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Working and ageing
16 Guidance and counselling for mature learners

most appropriate to their needs. This will require ― and will only be feasible
through ― more intensive use (and development) of the possibilities offered
today by modern information and communications technology. This could
enable guidance services successfully to reach older workers and other
groups. Increasing involvement of service users (in this case older workers)
in designing and developing guidance provision is crucial to create more
effective systems and to identify and meet requirements of diverse users
(Cedefop, 2011).

1.4. Career management in changing labour markets

In the current labour-market situation, still affected by the economic crisis,
public employment services in Europe are confronted with several urgent
short-term challenges and the need to adapt to long-term strategic objectives.
Continuing high unemployment rates, and youth unemployment rates more
specifically, demand immediate actions, which ideally should be compatible
with developments guided by the long-term strategic objectives defined in the
Europe 2020 strategy (European Commission, 2010b), the Agenda for new
skills and jobs flagship initiative, and the European employment strategy,
which calls for expanding investment in workersʼ skills for creating more and
better jobs throughout the EU (European Commission, 2010c).
Public employment services are crucial actors if we want successfully to
apply and develop skill needs forecasts. This will also require close
cooperation between employers, trade unions and educational institutions
across Europe to serve better the labour market (Cedefop, 2011; Council of
the European Union, 2009b).
Public employment services could assume a dynamic role as labour-market
change agents with priorities such as increased labour-market transparency
and new support processes (including career management services)
especially in relation to vulnerable groups. Public employment services can
act as contributors, users and interpreters of labour-market information,
provide job-and-career-related services through various (also electronic)
channels (online, telephone and face-to-face services) as well as address
special cases, for example, redundancy and outplacement (European
Commission, 2009; Cedefop, 2010b). However, several gaps in labour-market
information and guidance service provision have been identified (OECD,
2010). Relevant information is not always available or readily comprehensible
for all those that could benefit from it.