The first meeting of the PES Network Working Group (WG) on ‘Partnership Management’ launched discussions around the increasing importance of relationships between PES and other public and private-sector organisations for effectively addressing emerging labour market challenges.

Exchanges between Public Employment Services (PES) at the meeting held online on 27 March focused on:

• What new relationships might PES need in order to fulfil different functions, to address different trends (such as digitalisation and the green transition) and to deal with unexpected crises (such as COVID-19)?
• How can such partnerships best be monitored and evaluated?
• Which key services must absolutely remain in-house within the PES?

Participants at the meeting were extremely positive that they could learn from each other on these topics and agreed to map and analyse PES partnerships already in place. This aims to enable the exchange, scale-up and transfer of successful approaches.

The group also aims to explore the potential training and guidance needs of those managing PES partnerships.

The Partnership Management WG brings together PES representatives from Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy and Lithuania. The first online meeting was co-chaired by the Belgian regional PES Le Forem (Wallonia) and Actiris (Brussels region). The second meeting is scheduled to be held online on 13 May 2020.