Projects

Trainings and Human Resources Development,Strategies and development programmes,Expertise and research work,

Improving Active Labour Markets in BiH

Bosna and Herzegovina

European Commission Delegation to Bosnia and Herzegovina

- Ministry of Civil Affairs (Sector for Labour, Employment, Social Protection and Pensions) - relevant entities’ Labour Ministries, State and Entity Employment Agencies, Sub-entity agencies and social partners as appropriate

The overall objective is to contribute to reduction of unemployment, improvement of employment and quality of jobs and to support social cohesion in BiH through enhanced effectiveness of labour markets. The purposes of this contract are as follows: - To develop better targeted and more effective active labour market measures and employment programmes in order to combat unemployment and increase employment and labour market attachment; -To design and implement instruments aiming at activating and enhancing employability of the unemployed persons and improving attachments to the labour market for all categories of labour market actors; -To systematically use of options design and assessment as well as their effective cost and benefit implications with the aim of delivering evidence based priority setting in policy development; -To strengthen the capacity of the institutions responsible for employment policy at all levels for programming, planning, designing, implementing and monitoring appropriate and cost effective ALMMs. The project will be implemented in four components as follows: Component 1: Advancing and extending the outreach of current provision of the active labour market measures and programmes. TA will assist employment services and ministries in defining and designing a portfolio of ALMMs and programmes. This implies introduction of new programmes and measures particularly those aimed at promotion of self-employment and entrepreneurship, enhancing employability through education and training programmes, motivation and activation programmes designed for long-term unemployed and other vulnerable groups. Also, TA will assist the ministries and employment services in designing recommendations for improvement of the current legislation, including mechanisms for broader access as well as more coherent approaches in implementation of ALMMs. Particular attention will be given to the issue of advancing standards that providers/institutions have to fulfil for delivering certain ALMMs as well as the enhancement of the job searching and other skills of the unemployed and those detached from the labour market through adequate short training programme piloted across all cantons/entities/districts. Component 2: Further upgrading the capacity and institutions of the Employment Services and other key actors in labour market "management" at all levels. The objective is to strengthen the capacities of employment services personnel for better designing, planning, implementing and monitoring of the ALMMs, as well as to further improve the cooperation with the employers in terms of promoting the available unemployed persons and increasing transparency of the ALMMs. TA will implement TNA of employment service personnel, and will develop the capacity building programmes in the field of cooperation with the employers, ALMMs, and delivery of job searching training. Component 3: Effective monitoring, evaluation review and feed back to ensure sustainability. There is the need for design and implementation of the institutions that can ensure sustainability of the tasks of managing labour market stocks and flows, as well as for reengineering the internal structures of current state and non-state operators in the labour market. The aim will be to institutionalise the permanency of assessment review, evaluation and feedback that ensures permanent learning and the avoidance of repetitious mistakes. The functionalities for embedding evidence based policy development will be assessed and put in place. Component 4: Communication and visibility strategy. The promotion and communication strategy aimed at awareness-rising and introduction of the activation measures for the unemployed will be developed and implemented using tools such as press releases, brochures, leaflets, advertisements, websites, conferences, etc. TA will assist and train the employment services personnel to design and deliver communication plan at cantonal/entity-district and state level in order to raise the image of employment services activities.

Start date: 2010-02-01

End date: 2011-10-31