The PES Network explored ways for Public Employment Services (PES) to measure the progress of long-term unemployed people towards labour market integration in a webinar which gathered over 110 participants.

The webinar revealed increasing evidence that for unemployed people with complex needs not falling under classic profiling models, soft outcomes are valid measures of progression in Active Labour Market Programmes. Dr Sally-Anne Barnes of the Warwick University Institute for Employment Research and webinar guest speaker explained this current development.

The Croatian PES highlighted a tool to measure employability, combining statistical counselling and counsellor discretion. While identifying those furthest from the labour market, the tool directs them towards the Active Labour Market Programmes most suitable to their needs, thus enabling better targeting of resources.

Taking a different approach, the French PES explained how Artificial Intelligence could be used to measure distance from the labour market through different types of machine learning, Neural Networks, learning from data to recognise patterns and classify data. Such practices have predicted re-employment with 80-85% accuracy.

The webinar illustrated the effectiveness of ‘distance travelled’ to employment models based on soft measures and emphasised good quality client-counsellor objectivity as a means of properly assessing soft outcomes.

Additionally, as assessment models become increasingly sophisticated, it will become more and more important to address ethical concerns arising from the collection and use of data. It will be essential for systems design to avoid inadvertent discrimination.

A full recording of the webinar is available online.