Co-funded by the European Union

Private Employment Services Pave the Road to Recovery after Covid-19

  • WEC presented its three areas of priorities to recovery, namely developing the conditions for going back to work, facilitating activation and transition of agency workers, and allowing the access to social protection.

World Employment Confederation (WEC) disclosed a “quick and safe road to recovery” by developing a plan based on three-focus areas and a set of priorities.

In so doing, private employment services demonstrated a possible way to partner with workers, businesses, and society to achieve and shape a “better normal”.

As mentioned in the policy paper, “since the crisis exposed some inadequateness of labour market institutions and safety nets to mitigate economic disruption and cushion impact for all workers, while, at the same time, government, businesses and workers have showcased resilience, flexibility, and determination to mitigate the crisis”, human resources services stand ready to overcome the existing challenges and help society, workers and businesses.

PIC1

The paper indicates the labour market policies needed for the road to recovery based on the following priorities: 

  1. Operationalising the return to work, by creating the conditions – together with employers and their organisations, trade unions, governments and international institutions, for occupational health and safety. This priority goes hand in hand with the process of “increasing, maintaining, and securing digital infrastructure to allow the flexibility to return to higher levels of health and safety restrictions and remote working”, but also with the persistent use of digital solutions for remote skilling and e-signatures, for instance.
  2. A framework for activation and transition, that includes the simplification of restrictions for assigning agency workers to specific sectors and occupations – as already ensured in many countries at the peak of the Covid-19 crisis. Activation and transition of workers is guaranteed also by an improved partnership between public and private employment services so that people exposed to unemployment or informality “have access to the pooled expertise, digital tools, and quality of public and private employment services”.
  3. Speed up Social Innovation to ensure access to minimum levels of social protection, to be available to all workers across diverse form of work. This includes taking stock of the sector experiences in terms of specific protections allocated to agency workers that by definition work across different jobs, companies and sectors.

WEC President, Annemarie Muntz, commented that “Now is the time to innovate our safety nets to cover all and accept that diverse forms of work sustain all employment and that benefits, costs and risks need to be proportionately shared. Let us take stock on the many governments taking their responsibility to cover all forms of work in their Covid-19 relief measures and move towards safety nets that hold value add for all workers and deliver on the agility businesses need”.