Gudrun Nachtschatt & Peter Oberbichler

Indicators – general remarks

How to calculate the indicators for the benchmarking procedure

Vienna 24. 03. 2010

2

Personal experience

To assess the performance of your organisation you need a comparison with other organisations and valid and reliable data– Identification of weak points to see the necessary fields for

improvement

– To get good practice examples

Situation in Year 2000: A great number of confusing data on European level– Data not comparable at all

3

Personal experience

Agreement between QM-Manager of PES Denmark and PES Austria to compare results– Exchange of data: Good comparability seen

– Meeting: After 2 days of discussion only confusion

Agreement to start comparison of process and result data in a systematic way

Working group on Quality Management on European level introduced be the European Commission

Call for tender by the European Commission for innovative projects – start of the benchmarking

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Why is an extensive project necessary to compare simple data?

Each PES is used to it’s own indicators– Knows more or less what the indicator means and what is

behind the indicators• But also sometimes it needs internal specialist to get a full

understanding

5

Starting Point

6 PES show interest in taking part in an European Benchmarking Project

Decision: Comparison of data for strategic important areas and main service areas

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Starting point

Decision on areas for indicators– Service to jobseekers– Service to employers– Active labour market measures– Process indicators on (unemployment) benefits– Internal capacity planning data– Customer satisfaction

35 indicators in the above areas– Selecting of 12 indicators out of the list– Process indicators on (unemployment) benefits was deleted

International invitation to tender to get external support in caring out the benchmarking project

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First Tasks

Development of a manual for definition of indicators– Description of each part of the definition and also of the important

words and concepts; e.g. “unemployed”• unemployed (not taking part in active labour market measures)• unemployed (including persons in active labour market measures)• person looking for a job

– Information on “How important is this indicator?• Indicator is part of the business target system• Indicator is part of the management information system• Indicator is interesting for the PES

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Comparability of indicators

based on defined concepts/terms and meanings with several options

• unemployment,

• registration,

• deregistration,

• employment,

• training measure,

• participating in a training measure,

• transition to employment

documentation of measurement procedures and methods of calculation

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Difficulty to get comparable indicators

Different Definition

Different languages codes – the same word can have different meanings (English is for the most of us not the native languages)

Different measurement procedures (by definition or by technical or organisational possibilities)

Different employment market conditions (PES is not responsible for the economic situation in a country)

Different employment and social laws in the single countries)

Different provision with financial and personal resources

Different targets and priorities influences the results

10

Input – Output – OutcomeEffect of PES on labour market

Outcome

Economy Labour Market Dynamik Social Conditions

Input

Output

Public Employment Service

Employer Jobseeker

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Learning process concerning significance of the indicators

Start: Comparison of Indicators for benchmarking Now: Numerical figures as a starting point to search for

good practice– Some important lessons during the project (for AT)

• Indicator 1 (bringing unemployed back to work is the most important indicator for Austria – for other PES not)

• Indicator “Prevention of Unemployment is for the Netherlands very important – AMS Austria can not measure this indicator

• Sweden: Customer satisfaction is more important than the business results

• Open vacancies: In Austria the focus is on an active personal support, in other PES (VDAB, Sweden) is the focus on self service