The Partnership for Services to Investors Seeking Personnel and Outplacement Services is a project of the Regional Labour Office in Krakow implemented in the framework of the Human Capital Operational Programme (VI Priority) – The Labour Market Open to All, Condition 6.1.1., supporting individuals who remain without employment on the regional labour market.

An Innovative Project
The Partnership for Services to Investors Seeking Personnel and Outplacement Services is a novel undertaking that began the implementation of support for investors at the local level, searching for personnel and outplacement. Earlier such initiatives of investor support did not offer complete information regarding the potential of local human resources. The above project is a chance to mend this lack.

Key Assumptions
A fundamental goal of our project is the support of investors seeking personnel and of employers re-structuralising their employment scheme. Support is provided by the creation of a network of cooperative partnership between local government entities (city and community administrative offices, the Marshal Office of the Malopolska Region), academic career offices, unions, employers’ and entrepreneurs’ organizations. This group comprises of those institutions that directly service state tasks involved with the labour market as well as those entities that more broadly influence the labour market (entities that serve to develop human resources, extend dialogues and public-community partnerships at the regional and local levels).

Chronology of the Partnership
The project emerges from the need to create new solutions concerning the current functions of support for investors seeking personnel and outplacement services. At the roots of the project was the following diagnosis: institutions providing services to investors seeking personnel and outplacement service (public employment services, agencies, academic career offices, local governments) frequently acted in an uncoordinated fashion.  Each of these institutions possesses different possibilities and tools for providing services, implemented individually without the due consideration of partnerships – the effect of which can be seen in a lack of complementing spheres of service activity.  Given such conditions we realized the necessity to reshape the model of cooperation and to prepare staff dealing with the issues of finding personnel and helping those individuals who have been laid off.  

The Partnership Network  
Our answer to the situation presented above was the formation of a coordinated system of partnerships between the activities of those institutions dealing with the support of investors in human resources issues.  The institutional entities gathered together in the Partnership share the conviction that human resources are a strategic investment capital in the Malopolska region. The Partnership is a social body, apolitical and of a non-profit character not inscribed by any legal statutes.  The activities of this group are based on the good-will input of its staff members forming a network of cooperation in the Malopolska region for the benefit of employers seeking personnel and outplacement service.


The Partnership is comprised of:

•    Public employment services (District Labour Offices, the Regional Labour Office, employment agencies)
•    Local governments at the municipal level
•    Academic career offices at universities in the Malopolska region
•    Institutions at the regional level, among others: The Department of Economy and Information Society (Marshal Office, Malopolska Region), Malopolska Regional Development Agency
•    Organizations of unions and entrepreneurs

A Consultant’s Tasks
A crucial element in the creation of the Partnership was nominating consultants among the employees of the institutions involved. Their task is to service entrepreneurs in issues regarding personnel acquisition and outplacement. These services complement those existing on a strictly investment oriented basis (legal services, territory and infrastructure investment („hardware” aspects of an investment offer). Additionally, the network of partnership acts at the local level, allowing for more complete and detailed information to be delivered to the investor regarding available human resources.

Benefits from Participating in the Partnership
Activities of the Partnership reveal at least a dual-form of benefits. For the Partner: the possibility to utilize specialist training programs, raising the effectiveness of services, the possibility to engage in the Partnership’s initiatives, expanding the possibilities of implementing benefits for employers, taking advantage of the resources and potential of others in the Partnership, cooperation and support in the organization of events targeted at employers, support regarding the preparation of human resource characteristics, influence on regional labour market politics. Benefits for the Maloposka Labour Market: facilitation access for employers to labour market services and the possibility of meeting the complete and specific requirements of employers.

Measures Implemented by the Project
1.        Working out a model of partnership cooperation, benefiting investors seeking personnel and outplacement.
2.    The establishment of the Partnership for investors seeking personnel and undertaking outplacement process, to which 100 institutions have announced access by September, 2010.
3.    Working out original training programs dealing with providing professional services for investors and preparing investment offers taking into account human resources.
4.    Training Consultants from the above mentioned institutions in professional servicing of investors with special consideration of human resources.
5.    Leading promotional and information campaigns on the subject of the strategic role of entrepreneurs in the local labour market – organizing conferences, meetings with representatives of local governments and business institutions.
6.    Working out the local characteristics of human resources for selected districts in the Maloposka region, representing a compliment to „hardware” components of the investment offer.
7.    Cooperation and the mutual implementation of task with the Business in Malopolska Centre, benefiting investors in the region.
8.    The construction and implementation of an internet platform, facilitation communication between consultants with selected Partnership institutions.
9.    Servicing information regarding possibilities for gaining support in outplacement activities in the framework of public employment service.
10.    Monitoring the support of outplacement in the Malopolska region.

Information about forms of assistance to investors to acquire employees and match the qualifications of personnel with investors’ demands

I. Forms of Assistance Offered by Labour Offices

Information on the Małopolska labour market

The Voivodship Labour Office in Kraków and the poviat labour offices of Małopolska have information and analyses available which may be helpful to investors interested in locating their businesses in the region. It is possible to obtain reliable and valid information, which is updated on an on-going basis and which provides a picture of the situation in the labour market, data on the numbers and characteristics of the human resources available, as well as the occupational profiles and qualifications of the registered unemployed.
This information is offered to investors free of charge.

Programmes in support of the recruitment process

Vocational counselling
Interested investors can use the services of vocational counsellors employed at labour offices and prepared to carry out a number of HR tasks to assist employers in selecting candidates for work. Vocational counsellors work as partners in the process of staff recruitment undertaken by the investor through:

• support in planning, organising and delivering the recruitment process, including the preparation of job descriptions, the profile of an ideal candidate, choice of appropriate methods of recruitment and assessment of candidates for work, and
• drafting opinions on the candidates with the use of professional counselling and psychometric profiling. Vocational counsellors can also organise training in the selection of candidates for work for investors.

• Refund is available of part of the costs of the employee’s pay and contribution towards their social security for 6 months.
• The refund is a maximum of the equivalent of the monthly unemployment benefit and social security contributions on the refunded wage.

The employer can get such financial support when hiring an unemployed person for a period of at least 12 months on a full time position.

Training offers the opportunity for investors to engage the required personnel as a result of unemployed people acquiring or improving their vocational qualifications in line with the investors’ demands.

This measure offers a person without any occupational experience an opportunity to acquire practical skills through work at a place indicated by the employer without establishing an employment relationship. The employer interested in organising this measure is free to define its programme and then comprehensively observe and evaluate the worker in his or her work. This is a convenient form of preparing future personnel for selected positions. Work experience is addressed to unemployed persons below the age of 25 or persons with higher education below 27 years of age.

• This measure is financed from the Labour Fund resources administered by poviat labour offices and the employer does not incur any costs involved.
• Work experience is held with a participating employer, in line with the programme set out in the contract, for a period of up to 12 months. A person going through a work experience period receives a grant from the poviat labour office, in the amount equal to the unemployment benefit.

Work experience periods are organised by poviat labour offices using the possibilities and solutions set out in the Act on the Promotion of Employment and Labour Market Institutions (Dz.U. /Journal of Laws/ No. 99, item 1001).