Supporting recovery: effective job-to-job transitions

The goal of the webinar was to take stock on how the need to support job creation, employment participation and job-to-job transitions has been addressed in the national Recovery and Resilience Plans and how Member States have decided to use the Commission Recommendation for Effective Active Support to Employment (EASE) to support these changes. 

The opening remarks emphasised the importance of the favourable business environment to enable companies to be competitive and create jobs. Equally important is having a long-term strategy that ensures that as many people as possible are in employment.

​​​​​​​Panel 1: Active labour market policies to support job-to-job transitions

Main points raised:

• The ongoing recovery has highlighted worsening labour shortages and skills mismatches and companies face serious recruiting difficulties.
• We need to support labour market transitions between jobs, sectors and also from unemployment to employment. This requires guaranteeing access to diverse work contracts and different strategies to bring all people who can work back to the labour market.
• Digital transition has been on-going in many industries. The impact of the green transformation is going to be massive, but difficult to fully anticipate.
• Better anticipation and matching of skills, rapid options for upskilling and reskilling are crucial, especially for employees at risk of losing their job as well as vulnerable and young people. These measures are also important to equip workers with skills required by the green and digital transitions. Joint assessment of currently required and future qualifications conducted by social partners were mentioned as an example of how transitions from one sector to another can be facilitated. Short-term training programmes, vocational training and work placements help to avoid/reduce the duration of unemployment spells.

• Exchanges of best practices support reforming public employment services to create innovative solutions and enhance their efficiency. Public and private employment services need to closely cooperate with employers in order to understand labour market needs.
• Cooperation between public and private employment services is crucial. While in some countries their partnership and cooperation have been developing, there is clearly room for improvement towards a joint understanding of how public and private employment services can work together.
• Career guidance is needed both for people not in employment and for those who have a job.
• Job-to-job transition needs more than just a focus on jobs.  Housing, childcare and available transport options have to be considered, as well as creating a positive image of those being professionally active.
• Bringing people back to the labour market and inclusiveness of labour markets can be supported by different means to speed up the matching process, such as a “digital wallet” that facilitates access to candidate's documents relevant for recruitment or video interviews.

Panel 2: Reform coordination and implementation for adaptable and resilient labour markets

Main points raised:

• DG REFORM's demand driven reform support to Member States facilitates both design and implementation of the necessary structural reforms of active labour market policies, including in the framework of the implementation of the Recovery and Resilience Plans. Cross-country and flagship approaches facilitate mutual learning and should be used. Social partners must be involved in different stages of the reform process.
• In Greece both skilling and upskilling landscapes and public employment services are undergoing a reform to respond more efficiently to the skills mismatch and labour shortages. The emphasis is on digital, green and soft skills and on fast, high quality and effective training. Public employment services are being restructured to become agile organisation able to quickly react to changes.
• In Estonia reforms designed with the support of DG REFORM and the OECD addressed structural problems of the active labour market policies and were aimed at improving outreach. Furthermore, the legal and institutional set up is being simplified towards a more flexible legislation leaving room for decisions taken at the administrative level.
• In Ireland social partners are engaged in the governance and monitoring of the active labour market policies through a Labour Market Advisory Council. The Pathways to Work Strategy, Ireland’s national employment services strategy and the Government’s overall framework for activation and employment support policy, covers a number of different measures, including work placement experience programmes, hiring incentives to employers, tailor-made upskilling and training solutions designed by enterprises and measures to rapidly reskill the most impacted workers.

• In Sweden public employment services are being reformed to ensure effective use of resources and follow the “pay-for-results” principle. External private providers are expected to do the matching, while public employment services will be responsible for managing the infrastructure. The Swedish employers hope that this approach will contribute to improving quality and effectiveness of the offered services by financing those measures that bring results.
• The discussion showed that if schemes are too complicated, include too many overlapping financing options or there is too much red tape they will not be used widely. Communicating in a clear and understandable way promotes the use of different schemes.

The Webinar discussions clearly showed that the EC Recommendation on EASE, together with the implementation of national Recovery and Resilience Plans, is an important opportunity for each Member State to undertake the necessary structural reforms of active labour market policies. National social partners need to be involved in designing and implementing the reforms. These reforms should respond to the recovery necessities, but, at the same time, should contribute to further progress on effectiveness and efficiency of public and private employment services. National social partners’ competences need to be fully respected.

The webinar was a joint event organised by BusinessEurope and the EESC Employers' Group and took place on 1 October.

The speakers and participants included European Commission representatives, PES Network members, representatives of national governments and representatives of the EU level cross industry social partner organisations, EESC members as well as representatives of the EU level sectoral and national employers' organisations. 

The webinar was one of many employers’ initiatives aimed at facilitating further cooperation between relevant stakeholders