Job Centre Management and Organisation
– First-Year Experience of the Joint Job Centres

by Leena Eskelinen, September 2008

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Summary and Conclusion

Employment services in Denmark underwent a reorganisation on 1 January 2007, with the establish­ment of job centres to be responsible for both local authority (municipality) and central government employment programmes. The reform meant the merging of two previous agents in the area, the local authority employment services and the Public Employment Service (PES), but the amalgamation was not carried out uniformly. Two different models of organisation were agreed upon, with different degrees of integration between the local authority functions and the state functions. The present study addresses experience gained with the more widespread organisational model, the “Joint Job Centres”, in which the local authority and the state retain a high degree of formal independence. Of the total of 91 job centres, 77 are Joint Job Centres, while there are 14 “Pilot Job Centres” which come under the aegis of the local authority. Both types of job centres are staffed by both local authority and state employees.

The objective in establishing the job centres was to achieve greater uniformity and coordination of the work conducted by the local authorities and that performed by the PES than had been the case over many years, in spite of their employment policies having been by and large the same (Damgaard 2003). Prior to the job centre reform, staged initiatives to harmonise the PES and the local authority practice had been undertaken. The job centre reform is thus a component of a larger reform programme, “More People Working” (2002), which is not only about a new structure, but is concerned with a more thoroughgoing harmonisation of the two former systems in the employment area.

While all 91 job centres have faced the same problems of reorganisation, those that arise when two organisations merge (and especially in a situation where the requirement to collaborate did not arise at the two organisations’ own initiative, as was the case with the job centre reform), the Joint Job Centres have had particular challenges because the organisational structure with the local authority and the state in the same centre does not in itself support synergy. The study focused on the Joint Job Centres, because, owing to their particular organisational structure, they face greater challenges than the Pilot Job Centres. The study focused on how the Joint Job Centres have organised themselves and how inte­gra­tion and collaboration between the local authority and the state have developed. Have the two earlier systems approached each other in the job centre model, and if so, in what way? Have new relations of cooperation, different from those that existed before, been created within the new structure? We have examined management, internal organisation and integration, and also considered whether a link can be seen between organisation and results. Pilot centres were included in the study as a reference. The study was based on interviews and observation conducted at four selected job centres (Skive, Sorø,  Sønderborg and Næstved), and the material covers the first year of the job centres’ activity (2007).

Internal organisation and integration

The general finding of the study was that the Joint Job Centres have maintained the earlier organisa­tion­al division by retaining a structure in which the staff has, to the greatest extent possible, kept their previous tasks. The internal organisation therefore follows the same bipartite logic as the whole organisational model of the Joint Job Centres, namely, division between the state functions and the local authority functions. As job centres are also divided into units to serve different target groups, there are still units that are purely a local authority concern (for example, handling tasks related to match categories¹ 4 and 5 or to sick pay).

The two former organisations in the Joint Job Centres are closest to each other in those areas that both the PES and the local authorities dealt with before the reform, namely enrolment/visitation (common intake), local labour market service (outward-looking function), and the processing of match categories 1 to 3 (unemployed people who are fit to take on a normal job). In these areas there is common staffing, but still parallel practice. Local labour market service is the area that is most advanced with regard to coordination between the state and the local authority sectors.

The day-to-day work thus differs widely from the vision of a new division of tasks in the new organisation, where front-line employees would operate rather in the manner of generalists handling tasks spanning the two sectors. Instead, tasks are specialised to a high degree and the organisation has clear divisions according to function. Both systems are continuing their traditions in relation to the target groups with regard to which they have the greatest competence. Moreover, there has been a trend towards increased specialisation in the internal reorganisations that the job centres have carried out in the course of 2007.

That is not to say that there has not been development of practice in specific areas. The influence of the reform has been felt chiefly in relation to areas of local authority responsibility, especially with regard to match categories 4 and 5 and sick pay, where there has been a greater focus on results. The main endeavours of the constituent organisations in the Joint Job Centres have thus so far been centred on developing and systematising the activities within their “own” areas – in relation to their “own” target groups – conceivably the most efficient course in the short term.

Joint Job Centre management representatives are well aware that they are “running on parallel tracks”. Coexistence has rendered differences in practice visible, especially in the areas where target groups coincide (as with match categories 1–3), and it is therefore natural to compare the local authority employment services to the PES and vice versa. Initiatives on collaboration and coordination have so far been concerned with matters other than direct service to citizens. There is a definite will to collaborate, but the working out of specific forms of collaboration is still only in the initial phase. Examples of initiatives include joint events, such as job fairs, and efforts to develop a common terminology. 

In the light of the foregoing, it is relevant to ask whether it is reasonable to expect greater synergy, bearing in mind the conditions under which the job centres have worked during the first year of their existence.

The job centres explain the form of organisation with functional divisions by saying that this was necessary in order to carry on day-to-day operations in the period of transition from two separate systems to Joint Job Centres. Another argument is that it was necessary to offer reasonably stable conditions for personnel during a period of major changes (the Job Centre Reform coincided with the Danish Structural Reform). But there are also indications that the traditional organisational structure with its division by functions was retained as a matter of course, without other options being considered – in spite of the facts that various organisational models had been tried at the time of the labour market experiments of 2003–6 (Danish Labour Market Authority 2006), and that a new task composition had been recommended in connection with the job centre reform by both the Local Government Denmark and the Danish Labour Market Authority.

In several respects there are also matters over which the job centres themselves have not had direct influence. Several factors have contributed to the retention of a pre-existent division, and hinder front-line employees who worked in the two previous systems (local authority and state) from working more closely together, possibly on similar tasks. The differences in their work procedures are too great, and their practical implementation of the law is different. The state employees make up about 15 per cent of the staff, and occupy specific posts in the job centres: in enrolment/visitation, in local labour market service and in servicing insured unemployed in match categories 1–3. Moreover, the job centres are characterised by close relations with their local authority alone by virtue of the fact that a job centre was established in each municipality (apart from the seven smallest). Finally, there is a strong focus on results in the local authorities, and the job centres’ finances depend on reimbursement by the state. It is therefore to a large extent the priorities of the local authority parent organisations that determine the job centres’ day-to-day work, and there is a tendency for the part that the state is responsible for to become a niche activity.

The division into local authority and state components and an internal organisation with functional divisions are reinforced to a high degree by the management structure, where the two co-managers of the job centre are responsible to different parent organisations, which each have their own priorities. Moreover, the local authority component and the state component are financed differently, and results are measured in two different ways. There is an expectation among job centre managers and mid-level management that Joint Job Centres will be a temporary form.

For the sake of comparison it should be mentioned that organisation with functional divisions is not only seen in Joint Job Centres. The majority of Pilot Job Centres have organised themselves in the same way, despite the fact that they each have only a single job centre manager.

Management, organisation and results

The organisational situation in the job centres must also be seen in relation to the strong focus by the central authorities (the Ministry of Employment and the Danish Labour Market Authority) on central­ised management, improving efficiency, and coordination in the employment services. An expression of this seems to have been that there were high expectations of immediate implementation and immediate effects from the new structure: that the restructuring would yield efficiency improvements on the one hand, while on the other, management by results would, as an incidental benefit, promote the implementation of a new organisation. When the job centres were launched, their work was made subject to a particular form of result follow-up and management by results (including, among other things, the setting of employment targets and regular benchmarking of results).

A central theme in the debate on job centre organisation has been whether a management model with two co-managers in the Joint Job Centres is counterproductive in comparison with a hierarchical management structure, such as the Pilot Job Centres have. There are a number of factors that make it difficult to analyse management in isolation in order to reveal the connection between a particular management model and the results achieved. Firstly, the differences between the Joint Job Centres and the pilot job centres are not confined to matters of management, but extend to other matters, such as remit, relations with the local authority and Employment Region, terms of employment of staff, etc. Secondly, there are generally several factors in an organisation that have a bearing on its success (see the management representatives’ comments below). Thirdly, the period of observation in the present study was the job centres’ first year of existence, and there has been a running-in period during which the actual relocation and establishment affected the achievement of results. There has also been a period with turnover of both managers and other personnel – only one of the four job centres included in the study did not see a change at job centre manager level.

Job centre managers – especially those responsible to the local authority – point to bipartite manage­ment as a complicated structure that renders the decision-making process difficult. A job centre manager must both satisfy the stakeholders he represents (the local authority or administrative employ­ment region, respectively) and also cooperate with his or her co-manager. There may be conflicts of interest, where an initiative that would be efficient seen from the local authority point of view would not be efficient from the state point of view. The management model thus becomes to some extent a barrier that hinders the job centres from developing in the optimum way (and from reacting to external challenges). In interviews, the Joint Job Centre managers expressed the opinion that there were differences in their understanding of their task and objective, even though they had good mutual dialogue.

Drawing parallels between organisational conditions and results involves uncertainty. But the interviews with the job centre managers and mid-level management in the Joint Job Centres contain a number of interesting opinions on what might be relevant to whether a job centre functions well and achieves good results. It is clear from the interviews that there are several other factors involved than management, although well-functioning top and mid-level management is obviously very important.

Both the Joint Job Centres in the study have shown well in results comparisons. According to the job centre managers, this is to a great extent due to the fact that they are not very large. Large size is seen as counterproductive and as an explanation of the fact that there are several Pilot Job Centres whose showing is not as good with regard to results as that of some Joint Job Centres. What then are the advantages of smaller size? In this connection the management representatives point to three factors: firstly, a “manageable” organisation, where the distance between managers and staff is not great; secondly, “management presence”, i.e. visibility and communication with staff; and thirdly, that the work is carried on in dialogue with the staff, in other words, that the management listens to those in the front line. Other factors that are mentioned as important for achieving results are permanent, stable employees who support the objectives and understand the thinking behind the methods they have to use, and therefore use them correctly. “Simple structure” is also named as an advantage, with as few units as possible, in order to counter discontinuity in case processing.

The management representatives from the Joint Job Centres consider that large job centres – such as, for example, several Pilot Job Centres – have a more complicated organisation with more manage­ment levels, and typically a particular structure with “specialist consultants” which makes communi­ca­tion between the different levels of the organisation difficult. In this connection it should be mentioned that one of the job centres in the study, Jobcenter Sønderborg, has responded to this by setting up identically-composed teams, with each team undertaking all the tasks that a job centre has to perform. This mini job centre model is an example of how a large job centre can organise itself so as to preserve close contact between management and staff. 

Conclusion

The results of the project can be considered at two levels: firstly, what general trends are observed by the organisational merging of the employment services of the local authorities with the PES; and secondly, how has the collaboration between the two previously independent systems worked out in practice, after they were combined into job centres?

Generally, the job centres are in a situation between two developmental trends – increased goal and performance management from the state on the one hand, and increased local authority influence on the other. The job centres’ efficiency is continuously monitored against centrally-set targets, and they are consistently managed via reimbursement from the state. At the same time, the job centres are very much part of the local authority world as regards location, tasks and staff composition. The first factor – greater control from the state – represents a new situation from the local authority point of view, while the second represents a new situation from the point of view of the former PES. Earlier studies (e.g. Damgaard 2003) have indicated that the trend in the social welfare and labour market systems up until the “More People Working” programme (2002) was towards recentralisation, while in the light of the above-mentioned two trends there are indications that the job centre reform brought both a recentralisation and a decentralisation. 

How have the harmonisation and achievement of synergy worked out in practice (how much progress has been made) in the first year of the job centres’ existence? There is common staffing in those areas that both the local authorities and the PES system dealt with before the reform (enrolment/visitation, local labour market service, and processing of match categories 1 to 3), but there is a clear division of tasks between the local authority and state functions. It is not possible to say at this juncture whether this division has a tendency to become established or whether it will be possible to break down the demarcation lines to a greater degree than is the case at present. There has been a trend towards increased separation of local authority and state functions in the internal reorganisations that the job centres have carried out in the course of 2007.

The internal organisation that has typically been chosen by both the Joint Job Centres and the Pilot Job Centres appears to contribute to the maintenance of a separation between “local authority” and “state” functions, and thereby to render a higher degree of integration between the two areas more difficult. Organisation according to target groups thus entails the risk that both systems will maintain their traditions without greater coordination of the services. 

It is difficult to point to specific advantages of the organisational model of the Joint Job Centres, in which there are two co-managers, responsible to two different parent organisations. This form of organisation is felt to be complicated in practice and to be a barrier to the development of the job centre generally and of an integrated service specifically. The only advantage could be to ensure that the minority, the state component, has greater influence than it has in the Pilot Job Centres, which come under local authority aegis. The state sector, in respect of human resources, constitutes a very small part of the job centres, a kind of niche activity.

The requirement to be able to point to results appears to have directed the job centres’ development, including how they are organised. On the one hand, management by results in the form of the Minister’s employment targets has provided a general common objective for the job centres’ efforts. On the other hand, the focus on results and productivity has encouraged the job centres to regard the traditional division of tasks as the most efficient mode of organisation, at least in the short term. There are different requirements relating to the service provided to insured and uninsured unemployed persons, and the methods by which results are measured are different for the two groups – two factors that do not promote integration. This may be the reason that the two agents basically each work within, and give priority to, their own respective area.

1. Five “match categories” are used to express the degree of match of an unemployed person’s qualifications to the requirements of the labour market.

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