Activation and individual employment service

The ongoing comprehensive reform of Finland's active labour market policies was the subject of the review held in Helsinki. This reform comprises among other things the improvement of the employment service by, for example, arranging interviews at which PES-consultants see unemployed job-seekers and draw up individual job-seeking plans that are signed by the job-seeker. The content of the Finnish reform is not of direct interest to two of the three peer countries attending the review, namely Denmark and the Netherlands. The Finnish reform is comparable to the changes that have just been implemented in both these countries and the Finnish approach is more similar to the Danish and Dutch approaches. In Germany several elements of the Finnish approach have just been put in place, but there are still some aspects that are not yet implemented and these are of interest to German policy makers.

All three peer countries indicated that the Finnish evaluation approach is very interesting as the reforms have been evaluated less thoroughly in these countries. The Finns have started five thorough, large-scale on-going evaluation studies into the effects of the different elements of the reform. The experimental nature of parts of the evaluation is particularly unusual and the peer participants found it interesting. But it is suggested that the evaluation should also extend beyond the scope of the individual; the macro-economic effects of the reform also need consideration in the opinion of the peer countries participants. On-going evaluations are not a common practice in the Netherlands or Germany. These evaluations are important as they offer good opportunities for remedial action during the implementation stage of the measures.