Purpose: To describe occupational therapists experiences of development in occupational therapy at The Swedish Public Employment Service. Method: The study was conducted using qualitative interviews. Thirteen occupational therapists working at The Swedish Public Employment Service participated. The occupational therapists had a geographical spread throughout Sweden. Collected data was transcribed and analysed according to qualitative content analysis. Result: Data resulted in five categories as follows: To work with development of scientific methods, Importance of feasibility to competence development, Cooperation as a part of the improvement work, Preconditions to be person-centered and Importance of continual evaluation to improve actions. The occupational therapists describes in these categories various supportive and hindering factors at to what extent they had preconditions to carry out and develop occupational therapy at The Swedish Public Employment Service. Supporting factors were described as well-developed methods, a person-centered approach and intern cooperation. Obstructing factors were described as defective coordination between social actors in the community, insufficient evaluations, limited possibilities to competence development and implementation of research. Conclusion: This study contribute to knowledge of occupational therapists preconditions to development of methods and improvement work. The study shows that it is a lack of knowledge and a need of research is required to illustrate the role of occupational therapists within vocational rehabilitation at The Swedish Public Employment Service. / Syfte: Att beskriva arbetsterapeuters erfarenheter av utveckling inom arbetsterapi vid Arbetsförmedlingen i Sverige. Metod: Studien genomfördes med kvalitativa intervjuer. Tretton arbetsterapeuter med anställning vid Arbetsförmedlingen deltog. Arbetsterapeuterna hade en geografisk spridning över hela Sverige. Insamlad data transkriberades och analyserades enligt kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Resultat: Data resulterade i fem kategorier enligt följande: Att arbeta med utveckling av vetenskapliga metoder, Betydelsen av möjlighet till kompetensutveckling, Samverkan som en del i utvecklingsarbetet, Förutsättningar till personcentrering samt Betydelsen av ständig utvärdering för förbättrade åtgärder. Arbetsterapeuterna beskriver i dessa kategorier olika faktorer som stöttade och hindrade i vilken utsträckning som de hade förutsättningar att utföra och utveckla arbetsterapi vid Arbetsförmedlingen. Stödjande faktorer beskrevs bland annat som välutvecklade metoder, ett personcentrerat arbetssätt och interna samarbeten. Hindrande faktorer beskrevs som undermålig samverkan med samhällsaktörer, bristande utvärderingar samt begränsade möjligheter till kompetensutveckling och implementering av forskning. Slutsats: Studien bidrar till kunskap kring arbetsterapeuternas förutsättningar till utveckling av metoder och förbättrande arbetssätt. Studien visar på en kunskapslucka och behov av forskning kring ämnet är nödvändigt för att belysa arbetsterapeuters roll inom den arbetslivsinriktade rehabiliteringen vid Arbetsförmedlingen.

The aim of this paper is to research and discuss the role the cultural politics play for the Swedish employment office (Arbetsförmedlingen) and the meaning culture politics have within the labour market policy. A research has shown that Arbetsförmedlingen evaluates unemployed cultural workers differently than regular registered jobseekers. From an instrumental perspective on political implementation this can be considered as an anomali. Arbetsförmedlingen’s mandate derives from the government and its authority is a tool for carrying out state policy. A study, conducted on how Arbetsförmedlingen handles matching of culture jobseekers in the labour market can therefore be utilized as guidance towards possible answers regarding the state’s cultural policy in general. The problem formulation presented above led to the following inquiry: Does Arbetsförmedlingen have a cultural political assignment appointed by the government? Furthermore, what does the answer to the question imply regarding the Swedish cultural policy? A descriptive analysis of ideas are applied in order to examine governmental political documents and Arbetsförmedlingen’s regulations. The inquiry has generated a no answer for its question.  Arbetsförmedlingen does not have a cultural political assignment. The governmental organization has primarily a labour market political mission and in this context it signifies that it balances the cultural labour market. The result indicates that the Swedish cultural policy are presently diverting from the traditional Swedish model, where the state had a closer relationship to the culture and the culture workers.

La mondialisation et l’européanisation impliquent de plus en plus une gestion à un niveau régional et local des marchés du travail transfrontalier. Dans ce cadre, le projet Interreg « travail sans frontière » Rhône-Alpes/Piémont constitue un laboratoire interrégional de la construction européenne du marché du travail. La coopération des services publics de l’emploi et de leurs acteurs, issue d’un modèle centralisé pour la France et décentralisé pour l’Italie, participe à la construction sociale du marché du travail Rhône-Alpes/Piémont. C’est à travers une sociographie et une modélisation de ce marché du travail que sont mises en exergue les logiques d’actions singulières des institutions et de leurs acteurs. Le marché du travail Rhône-Alpes/Piémont est spécifique, de part l’héritage dynamique qui l’a produit, les structures actuelles qui le portent et les perspectives de développement que lui offre sa position transfrontalière. La spécificité de l’espace frontière créé dans le cadre de ce type de coopérations se nourrit de la complexité des maillages institutionnels et de la non harmonisation des services publics au niveau européen. Le modèle fourni par l’analyse repose sur une quadruple hypothèse : c’est un marché des professions, un marché de service public, un marché transfrontalier et un marché transitionnel. Le modèle ainsi élaboré est spécifique et peut être transposé à d’autres systèmes. / Globalization and Europeanization are involving a more local management for the cross-border labour market. In this framework, the Interreg project between Rhone Alpes and Piemont called “working without borders” is a real interregional laboratory for the european labour market construction. The public employment services cooperation and their actors steming from a centralized model in France and from a decentralized one in Italy are participating in the social construction of the Rhone-Alpes - Piemont labour market. This is through the labour market modeling and sociografy that are pointed up the peculiar processes of the different institutions and of their protagonists. The Rhone Alpes-Piemont labour market is very specific one, due to the dynamic heritage which created it, the current structures bearing it and the expansion prospects that its cross border position enables. The specificity of the border space created in the framework of this type of cooperations is fed by the complexity of institutional meshings and the lack of synchronization of public utilities on the european field. The model provided by the analysis relies on a quadruple assumption: this is a market of professions, a market of public utilities, a transborder market and a transitional market. Consequently, this model is specific and can be transposable to any other system.

The objective of this thesis is to forecast the number of people registered at the Swedish Public Employment Service (Arbetsförmedlingen) that will manage to get employment each month and examine how accurate the forecasts are. The Swedish Public Employment Service is a government-funded agency in Sweden working to keep the unemployment rate low. When someone is unemployed or looking for a new job, he or she can register at the Swedish Public Employment Service. Being able to forecast well how many are expected to get employment could be useful when planning and making decisions. It could also be used as an indicator of how well the Swedish Public Employment Service manages to perform and thus how well the tax money is used. The models employed for forecasting were the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) and the long short-term memory (LSTM). A persistence model is also used as a baseline. The persistence model is a very simple model and the other models are therefore expected to outperform it. For the LSTM model, the use of both univariate and multivariate approaches will be explored in order to examine if the model can be improved with more data. Results from the experiments performed showed that a multivariate LSTM performed the lowest root mean squared error (RMSE) and is therefore considered the best model. However, the robustness of the model over time needs further research. / Syftet med detta arbete är att göra prognoser på hur många av de registrerade på Arbetsförmedlingen som kommer att få arbete en viss månad och undersöka hur noggranna dessa prognoser blir. Arbetsförmedlingen är en skattefinansierad myndighet i Sverige som arbetar med att hålla arbetslösheten låg. När någon är arbetslös eller letar efter ett arbete kan man registrera sig hos Arbetsförmedlingen. Att kunna göra bra prognoser på hur många som kommer att få arbete skulle kunna vara användbart vid planering och beslutfattande. Det skulle också kunna användas som en indikator på hur väl Arbetsförmedlingen använder skattepengarna. De modeller som har använts är seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) och long short-term memory (LSTM). En persistensmodell används också som baslinje. Persistensmodellen är en enkel modell och därför förväntas de andra modellerna prestera bättre. För LSTM-modellen kommer användningen av både envariabla och flervariabla tillvägagångssätt att undersökas för att testa om mer data kan förbättra modellen. Resultat från experimenten visar att det var en LSTM-modell med flera variabler som presterade lägst root mean squared error (RMSE) och anses därför vara den bästa modellen. Det behövs dock ytterligare studier för att undersöka modellens stabilitet över tid.

Long-term unemployment is a social problem that is expected to increase in the coming years because of the on-going recession. Unemployment creates dilemmas both for the individual and society in form of an increased pressure on the individual to be reflexive in their identity and self-development and for society which wants to regulate unemployment and keep it under control. In the regulation letter for the Public employment Service for the year 2023, it was clearly formulated that the authority must work to prevent people from falling into long-term unemployment. The purpose with this study is thru qualitative interviews with —Public employment officers, job coaches and recruitment staff— investigate if the first two´s tips to the unemployed people matches what the recruitment staff really want to see in the applications for example.. The empiric of this study will be analyzed with help of Anthony Giddens theory about the modernity and self-identity with terms like, Ontological security, disembedding and expert systems. The result of this study shows that there are divided meaning both within and between the professions, in what are expected from a unemployed person and how they should put themselves at the market in form of how to use the application documents. What also brings to the light it that it often is bad quality on the application documents. These disagreements and dilemmas that the job seeker encounters challenge its ontological security and can negatively affect them. / Långtidsarbetslöshet är ett samhällsproblem som befaras öka under de närmsta åren till följd av den pågående lågkonjunkturen. Arbetslöshet skapar dilemman både för individ och samhälle i form av en ökad press på individ till reflexivitet i sin identitet och personlig utveckling, och för samhället som vill reglera arbetslösheten och hålla den kontrollerad. I regleringsbrevet för Arbetsförmedlingen inför år 2023 var det tydligt formulerat att myndigheten ska verka för att förhindra att människor hamnar i långtidsarbetslöshet. Syftet med den här studien är att genom kvalitativa intervjuer med 3 olika grupper —arbetsförmedlare, jobbcoacher och rekryterare— undersöka om de två förstnämndas råd matchar det rekryterarna säger att de verkligen vill ha.. Empirin analyseras med hjälp av Anthony Giddens teoretiska ramverk kring det senmoderna samhället och självidentitet, med begrepp så som urbäddning, expertsystem och ontologisk trygghet. Resultatet på denna studie visar på att det råder stor oenighet både inom och mellan professionerna i vad som förväntas av en arbetssökande och hur den ska marknadsföra sig själv i form av ansökningshandlingar, men där det också framkommer att det ofta råder dålig kvalité på de ansökningshandlingar man tar emot. Dessa oenigheter och dilemman de arbetssökande stöter på utmanar dess ontologiska trygghet, och kan påverka den arbetssökande negativt.

No description available.

The aim of this study was to explore evaluation in the Swedish Public Employment Service, with particular focus on how the use of evaluations looks like. The study consists of two studies. The first one is an analysis of the Employment Service’s all policy documents that describe or mention evaluation as well as an interview-study with all the management staff in one of the Employment Service’s local labor market units. The second study is a comparative study with analysis of the Employment Service’s entire evaluation production for the years 2010 and 2015. The results show that the Swedish Public Employment Service is a hierarchically controlled governmental organization with routines for effective communication of management's messages to all levels in the organization. Employment Service's evaluation is governed and implemented centrally and communicated from the top, down through the organization. Evaluations are mainly used as a routine for checking and reporting, as well as accounting to the government. Managers on a middle and local level find that much of the evaluation is about control, and that control is not adapted to needs of the everyday business on the local level. Evaluation activities are extensive. Evaluations seems to have become an end in itself, used in legitimizing purposes rather than as a tool for developing of the service to the clients. Half of the evaluations that the Employment Service carried out by their own, is regular evaluations. Almost all evaluations carried out by the European Social Fund Council in Sweden and “Samordningsförbund” (associations for coordination of social projects) are single occasion-evaluations. Legitimizing dominates the use of evaluation, both 2010 and 2015 in evaluating production. Evaluation for improving of the service to the clients is mentioned only in a small number of policy documents. Evaluations that includes the client’s perspective as well as proposals for change occurs to a limited extent in both 2010 and 2015. The Organization of the Employment Service's evaluation activities are heavily influenced by New Public Management's management philosophy.

Background and Aim: Development and digitalization of contemporary work life means that leadership at a distance becomes commonplace practice in an increasing number of organizations. Which affects leader prerequisites to handle their followers psychosocial work environment. This study´s aim was to explore office workers perceptions of how leadership at a distance affects their psychosocial work environment. Methods: Ten informants (coworkers) from the Swedish Public Employment Service were interviewed using semi-structured questions and their narratives were analyzed using inductive content analysis. Results: The analysis resulted in three salient sub-themes which were Equality, Contraposition, and Losses. These sub-themes resulted in a main theme that expresses how leadership at a distance holds potential for improved psychosocial work conditions. If leaders acknowledge the increased autonomy employees expect from a remote leadership. And cooperate with their employees to compensate for the losses that accompany physical distance. Leadership at a distance also contains risks when the contact between leadership and employee doesn´t compensate for the losses that comes with physical absence. Which can lead to a psychosocial work environment where employees experience alienation, feelings of disregard and a lack of support.  Conclusions: Leadership at a distance seems to create opportunities for employees to experience an improved psychosocial work environment, through a more autonomous everyday work environment. Including an opportunity for peer relation with their manager. With physical distance follows a loss of inter-human contact and fewer possibilities for a manager to perceive their co-workers everyday work environment. Meaning conditions where managers become dependent on their employees in a new way, not only for task performance, but for being able to handle psychosocial work conditions. Even if remote leadership seems compatible with a satisfying psychosocial work environment. The work place needs to make an effort for leaders to be present in new ways that facilitates psychological and functional closeness. In a way that allows managers to provide the freedom employees expect from a distance leadership along with the attention they need. Without letting their own control needs lead to detailed control and increased monitoring which may lead to a negative psychosocial work environment. Examples where leaders, and organizations as a whole, needs to reconsider new ways are: How to achieve availability, managers insight into the everyday work environment, building relationships that facilitate trust, and communicate clear expectations.   Key Words: Leadership at a distance, remote leadership, psychosocial work environment, Swedish Public Employment Service, qualitative content analysis

<p>The 1990s were a period of economic crisis and mass unemployment. The dissertation shows that in the labour market policy guidelines in the period 1978–2004, a dichotomy was constructed between, on the one hand, a group of unemployed described in positive terms as potentially able to gain new employment, and, on the other hand, a group – referred to in the dissertation as the Others – whose exclusion and marginalisation were seen as permanent. </p><p>Unemployment has not always been defined as a social problem. The nature of the problem of unemployment has been understood and conceptu­alised differently over time. Frames of interpretation contribute to the construction and/or reproduction of categories of unemployed within the context of active Swedish labour market policies. The point of departure for the study is that the definition of social problems is a complex process of social construction. It is an active process of re(construction), in which certain problems become perceived as social problems while others are not. </p><p>The flexibilisation of the labour market, and of labour market policy, is an institutional and discursive process that leads to new categorisations and otherings on the labour market.<i> </i></p><p>In the wake of the 1990s crisis, and of the more structural transformation of the Swedish labour market, a group of long-term unemployed has emerged. In the official guidelines of the labour market policy, the recommendations are to treat this group within the framework of the measures and activities that earlier applied to groups with disabilities. In this process, the structural labour market problem becomes defined politically in terms of individual disabilities. This is not only a process of individualisation, but also a process of medicalization. In this manner, unemployment, and particularly long-term unemployment, becomes analogous to disability.</p>

The 1990s were a period of economic crisis and mass unemployment. The dissertation shows that in the labour market policy guidelines in the period 1978–2004, a dichotomy was constructed between, on the one hand, a group of unemployed described in positive terms as potentially able to gain new employment, and, on the other hand, a group – referred to in the dissertation as the Others – whose exclusion and marginalisation were seen as permanent. Unemployment has not always been defined as a social problem. The nature of the problem of unemployment has been understood and conceptu­alised differently over time. Frames of interpretation contribute to the construction and/or reproduction of categories of unemployed within the context of active Swedish labour market policies. The point of departure for the study is that the definition of social problems is a complex process of social construction. It is an active process of re(construction), in which certain problems become perceived as social problems while others are not. The flexibilisation of the labour market, and of labour market policy, is an institutional and discursive process that leads to new categorisations and otherings on the labour market. In the wake of the 1990s crisis, and of the more structural transformation of the Swedish labour market, a group of long-term unemployed has emerged. In the official guidelines of the labour market policy, the recommendations are to treat this group within the framework of the measures and activities that earlier applied to groups with disabilities. In this process, the structural labour market problem becomes defined politically in terms of individual disabilities. This is not only a process of individualisation, but also a process of medicalization. In this manner, unemployment, and particularly long-term unemployment, becomes analogous to disability.