Monitoring performance in public employment services – key to further reforms



The regular annual managerial and expert conferences of the Centre of Public Employment Services of Southeast European Countries (CPESSEC) are being held this week in Budapest involving active participation of the Labour and Employment Agency of BiH as CPESSEC member country.   With the aim of exchanging insights, good practices and information, Mr. Muamer Bandić, Director of the Labour and Employment Agency of BiH, delivered a presentation on “Methods of Monitoring Performance in Public Employment Services in BiH”. 

The complex governance structure in BiH entails a complex structure of public employment services which is reflected on the country’s labour market.  This is why, said Director Bandić, the Labour and Employment Agency of BiH has a crucial coordinating role to play.  It is this role of the Agency that has enabled the implementation of labour market-related international projects in BiH, including the reform of public employment services.   One such project is YEP, described by Director Bandić as a model of good practice in PES reform.  

According to Director Bandić, the total number of PES staff in BiH today is 934 persons and every other staff member has contacts with job seekers and employers as PES clients.  Due to high unemployment in the country, average caseload per counsellor is 1100 job seekers.  This is why this area is in the focus of reforms that are already yielding results, underlined Director Bandić.  Also, a network comprising 29 job clubs has been established in BiH bringing PES services closer to the citizens.  These clubs have assisted 7 098 persons to enhance their employability and so far 3 090 of them have found jobs.

On the other hand, activities of the Labour and Employment Agency of BiH for employers from Germany and Slovenia are an example of positive practice in bringing together foreign employers with job seekers from BiH.   In the past five years, these activities for employers have assisted in the issuance of a total of 20 500 work permits to BiH citizens in Germany and Slovenia and the key role in this process was a continuous monitoring of staff performance which lead to a constantly growing number of job placements.  Public employment services responsible for job mediation at country’s level are seeking to transfer this practice into their own job mediation activities.  The fact that the number of persons placed in jobs through mediation of these public employment services has been constantly growing says enough about successfulness of this transfer.  Whilst the number of placements during the recent economic crisis ranged between 70 000 and 80 000 per annum, it stood at 132 191 in the previous year and in the first 10 months of 2017 this number has already reached 108 536. 

In conclusion to his presentation Director Bandić mentioned future steps to be taken to complete the reform process and the most important certainly are to separate active from passive job seekers and administrative from counselling jobs in PES, modernize PES premises and IT tools that are used in working with job seekers and set up a system of performance-based evaluation of work in PES.