The Manual “Public Employment Services and the Future of Work” has been developed as a practical response to the ILO’s Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work. The work was initiated and led by Olga Koulaeva, Director of the ILO Decent Work Team and Country Office for Eastern Europe and Central Asia (ILO Moscow Office), and Mikhail Pouchkin, Deputy Director at the ILO Moscow Office, as part of the overall eff orts to enhance the PES role on improving and fostering innovations in employment policies and programs, labour market institutions and on delivering quality services to support life-long learning and labour market transitions, with focus on youth problems.
The Manual has been developed as part of the ILO technical assistance to the national reform of the Public Employment Service implemented by the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of the Russian Federation. The Manual is based on learning topics developed during the inter-regional meetings; the discussions held during two “Employment Academies” in Moscow, gathering heads of employment services of 16 Russian constituent entities, organised by the ILO jointly with the Federal Service for Labour and Employment (ROSTRUD) in 2019, and the lessons learnt from 6 partnerships for youth employment implemented in the selected Russian regions. The Manual has also benefi ted from the thematic policy discussions, best practices and country experiences identifi ed during the Sub-Regional Annual Conference on Youth Employment (Kazan, 2019) on the subject “Future of work and gender aspects of youth employment” held within the Project “Partnership for Youth Employment in the Commonwealth of Independent States”, and also from the PES trainings rolled out in Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan in 2018 and 2019.
The Manual “Public Employment Services and the Future of Work” has been developed and fi nanced by the Project “Partnerships for Youth Employment in the CIS”, Phase II, a public-private cooperation initiative between the ILO and the Russian LUKOIL Company. The Manual has been coordinated by Ramiro Pizarro, Project Manager, who also provided technical editing and led the training activities. Ruth Santos-Brien and Helen Metcalfe from ICF Consulting Services Limited have written diff erent chapters based on the project’s own training materials and presented the initial draft of the Manual at stakeholders‘ meetings. The Project team, Julia Surina and Kanae Tada, Junior Technical Officers, helped to organise the training sessions for the PES staff delivered in the Russian Federation, Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan; and Project assistants Anna Koroleva and Elena Kokoeva provided the administrative and logistical support needed for a successful implementation and follow up of the project activities.
The content of diff erent chapters benefi ted as well from numerous international experts who delivered diff erent trainings sessions: Yuri Gertsiy and Fedor Prokopov (Russian Federation); Jens Sibbersen (Denmark); Bjoern Halvorsen (Norway) and Bengt Lyngbäck (Sweden); Eamonn Davern (UK); Valli Corbanese (Italy). ILO colleagues conducted constructive conversations on how to strengthen the PES capacity to deliver quality services to youth, and provided invaluable advice and support to the training activities: Gianni Rosas (Director, ILO office for Italy and San Marino), Niall O’Higgins (Sr Youth Employment Research Specialist), Susana Puerto (Sr Youth Employment Specialist) and Michael Mwasikakata (Head, Labour Market Services Unit).