How can Public Employment Services provide digital services to vulnerable jobseekers?

Digital service delivery is omnipresent in the service offer provided by Public Employment Services and has proved to be effective, in particular, for jobseekers who are closer to the labour market. This, however, raises the question of whether and how to provide services online to jobseekers who either have no or very low levels of digital skills or who do not have the resources to access digital services.

The Thematic Review Workshop of the EU PES Network (held on 7/11/23 in Zagreb)  focused on: (1) outreach to vulnerable jobseekers; (2) diagnosis of (digital) skills shortages; (3) providing effective digital skills training and (4) online delivery of counselling and complementary services. The discussions centred around the needs of the long-term unemployed and young people not in education or employment (NEETs). A number of PES, including the host Croatian PES have made significant strides in diagnosing the lack of digital skills, providing (online) career guidance in an accessible format and have developed digital skills courses. However, there are a number of situations, including outreach and employment counselling, where offline service delivery still remains crucial. Furthermore, as pointed out by Márton Csillag in the Thematic Paper there is significant room for experimentation in the delivery of online services, to better understand what precise ways of nudging vulnerable jobseekers to take up and finish digital skills training work best.  

The expert services of the Budapest Institute (Márton Csillag) were commissioned by ICF for the EU Network of Public Employment Services as part of a framework contract with the Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European Commission.