Experiences from the European Parliament Preparatory

Piloting the Youth Guarantee
on the Ground – Experiences
from the European
Parliament Preparatory
Action (EPPA)
Conference paper, 8 May 2015
Written by ICF
May 2015
EUROPEAN COMMISSION
Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion
Directorate C – Europe 2020: Employment Policies
Unit C2 — Sectoral Employment Challenges, Youth Employment and Entrepreneurship
Contact: Tamás Varnai
E-mail: [email protected]
European Commission
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ISBN 978-92-79-47447-7
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Reproduction is authorised provided the source is acknowledged.
Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion
May, 2015
Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
Parliament Preparatory Action (EPPA)
Table of Contents
Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1
Setting the scene .............................................................................................. 1
Testimonies of Youth Guarantee pilot project participants ....................................... 2
The results and lessons from the evaluation of the Preparatory Action ...................... 3
Audience viewpoints .......................................................................................... 4
Youth Guarantee services for young people........................................................... 5
Engagement of young people in the Youth Guarantee ....................................... 5
Assessment, guidance and job matching ......................................................... 6
Active labour market policies in the Youth Guarantee context ............................ 7
Youth Guarantee from the service delivery point of view ......................................... 8
Early intervention services ............................................................................ 8
Organisation and delivery of Youth Guarantee offers .......................................10
Engaging employers in the Youth Guarantee ..................................................11
Concluding remarks and key messages ...............................................................12
Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
Parliament Preparatory Action (EPPA)
Introduction
On 8 May 2015, DG Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion of the European
Commission hosted a large dissemination conference on the Youth Guarantee. It
focussed on showcasing the results and lessons from the piloting of local and
regional partnerships under the European Parliament Preparatory Action (EPPA) on
the Youth Guarantee.
The European Parliament Preparatory Action on the Youth Guarantee was launched in
2012 by the European Commission, following a request of the European Parliament.
The rationale of the Preparatory Action was to provide support to Member States (MS)
with the building of Youth Guarantee partnerships and trialling associated services
among young people aged 15-241 and to collect experiences that could provide MS
with practical recommendations for launching and implementing national Youth
Guarantee schemes and related actions.
This dissemination conference brought together over 170 delegates from across
the EU. This included representatives of the European Commission, EU agencies such
as Eurofound, European Parliament, national governments as well as national and
international press. The event also brought together pilot project coordinators and
partners, ESF managing authorities, national youth guarantee coordinators, social
partner representatives, non-governmental organisations and international experts. A
small number of end-beneficiaries of the Preparatory Action, young people and
employers, also took part in the event. The conference was a one-day event.
The remaining of the paper is divided into different sections categorised around the
proceedings of the conference, highlighting examples, key discussion points and
messages from the event.
Setting the scene
The conference was opened by Gregorio de Castro from the European Commission
who gave background information on the Preparatory Action and on the 18 individual
pilot projects funded by it. The 18 pilot projects were implemented in seven countries:
Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Spain and the United Kingdom. They were
launched between August and December 2013, with each delivered over a 12-month
period. He highlighted the diversity in the pilots in terms of most projects focussing on
the trialling of different services associated with the Youth Guarantee and the rest
piloting the Youth Guarantee model in a more comprehensive manner. He praised the
professionalism and commitment of the pilot partnerships, their dedication to
innovation and implementation of new measures with new partners in new contexts.
He also disseminated good news about decline in EU youth unemployment rates, from
23.2% at the start of the Preparatory Action to 20.9% in March 2015. While the
process of decline has been slow and the rate is still too high, there are now 850,000
fewer unemployed youth.
Michel Servoz, the director general of DG EMPL, continued by underlining the
positive tendency in the youth unemployment rates and was encouraged by the way in
which the Member States have adopted the Youth Guarantee scheme as a flagship
initiative. The design and early implementation has taken time but the Youth
Guarantee is starting to deliver concrete results and is bringing together actors which
have not worked together before. The European Commission remains committed to
supporting MS in the implementation and further development of the Youth Guarantee
schemes. Importantly, Mr Servoz announced the release of EUR 1 billion prefinancing from the Youth Employment Initiative, available as of May 2015,
1
The Preparatory Action is implemented within the Article 49(6) of Council Regulation (EC, Euratom) No
1605/2002 of 25 June 2002 on the Financial Regulation applicable to the general budget of the European
Communities.
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
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thereby increasing the pre-financing MS receive to boost youth employment by up to
30 times. This is measure is expected to support up to 650,000 young people in
accessing employment earlier and faster than expected.
Mr Servoz emphasised the role of the Youth Guarantee pilot projects in demonstrating
the value of different actors working towards one common goal. The beneficiaries had
clearly been empowered by their participation in the pilot projects but he also called
for all actors to pay particular attention to supporting unregistered young people –
those outside formal systems and registries. The importance of the role of outreach
work in this context should not be undermined. He also called all actors, especially
stakeholders in the countries where the pilots were funded, to ‘up their game’ to make
the methods and practices developed by the projects sustainable.
Testimonies of Youth Guarantee pilot project participants
The opening presentation was followed by testimonies of participants of the
Preparatory Action. This included four young people and one employer who
benefitted from the activities of the pilot projects in Ireland, Lithuania and Spain.
Laura and Begoña had taken part in the Gijón pilot project (Spain) while Karl and
Stacey benefited from the Ballymun pilot (Ireland). Kristina from Lithuania was one of
the employers that worked with the Vilnius pilot project employing and taking on
young participants on short traineeships.
In their testimonies, the participants described the benefits associated with the
traineeships offered by the pilot projects they were involved in: several had found a
job at a company where they had complete their traineeship. Others expressed
satisfaction with the opportunity to return to education, which they had
dropped out from earlier due to lack of motivation or wrong study choice. They
praised the counsellors in the way in which they had given time, supported
and guided them in the planning of next career steps: the beneficiaries felt this
support had not been there before the pilot. Further testimonies of the beneficiaries
can be found in the box below.
Testimonies of beneficiaries2
“The Youth Guarantee gave me an opportunity to go and do what I really wanted to do, which
was to go back to college. There were so many barriers before preventing me from returning“
“I was unemployed for two years before the pilot project and was getting really down about
it. I wasn’t even getting interviews. Now I have a job and a permanent contract; I work for
the company where I did the traineeship found for me by the project”
“My counsellor went from business to business to look for the right traineeship for me. I
really appreciated this”
“I really appreciated the effort made by the project to find a traineeship for me, which
matched my education and interests”
“The pilot project was good because it gave an opportunity for young people to meet and
communicate directly with employers”
“Before the pilot I had no options. Now I have three different options about what to do with
my future.”
“Career guidance just was not there before this project. I made some poor study decisions
before. I didn’t have a clue. Career guidance is key!”
“I could have gone back to university but I know it was the lack of professional experience
that was holding me back; not lack of qualifications as I have a two-year degree”
“I liked the fact that my participation in the project started with an internship. It was just
what I needed”
2
Modified in places to take into consideration translation.
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
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“I was getting quite frustrated before the project; it was getting difficult to get up in the
mornings. The project made a huge difference. The group activities I participated in
motivated me because I learnt from other young people in a similar situation about how to
make most of all possibilities. I have a lot of energy now and I work very hard”
From a more critical point of view, the beneficiaries considered the separation of Youth
Guarantee participants in group activities on the basis of their education level or
career interests as a good idea. This was to make sure the individuals within such
groups have broadly the same goals and are able to move with career planning at a
fairly similar speed. They also stressed the ‘individualisation’ aspect of all
activities and called for relaxation of rules for those who want to return to learning,
including access to universities and colleges.
The employer beneficiary of the Lithuania pilot appreciated the approach taken by this
project in that it was led by an employer’s organisation, which immediately raised an
interest to find out more and take part: the participating employers found the pilot
project model to be ‘quite simple but effective’. The employer ended up taking on five
beneficiaries on a traineeship of which two were employed by the company at the end.
A letter of recommendation was given for the third beneficiary who wanted to pursue
further training abroad. A total of 65 companies joined the employer network of the
pilot project and shared experiences with other employers.
In the end, Gregorio de Castro from the European Commission encouraged all the
beneficiaries from the pilot projects to spread the message about the Youth Guarantee
as the beneficiaries with their success stories are the best ambassadors to the
scheme.
The results and lessons from the evaluation of the Preparatory
Action
The opening presentations and beneficiary testimonies were followed by a
presentation of the evaluators of the Preparatory Action from ICF. Anne-Mari Hall
concluded that the Preparatory Action involved nearly 4,900 young people, of
which some 3,300 benefitted from a range of ‘activation’ measures. The pilot projects
supported 330 young people mainly from disadvantaged backgrounds into
employment and helped to create 52 new businesses, with potential for further
50+ new enterprises. Some 1,700 young people continued education and
training following pilot project participation and up to 480 potential cases of early
school leaving were prevented. Over 1,100 young people were provided out-ofordinary levels of support to better equip them for the school-to-work transition.
Participants themselves reported feeling ‘more supported’ and ‘educated’ in deciding
and implementing career plans. They also felt more confident and gained new labour
market and ‘life’ skills as a result of participation in the pilots.
The evaluators would have liked to see some projects test the services and methods
they developed as part of the Preparatory Action with larger and more diverse group
of participants. They also called for pilot projects to move away from a ‘project-based’
isolation focussing on the delivery of the project, to consider and plan to secure
the sustainability of the actions from early on. More concrete links to national /
regional youth guarantee implementation plans as well as partners at level(s)
where policy, regulatory and longer-term funding decisions are made (i.e. in
order to address structural barriers, in order to plan for post-pilot sustainability) could
have helped.
Mrs Hall ended the presentation by highlighting the potential of the Youth Guarantee
as a vehicle for delivering youth employment services in a comprehensive and
coordinated manner; but the pilots also demonstrated that the Youth Guarantee can
also trigger a more comprehensive process of improvement of youth services
when implemented under right conditions and by a broad, committed partnership. The
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
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Youth Guarantee however should not be seen as a one-off reform or as a quick fix,
and young people themselves need to be at the centre of it3.
Audience viewpoints
The opening session was supported by real-time electronic voting on key aspects of
the Youth Guarantee. This gave an opportunity for the members of the audience to
express their opinion on the Youth Guarantee. Specifically, the audience was asked to
express their view on the impact of the Youth Guarantee in their country, the extent of
the involvement and consultation of young people in the set-up Youth Guarantee
schemes, the value of European funded pilot actions and the possible further need to
publicise and explain what the Youth Guarantee seeks to achieve and deliver.
As shown by the results overleaf (Figure 1), the audience was particularly positive
about the value of European funded pilot actions, such the one on the Youth
Guarantee, which are managed at EU level but delivered on the ground by local and
regional partnerships. Nine out of ten conference participants (91%) saw value
in this type of pilot projects, which are designed to provide lessons for the
implementation of larger schemes at national and regional levels.
Two-thirds of the conference participants (66%) felt positive about the impact of
the Youth Guarantee in their countries. This indicates that work undertaken
across Europe to develop Youth Guarantee schemes is starting to bring in results, but
more work is still to be done. One aspect the majority of audience members agreed
upon as requiring further work concern the involvement and consultation of young
people in the set-up of the schemes. Indeed, only a quarter of audience members
(25%) felt young people’s voice and concerns are sufficiently taken into
consideration. There was also a widespread consensus on the need to do further
communication work to spread the message about the Youth Guarantee especially
in terms of what it promises to deliver and seeks to achieve. Only 13% of the
audience members felt there is no need for further communication on the Youth
Guarantee.
Figure 1. Audience vote results
Note: The total number of answers received was 105 for the first questions and 112 for the remaining
questions
3
The full results will be available in the Europa website:
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1099&langId=en
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
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Youth Guarantee services for young people
A total of six thematic working groups were organised during the event, with three
different groups running in parallel with one and another. The first set of working
groups looked into the Youth Guarantee services from beneficiaries’ perspective by
discussing the approaches introduced by the pilot projects (and in some cases,
countries more broadly) to improve and strengthen:
 Engagement of young people in the Youth Guarantee schemes,
 Assessment, guidance and job matching, and
 Implementation of active labour market policies (ALMPs).
Key messages from these working groups are included below.
ENGAGEMENT OF YOUNG PEOPLE IN THE YOUTH GUARANTEE
The aim of the first working group session was to discuss difficulties in engaging
young people in the Youth Guarantee and strategies/approaches that have proven
successful at raising awareness among young people and securing their involvement.
The workshop included presentations from Luisa Moar representing the Veneto
project (Italy) and Laura González representing the Gijón project (Spain). The
conclusions were summarised by Allan Päll from the European Youth Forum.
Luisa Moar and Laura González started by introducing their projects and presenting
some of the challenges associated with engaging young people in Youth Guarantee
schemes. In particular they raised barriers around:
 Mainstream
employment strategies, programmes and authorities not
sufficiently targeting and tailoring their materials and services for young
people, including failing to take into consideration the importance of new social,
informal and non-formal communication channels and ‘languages’ in the lives of
young people;
 Mistrust of authorities (including education and training sector) among specific
groups of young people; and
 Fragmentation / disintegration of different youth services, meaning that
communication activities have to be repeated and time/money is wasted.
Given this challenging and changing context, the Gijón and Veneto projects sought to
develop and trial new communication channels and strategies as part of their pilots
that went beyond the mainstream practices. This included, for example, strategies
mentioned in Figure 2 below and also development of different, dedicated strategies
for other stakeholders, such as employers.
Figure 2. Examples of tailored communication channels and strategies used by the
Gijón and Veneto pilots
New communication channels (e.g. social
media, YouTube, ‘hashtags’ and viral videos) and
materials (e.g. logos and posters with a fresh,
eye-catching youth orientated look)
Involvement and employment
of young people in the design
of new communication tools and
campaigns
Different engagement strategies for different
groups of young people (e.g. outreach ‘streetwork’ to involve NEETs, PES with designated
responsibility to engage those taking part in
vocational training and graduate engagement
through employment fairs)
Informal information events
(e.g. named as a ‘cocktail’ event
rather than employment
information event)
The involvement of peers in
the building of a ‘community of
youth’ to spread message
about new services via word
of mouth
Source: Presentations of Luisa Moar and Laura González
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
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The following were highlighted as key conclusions from the workshop discussions:
 Engagement/recruitment methods need to communicate ‘empathy’, demonstrate
an understanding of young people and the situations they find themselves
in especially in areas and times of high unemployment.
 The involvement of young people from different backgrounds in the design
of communication strategies and tools not only help to identify the ‘right’
language, message and tone but also spread the message about services among
friends and other peers; the value of word of mouth as a communication channel of
its own cannot be underestimated.
 Outreach work as an engagement tool needs to build around should be built
around the principles of youth work, which stresses the importance of trust
building and non-judgemental approach.
 Communication strategies need to be targeted at different youth cohorts,
recognising that young people are a heterogeneous group, and supplemented by
broader media or other campaigns that spread the message to other important
people in the lives of young people, including families, friends and NGOs.
 Engagement/recruitment strategies should be based on realistic messages, to
avoid promising results which are not achievable.
ASSESSMENT, GUIDANCE AND JOB MATCHING
The second workshop of the day discussed the experiences of the pilot projects in the
development of practices and piloting of services related to initial assessment, career
guidance and matching of offers. In this workshop, Ramune Mereckiene from the
Vilnius pilot (Lithuania) and Fulgencio Cerón Mora from the Cartagena pilot (Spain)
presented their experiences in this area. The workshop conclusions were summarised
by Margherita Bussi from ETUI.
Both pilot projects presenting in this workshop (Vilnius and Cartagena) developed
their own orientation pathways, which combined elements of guidance,
assessment of skills and aspirations as well as preparatory and motivational activities.
Ramune Mereckiene, the Vilnius pilot
The approach of the Vilnius project was centred on strong social partner and youth
organisation involvement in the engagement and selection of participants, followed by a
three-part motivational pathway where direct communication between employers and young
people played a central role. The pathway ended with a four-week work placement. Young
people were profiled into different groups on the basis of a survey they filled in at a start of
the project, focussing on categorising young people on the basis of their ‘sectoral’ aspirations
(the sector they wanted to find work in).
A total of 64 companies took part in the network which provided placements, motivational
speeches and labour market guidance for the participants. They also had an important role in
giving practical advice to young people, many of whom had never worked before or indeed
had any direct contact with employers (thus had unrealistic expectations and demands about
jobs), about realities of employment. For example, they explained how businesses run and
make money, what different employees do and what kind of salaries can be expected in
different positions.
A total of 270 young people participated in the pilot, of which 44% found their first job
through their participation.
Fulgencio Cerón Mora, the Cartagena pilot
The Cartagena pilot ran their pathway practice with two different groups of young people
(with participants from three distinct backgrounds), consecutively. The first step in the
pathway consisted of two sets of interviews:

The first one sought to create an atmosphere of trust between the project counsellor and
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the participant. Information was given on the project and information was collected from
the participant on his/her education and employment background.

The second interview focussed on the creation of a personalised employment plan,
deciding on the next steps and acquiring a mutual commitment on the chosen plan.
After the interview, participants had a chance to take part in a range of group workshops,
such as workshops on communication and creativity, job search skills, entrepreneurships, ICT
(including blog creation, apps, etc.), English and selected vocational topics (such as food
handling). Motivational workshops and socio-cultural activities were also available.
Some of the key success factors in the pilots included proactive involvement of
individual employers as motivators and work placement providers, recruitment of
counsellors from a broad range of backgrounds with different specialisations,
enhancement of the role of ‘motivational’ and socio-cultural activities in the pilot (in
order to minimise dropout rates, especially among the least motivated participants),
and use of participants from the first round of the pilot to involve, inform and motivate
participants in the second round. A ‘discretionary’ pot of funding allowing the
counsellors to address practical, one-off barriers to participation faced by individual
young people was also crucial (e.g. ability to pay for public transport to attend the
project).
ACTIVE LABOUR MARKET POLICIES IN THE YOUTH GUARANTEE CONTEXT
The third workshop explored ALMPs in the Youth Guarantee context, especially training
and support for self-employment. The workshop included an opening presentation
from Gianni Rosas from ILO and a pilot project presentation by Yolanda Otero
Balsa from the Galicia pilot (Spain). The conclusions were delivered by Guillermo
Montt from OECD.
Gianni Rosas started his presentation by underlining the role of ALMPs in the Youth
Guarantee process in that they can help redress education and labour market
failures and prevent labour market disengagement. However, ALMPs cannot
solve structural problems or indeed create jobs, per se. When appropriately designed,
targeted and monitored, ALMPs (employment services, entrepreneurship programmes,
labour market training and subsidised employment) are responsive to labour market
requirements, are appropriately targeted, are offered within a comprehensive package
of measures, are linked with work experience and are implemented in a broad social
partnership. When these conditions are not met, ALMPs can produce labour market
distortions in a form of creaming, deadweight and displacement effects.
Yolanda Otero Balsa introduced the pilot project her partnership run in Galicia,
supporting labour market integration of young people from rural areas by promoting
and supporting self-employment. The pilot involved initial training on various
topics concerning entrepreneurship (e.g. talks by experienced entrepreneurs, site
visits, and case study/project assignments), work placements in businesses related to
the
self-employment
aspirations
of
the
participants
and
individualised
tutoring/mentoring in the planning, realisation and launch of business ideas. More
than two-thirds of the participants (68%) went on to launch their own business or
found a related job following participation in the pilot.
Overall, it was concluded that entrepreneurship measures can yield good
employment outcomes and meet young people’s aspirations in terms of
independence and flexibility it provides. However, successful entrepreneurship
measures need to find a right balance between theory and practice in the provision of
support, include individualised mentoring/tutoring and they can be challenging to
implement among disadvantaged groups.
There is significant room for improvement in the evaluations of ALMPs; but there is
also duplication of activity in the delivery of ALMPs among key actors and projects
tend to be selective, hence producing creaming and deadweight effects.
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
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Youth Guarantee from the service delivery point of view
The set of three afternoon working groups centred on innovative approaches to the
Youth Guarantee service delivery, in particular examining the pilot project experiences
with:
 Preventive work (early intervention services),
 Organisation and delivery of Youth Guarantee offers, and
 Engagement of employers in the Youth Guarantee.
EARLY INTERVENTION SERVICES
Early intervention services in the Youth Guarantee context refer to the linking of preemptive and preventive measures such as those seeking to reduce early school
leaving and prepare young people for the school-to-work transition. The workshop
started with a presentation of Massimiliano Mascherini from Eurofound and was
continued by a joint presentation of Julie Seymour and Tony Slonecki from
Hartlepool and Croydon pilot projects (UK)4.
Massimiliano Mascherini set the scene by presenting the results of an investigation
into early implementation of the Youth Guarantee in 10 MS (BE, BG, EE, EL, ES, FR,
IE, IT, PL, UK). This research has highlighted considerable differences in the ‘starting
points’ of different Member States in relation to the Youth Guarantee especially in
terms of institutional, labour market and structural frameworks. The study also
underlined the need for new cooperation structures for the design and operation of the
Youth Guarantee in order to address the fragmentation in the implementation of
youth policies. Other key issues highlighted include for example: 1) The need for
PES, education systems and other actors to work together to smoothen school-to-work
transitions for young people, 2) The role of youth organisations in the Youth
Guarantee remains (too) fragmented, 3) Difficulties in ensuring the sustainability of
opportunities created (what constitutes a good offer and a sustainable outcomes?), 4)
Education and training systems and the labour market need a sufficient absorption
capacity to ensure offers for all Youth Guarantee clients. (In this context, the key
question is how to avoid focus on those who are easier to reach and integrate into the
labour market. The Youth Guarantee needs to serve all young people, no matter what
their background is), 5) Monitoring and evaluation of the Youth Guarantee is essential
but not easy in practice.
In terms of early implementation of Youth Guarantee related measures in the MS,
much of the work has focussed: on setting a Youth Guarantee specific process for
information, counselling and guidance; outreach work; supporting school-to-work
transitions; training and work placements; VET including apprenticeships; and youth
entrepreneurship measures. In terms of early intervention, the outreach practices
introduced by the MS focus largely on online tools (as opposed to street work, for
example) while school-to-work transition measures centre largely on preventing of
early school leaving, reintegration of early school leaving, improvement of
employability skills and removing barriers to participation.
Julie Seymour and Tony Slonecki from Hartlepool and Croydon pilot projects presented
their experiences with the implementation of early intervention services. Both pilots
worked with students who were preparing for transition from education or training, to
either further learning or emploment.
4
Adriano Maria Meucci was due to present the experiences of the Lazio project (Italy) but was unable to
attend due to several flight cancellations.
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
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Figure 3. Overall goals and specific objectives of the Hartlepool and Croydon pilots
Hartlepool pilot
Croydon pilot
Goal: To improve employability and enterprise
skills of young people so they are prepared for
work by strengthening cooperation between,
schools, career services, employment services,
colleges, work-based learning providers and
employers
Goal: To address rising levels of youth
unemployment and the growing number of young
people at risk of becoming NEET
Specific objective: To support 200 young people
classified as high risk of becoming NEET to
progress into a positive destination within four
months of leaving school
Specific objective: With the support of employers
and other stakeholders, to build capacity in 5
schools across Croydon to better prepare young
people leaving school for employment (facilitate
improved careers decision making; ensure pupil
learning and progression is linked to (and relevant
to) the current and future labour market; improve
teacher capabilities and awareness of the
competencies required for work
Source: The presentation of Julie Seymour and Tony Slonecki
These two pilots offered a range of services to young people so as to better prepare
them for the transition, described in Figure 4 in more detail.
Figure 4. Early intervention services for young people
Hartlepool
Croydon
Early Intervention system (a risk of NEET indicator)
developed to identify students at most risk of not
making a successful transition to positive postschool destinations
2 week work placements/assignments for companies
30 hours of mentoring and tutoring at a school
setting, plus one-on-one mentoring on noneducational issues
Mock interviews (support in writing CV and
application letters, half an hour ‘mock’ interview with
an employer, feedback)
Mentoring and career guidance
Taster days at local colleges, supporting in attending
interviews at colleges/employers, careers events
Employability skills and master classes
Continuing liaison and support over
including practical advice / ‘life’ skills
Resources, such as training packs for teachers,
students and volunteer business mentors, epassport to record work experiences
summer,
The main outcomes for the participants include:
 Increased levels of motivation among participants with a higher share of school
leavers moving onto further learning or employment;
 Better educational outcomes due to ability to focus on their exams;
 Better awareness of post-school options and career pathways; and
 Improved understanding among teachers of the importance of employability
skills.
The need to invest in more concrete links between schools and employers (with
benefits ranging from increased work placement opportunities to businesses acting as
mentors) and the value of close contact over the summer period with at-risk students
who are moving from one level of education to another, are some of the key lessons
from the pilots. Interestingly, at times it was easier to involve/engage employers
rather than schools, indicating lack of resources and high pressure faced by
schools. The pilots also taught important lessons about sequencing of school-to-work
support activities over the school year, for example with students learning about
employability skills before taking part in work placements or other assignments with
employers.
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
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ORGANISATION AND DELIVERY OF YOUTH GUARANTEE OFFERS
The second workshop in the afternoon dealt with the organisation and delivery of
Youth Guarantee offers, in particular focussing on clarifying the process of identifying,
selecting and matching offers to the Youth Guarantee clients. The elements making an
offer a good quality one were also considered. Joaquín Miranda started the
workshop by presenting the Gijón pilot experience (Spain) in terms of the type of
offers and activities they offered to their target group and this was followed by a
presentation of Paul Carroll from the Ballymun project (Ireland). Wolfgang Muller
from the German Federal Employment Agency summarised the conclusions from the
workshop.
The Gijón pilot, Spain
The Gijón pilot operated around the set-up of a dedicated ‘youth employment and activation
agency’ where advisors and coaches from different agencies were brought together to offer
services for young people under ‘one roof’ (one-stop-shop model). A total of 104 young
people joined the pilot of which 93 ended up following the personalised employment plan with
a pathway of activities that was set for them.
The Ballymun pilot, Ireland
The Ballymun pilot took place in one of the most deprived areas of Ireland where the youth
unemployment rate was 54% at the time of project application. It brought together a
partnership of public employment services, employers and trade union representatives,
education and training providers, local government, local development & youth organisations
to develop and pilot a youth guarantee scheme promising a quality offer within 4 months of
the first guidance interview to all young jobseekers. By the end of the project the number of
youth registered as unemployed in Ballymun had dropped by 29%, which compares positively
against the national rate of reduction of 19%.
In terms of the process of selecting and matching offers to pilot participants, the
process in both cases started with initial assessment, interview, counselling, guidance
and follow-up by a counsellor throughout the participation. The available ‘offers’ of
these pilots included5:
 Jobs, work placements and subsidised employment
 Mainstream education and training offers, and also labour market training and
second chance opportunities
 Short training courses, such those combined classroom and work-based learning in
the premises of employers, short thematic courses (e.g. communication skills, IT,
foreign languages, interview skills), preparatory training, basic skills training and
pick & mix courses which allow young people to try out different courses.
 Self-employment / entrepreneurship training and support
 Volunteering
Some lessons from the workshop discussions included the following:
 The notion of a ‘good quality offer’ is subjective; can be different for every
person but should support outcomes that improve the employment prospects of
participants in the long-term.
 Forcing young people to participate “is in no one’s interest”: other engagement
‘methods’ tend to prove more effective but sanctions can have their place as a last
resort when no other method has worked.
5
Note: the pilots tended to adopt a broader definition of an ‘offer’ than that of the Council recommendation
on the Youth Guarantee.
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
Parliament Preparatory Action (EPPA)
 IT-based solutions, such as online training courses on interview skills and CV
writing for example, have their place in the Youth Guarantee arena and can prove
cost-effective, but only among certain cohorts of young people; not as the only
option.
 The client-staff ratios (front-line PES staff) were significant lower in the pilots
than PES normally has (with an average ratio in Europe standing at around 1
advisor per 500 clients); the challenge lies in delivering the mainstream Youth
Guarantee schemes with lower client-staff ratios than the pilots and ensuring
follow-up after participation in ‘offers’. At the same time it is recognised that most
pilots had a significantly higher share of young people from disadvantaged
backgrounds than an ‘average’ larger-scale Youth Guarantee scheme would have.
 Multi-disciplinary front-line teams proved effective at serving Youth Guarantee
clients, with counsellors coming from different backgrounds with different areas of
expertise.
 Publicly recognising/awarding companies supporting Youth Guarantee schemes
through awards/hallmarks, proved to be a cost-effective way of involving
employers.
 Work placements and other activities directly involving employers tended to be
the ‘offers’ scoring the highest levels of satisfaction among pilot participants.
ENGAGING EMPLOYERS IN THE YOUTH GUARANTEE
Engagement of employers in the Youth Guarantee was the topic of the final workshop
of the day. It explored innovative, proactive approaches introduced by the pilots to
build relationships with employers. Ana Riesgo from the Avilés project (Spain) and
Aoife Doyle from IBEC representing the Ballymun pilot (Ireland) explained their
experiences in this area and Bart Vandewaetere from Nestle summarised the key
messages from the workshop.
The Avilés pilot created coaching/employability pathways for two groups of young
people: the first group consisted of young people without qualifications and at risk of
early school leaving but interested in a career in the hospitality industry and the
second group of qualified, unemployed youth not successful at finding a job in the IT
industry due to insufficient ICT skills. The pilot worked with companies in these two
industries to address specific issues facing each sector:
 The pilot worked with local companies from the hospitality industry to make the
sector more attractive among young people and encouraged early school leavers to
return to learning and become professionals in this industry.
 The pilot worked with local companies in the IT sector to ensure they recruit VET
graduates from local schools, rather than from other cities, by addressing skills
mismatches by involving employers in ‘bridging’ training who were interested and
committed to increasing the uptake of local workers.
The Ballymun pilot, introduced above, developed an employer engagement strategy as
part of the project for two key reasons:
 The public employment service (PES) practice in relation to employers was underdeveloped, with little systematic or proactive employer engagement
 Employers favoured other recruitment methods (referrals from own staff, private
recruitment agencies, online)
As a result, the pilot sought to develop employer relations by adopting an integrated
approach, which involved taking care to involve both employers and young people,
developing the kind of skills sought by employers, stressing connections between
education and work and prioritising work experience. Importantly, the pilot also
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
Parliament Preparatory Action (EPPA)
sought to ensure that the PES has the capacity to engage proactively with
employers and understand their requirements and change employer
perceptions of the PES and its clients.
The strategies for achieving change in the way in which the organisations involved in
the pilots work and build relationships with employers are outlined in Figure 5 below.
Figure 5. Strategies for building relationships with employers
Avilés (Spain)
Ballymun (Ireland)
Employer contributions to the design, development
and evaluation of training courses
Database of local employers to facilitate relationship
building (including cold-calling)
Tutoring/mentoring of participants
Breakfast briefing sessions to raise awareness of the
Youth Guarantee pilot – included employer
testimonials to encourage peers
Contributions to the participant selection
Contributions to the monitoring and evaluation of the
project
Breakfast briefing
sessions to raise
awareness of YGS –
included employer
testimonials to
encourage peers
Review and improvement of promotional materials
aimed at employers (by reps of employers’
organisations), preparation of a range of new,
dedicated communication tools for employers
Dedicated employer engagement officers in the PES
assigned to drive both local and regional
engagement
Sources: Presentations of Ana Riesgo and Aoife Doyle
Provide a menu of options of how to engage in the
Youth Guarantee to employers (e.g. recruiting,
providing work experience, motivation talks, visits)
•motivational talks, onsite visits
Breakfast briefing sessions to raise awareness of
YGSimportance
– included employer
testimonials ‘outreach’
to encourage
Conclusions from the workshops highlighted the
of extending
peers
work to employers: starting with the researching of the needs of companies;
nurturing new and existing relationships; making proactive work with employers a
‘standard’ practice; ensuring PES are geared to employer expectations with a ‘menu of
options’ in terms of how to get involved in the Youth Guarantee; and marketing the
business case for employer involvement.
Concluding remarks and key messages
Max Uebe from the European Commission as well as national youth guarantee
coordinators from Spain, Italy and Ireland (Daniel Solana, Bruno Busacca, Kasey
Treadwell Shine, respectively) took part in a final panel discussion of the day. Four
main messages have been summarised below.
1. The Youth Guarantee has started to bring about concrete results and is uniting
actors which have not worked together before. The European Commission
continues to support Member States in efforts to further develop their Youth
Guarantee schemes. The recent release of EUR 1 billion pre-financing from the
Youth Employment Initiative is expected to support up to 650,000 young people in
accessing employment earlier and faster than expected. Recent declines in EU
youth unemployment rates are encouraging but the rate remains at an
unacceptably high level. In addition to the role of the Commission in providing
financial support, the conference participants supported the idea of the
Commission acting as a facilitator of exchanges of experiences and knowledge in
this area. They welcomed the Preparatory Action as a useful platform for
identifying lessons for larger schemes.
2. Stakeholders in countries where the pilots were funded were urged to consider
the lessons and support the upkeep and mainstreaming of the new models
and practices developed.
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Piloting the Youth Guarantee on the Ground – Experiences from the European
Parliament Preparatory Action (EPPA)
3. A small number of end-beneficiaries of the Preparatory Action, young people,
played an important role in the conference by sharing their experiences. In their
view, the pilot projects had succeeded at identifying and matching them with
career steps that complemented their aspirations and thereby made a long-lasting
impact on their lives. While it is not feasible to expect every participant to have
equally positive and life-changing experiences, it is fair to say that the pilots
added to the mainstream provision by offering services (especially in
relation to the depth of counselling and mentoring), which would not have been
available without the pilot funding
4. Some of the challenges for the Youth Guarantee schemes involve (on the basis of
conference discussions): the management and development of the schemes in
light of cuts in mainstream budgets; ensuring a manageable staff-client ratios for
those working on the front-line; providing individualised, ‘good quality’ offers for
Youth Guarantee clients, without deteriorating the chances for other client groups;
extending outreach work from unregistered youth also to work with employers;
raising awareness of the Youth Guarantee among young people, their families and
among key actors at regional and local levels; and bringing the preventive
measures concerning young people still attending compulsory or secondary
education under the Youth Guarantee framework.
The conference discussions and key messages provided some suggestions for
these messages, but they can also be seen in light of the more comprehensive set
of messages from the Preparatory Action and individual pilot projects presented in:
-
The summary report of key achievements and lessons from the European
Parliament Preparatory Action on the Youth Guarantee
-
The comprehensive evaluation report of the European Parliament Preparatory
Action on the Youth Guarantee
Both reports can be found in the Europa website:
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=1099&langId=en
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KE-04-15-399-EN-N
doi: 10.2767/24911