Employment Service activities to increase employment

The Employment Service would contribute more to employment growth if its lines of action were reviewed and updated, the planning and evaluation of activities were more coherent, and the consultants’ orientation towards results was higher. All this would make it possible to achieve better results in the provision of services to jobseekers and employers, as published in the National Audit Office audit report “Employment Service activities to increase employment”. 

“The audit showed that the Employment Service, despite its efforts to achieve its objectives, needs more change to justify the fundamental expectation of increasing employment. Currently, the Service is often linked to the registration of unemployed people for the payment of benefits and not to their employment. In both 2019 and 2020, the Service achieved less than half of the planned results", — says Eivida Šlamė, Principal Auditor-Audit Team Leader of the Performance Audit Department 4 of the National Audit Office. 

One of the factors that can help people find self-employment is the appropriate consultancy from the Employment Service. The audit shows that during the pandemic, 39.6 % of consultants did not devote enough time to such consultancy, while 59.3 % of unemployed people were not assessed for self-employment.

The share of persons receiving vocational counselling and career planning services is low and decreased by 4 times during the pandemic, reaching 0.4 % in the first half of 2021. When consulting on the acquisition or retraining of a profession, one in five career and recruitment consultants do not use the results of labour market monitoring. In the 1st half of 2021, 12.3 % of jobseekers were sent to acquire professions that are not on the list of professions in demand. The Service should better target individuals in acquiring professions and competences that are in demand on the labour market. 

Half of the employers say that the candidates proposed by the Service lack motivation to work. The auditors estimate that 6.9 % of the candidates proposed by the Service were recruited for vacant posts in the first half of 2021, thus filling 9.2 % of the vacancies. The results of activities of the Service would be beneficial to employers if the Service were able to identify and propose suitably qualified and motivated candidates to job vacancies.

The introduction of new working methods in the Employment Service was more intensive in 2021, however training, methodological support and information systems should be more responsive to the needs of consultants in the Service.

Better results could be achieved by providing consultants with relevant training and by making more use of the information system to explain customers’ needs and reduce the workload of consultants.

The implementation of the audit recommendations will contribute to the Service’s performance in reducing long-term unemployment: the share of re-registered unemployed will decrease, the satisfaction of jobseekers and employers with the services provided by the Employment Service will increase, more vacancies will be filled.