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The current issue of the German Human Resource Manager Magazine (April/May 2016) mentions the importance and the trend of being coached by peers. Carmen Wolf (KIT), member of the EmployID team, was interviewed on the Peer Coaching Tool currently in development by EmployID. The peer-to-peer concept is not only of interest for Public Employment Services around Europe, but also for companies that partly already implemented peer coaching into their working practices. The article written by Josephine Pabst might attract also partners from industry to collaborate with EmployID.

The article mentions the peer coaching tool as work in progress that "could be revolutionizing peer coaching in companies by the end of the year.“

On March 16 & 17, 2016 a two-day’ workshop was held in the facilities of the Research group engineering didactics at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) to prepare the peer coaching kick-off workshop on the 6th of May 2016 in Zagreb/Croatia for the Croatian Public Employment Service (PES) and the then following three-week online course on EmployID Academy. The working group was mixed between members of the peer coaching team, the evaluation team and the Croatian Public Employment Service members.

On the first day the group cleared up issues on the organization, e.g. agenda, participant group, certificates, open online badges, video dissemination of PES and re-structured and shortened the already existing EmployID peer coaching online course according to the participant’s group’s demands. The online course will be translated into Croatian in the following week, which includes also videos that have been already produced for peer coaching. The English version of the online course is planned to be added to the prepared PES Portal as first finished and cleared solution for open use even after the project. As there is also a meeting with German Public Employment Services soon, there will be also a German version upcoming.

The second day was used to plan evaluation of the training with Croatian PES and how the evaluation will be done in future courses and contexts around peer coaching. Therefore the self-assessment questionnaire was adapted and an expectation questionnaire created and the evaluation approach planned in detail (for both kick-off training and online course). At the end of the second day the current status of the peer coaching online tool was presented and the participants very well liked the realization of the peer coaching. However some doubts on acceptance within PES will be needed to be cleared up by actually trying out the tool in another workshop. 

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.