him or her in filling out formulas, finding the way on the website and there is a possibility to send necessary documents, videos and other content within the tool to facilitate the guidance. Plus there was a tool presented with the possibility to have a large group of participants in webinars. This is mainly with focus on customers, but of course there is also the possibility to train colleagues with it. These activities are very close to the activities in EmployID on Social Learning and the creation on supporting systems for peer coaching within a peer coaching room in a sense of a facilitation box.
Exciting to learn was that at Sweden PES there is also special focus on Customer Driven Development which was presented by Ms. Pia Rydqvist. Experiences are similar to EmployID’s agile and user-driven approach.
Mr. Bruce Andersson presented some mechanisms behind a in developing process skill matching tool to find the fitting job for a customer. In this tool skills weigh more the matching of job roles which can differ and change vastly in naming. A combination of free text and controlled vocabularies is being used and can offer learning opportunities similar to the EmployID LMI tool.
For our works on coaching and facilitation competences within our so-called Coaching and Facilitation Competence Framework (CFCF) which is mainly a collection of skills, abilities, knowledge and competences the plans of Mr. Pär Skoglund on Skills Profiling and Matching was especially intriguing. The career management skills (CMS) were highlighted as probably “9th key competence” for learning where career adaptability can be associated with.
EmployID will continue the conversation as the innovative approaches complement each other in a very promising way.
