International Journal of Soft Computing Applications ISSN: 1453-2277 Issue 1 (2007), pp.17-26 © EuroJournals Publishing, Inc. 2007 http://www.eurojournals.com/IJSCA.htm
Software Agents Integrating Job Rotation with e-Learning Nikolaos V. Karadimasa National Technical University of Athens, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Multimedia Technology Laboratory, 9 Heroon Polytechniou Zografou Campus, 157 80 Athens, Greece E-mail:
[email protected] Tel: +302107722538, Fax: +302107722538 Nikolaos P. Papastamatioub Technopolis S.A., 31 Giannitson St, 54627, Thessalonica, Greece Abstract This work presents the Job Rotation model as an e-service application that links training policy with employment policy. It is a tool that assists companies to decide upon the proper training for their employees and at the same time it supports them in finding and recruiting new employees. The proposed platform is a management tool that coordinates Job Rotation activities, which take place after successfully matching offers from companies with the qualifications of unemployed individuals. The aforementioned matches are made without any human intervention and are derived from several recorded criteria while the final choice is made by the parties involved (individuals who express interest and companies that accept them). The system also offers a number of third party e-learning courses, integrated in its e-learning module, on essential skills necessary for registered unemployed individuals in order to effectively replace the departing employees. The selected courses vary according to the market needs of each country. This work concluded to a robust application and is currently market validated in five European countries, in the framework of the e-Ten program, (call 2005) [1]. The benefits of the developed system derive from the fact that it brings together unemployed individuals, companies and training organizations, under the same umbrella, providing all the necessary web tools to manage the above exchanged information performing optimal matches. Keywords: Job Rotation, Software Agents, e-Learning, unemployment.
1. Introduction Europe is moving towards a knowledge-based society and economy. More than ever before, access to up-to-date information and knowledge, together with the motivation and skills to use these resources intelligently on behalf of oneself and the community as a whole, are becoming the key to strengthening Europe’s competitiveness and improving the employability and adaptability of the workforce. To follow this revolution, it has become evident to all stakeholders, that enterprises should improve the knowledge acquisition of their employees, at all the levels of their businesses (from management to production) by providing them life long access to learning. However, the training offered nowadays, has been criticized for insignificant improvement of the employee’s qualifications.
Software Agents Integrating Job Rotation with e-learning
18
This results mainly because, on the one hand, the necessary training and planning has not been recorded, and, on the other, employers - especially Small and Medium size Enterprises (SMEs) - are unwilling to participate so as not to disrupt their production. Additionally, new recruits hired to substitute departing employees, can scarcely be expected to be immediately operational since they must undergo a period of training. In general, there is an ineffective connection between training, production procedure and employment. The Job Rotation model, a tool that links training to employment policy, helps companies overcome the aforementioned obstacles of re-training their employees, as well as the unemployed to enter the labour market. Job Rotation promotes both training and labour market activities. It provides employees with paid leave to participate in supplementary training, while they are replaced in their jobs by unemployed people, who in turn receive a period of on-the-job training [2]. The Job Rotation model is not only a market tool enabling a solution to be found to the long-term unemployment of lowskilled individuals, but also a training tool that enables firms to maintain and expand their employees’ skills without holding up production. More importantly, Job Rotation links training to employment policy by providing a partial solution to the significant question of the relationship between training and employment. According to the Employer’s Guide from WEA [3], more than 3,000 companies Europe-wide have participated in Job Rotation. Almost 90,000 employees have received training and 20,000 unemployed people have trained as substitutes and re-entered employment. Job Rotation has been described as a win-win strategy where all the parties involved derive benefit [4]. The presented Job Rotation e-service is a web application for administrating and supporting the appliance of Job Rotation models (Partners and pilots). The unemployed are offered free e-learning courses on general fields (communication skills, Basic IT skills, professional English, etc) so they are prepared for the job market and simultaneously their rotation (substitution) is coordinated with the employees that temporarily depart for further training. The e-service matches the qualifications of the unemployed individuals to the needs of the enterprise, while it organizing, recording and presenting each rotation. Thus the e-service is a valuable tool for any organization that would like to successfully apply the Job Rotation model. This schema is described in the sections that follow. More specifically, in the second section an introduction is offered showing the necessity of the Job Rotation model as a tool that links training policy to employment policy; in the third section the Job Rotation model that the e-service implements is introduced; in the fourth section the service and its functionality are described; in the fifth section the potential users of the system are presented; in the sixth section the infrastructure and the technology behind the service are acknowledged while the last section presents the expected result of the application.
2. The Job Rotation Model The Job Rotation is training and education in which the unemployed are educated and trained continuously in order to replace employees in companies, during the time that they leave their jobs for more education and training. The important element is that the Job Rotation as an implement offers a lot of advantages to all the associates – employees, employers, syndicate, unemployed-, to the modulation authorities in the market and the society. Today, there are huge funds, that are disposed to pathetic policies, that should become energetic. The new idea of Job Rotation offers opportunities for companies, but also for the people searching for a job. The Job Rotation means on the first hand, the refreshment of the present human resource, under the goal of improvement in quality, greater productivity and new forms of management at work, but on the second hand it fullfils the need for the replacement of the employes that left their jobs for further training. This recruitment will create a great opportunity for young and unemployed people to enter the job market. This change from pathetic to energetic measures, based on the idea of Job Rotation is related to the agrrement of European Committee for selective re-structurment of the public costs,
19
Nikolaos V. Karadimasa and Nikolaos P. Papastamatioub
following the goal of activation of development and employement. A very simple example of a Job Rotation model is illustrated in the figure 1. Figure 1: A simple example of a Job Rotation model.
In case of unemployed people, the model is changing among education or training and practice and replacement of an employed person. For the employees the model is changing between the situation that they working for the company and the situation that leave their jobs for further education and training. As we can see from the example above, Job Rotation model is a new idea of conversing training of employed and unemployed people. The proposed model is an energetic policy which promises more efficient results for the long term training of the employers inside the companies and the unemployed people compared to other pathetic policies; incentives subsidizing hires and training courses for unemployed. The last years, it has been proved that the Job Rotation is one of the best ways that we can increase human resource capital investment and also a way for increase efficiency. Job Rotation by now constitutes a part of the training policies and policies for the job market for many countries of European Union. Job Rotation program has already embodied to the constitution of continious training for the job market, as a part of educational institution’s training offers. The main goals of the program are the following: • The promotion of Job Rotation as a new approach of training for the employed and unemployed people. • The reinforcement of the orientation of Human Resource to the long-term education and training • The development of new forms that support enterprises • The production of a primary material which will affect the present in National level training systems and working models The expected result form the application of the Job Rotation model are shown in figure 2.
Software Agents Integrating Job Rotation with e-learning
20
Figure 2: Expected results from the application of the Job Rotation model.
3. The Job Rotation e-Service The proposed system [5] is an integrated Job Rotation on-line platform that coordinates the substitutions (rotation) of SMEs’ staff with trained unemployed individuals and offers training courses to all involved. The system includes an e-learning platform through which distance training is offered, according to the market needs, by training institutions to both the aforementioned target groups. The innovation of the 20 system is the implementation of the Job Rotation model as and e-service. As far as we know there is no similar job –rotation e-service in Europe. From a technical perspective, the proposed Job Rotation system is a special management, elearning, support and matching tool. The service takes into account the focused target of the service, and therefore provides tools and functionality to facilitate work and leverage the use of existing material. The platform does not include unnecessary functionality, without of course sacrificing scalability. The system is consisting of the following parts: • The Registration system, • The matching system, and • The e-learning platform. 3.1 The Registration system This module’s line of business concerns the registration of new SMEs and unemployed individuals, the personalization of the web pages and the creation, update and maintenance of each user’s profile. The registration tools for SMEs include the build up, using the offered tools, of on-line multimedia profiles in a “what you see is what you get (WYSIWYG)” environment of their companies that will supplement the Job Rotation offers managed and coordinated with the support of the service. The data exchanged through the system are secured from unauthorized access through authentication passwords for all users and Secure Socket Layers (SSL) protocol under which all the transmitted data are encrypted and protected. The submission of a new Job Rotation offer includes descriptive metadata, some of which are used from the system in order to propose the best matches between workers and unemployed. Such metadata include: • Working sector that the position relates,
21
Nikolaos V. Karadimasa and Nikolaos P. Papastamatioub
• Level experience of the unemployed, • Training required, • Start and duration of the rotation, • Work schedule, and • Area that the job is offered. These metadata are enriched with further information of the job position such as job description, salary offered, on the job training required, etc. Figure 3 shows an example of a Job Rotation offer accompanied by the profile of the offering company. Figure 3: Example of a Job Rotation offer accompanied by the profile of the company.
The system provides the companies with all the functionality required to manage the submitted Job Rotation offers (modify, publish, unpublish, delete, view candidates, etc). Additionally companies can compose an on–line questionnaire for each Job Rotation offer that submits to the system. The unemployed interesting for the position should fill the questionnaire in order the company to obtain additional information to this recorded from the static forms of the e-service (the content of the
Software Agents Integrating Job Rotation with e-learning
22
questionnaire is subject to the companies needs). This questionnaire will be the criteria for selecting among unemployed that will be matched to the system for each specific job offer. The unemployed interested to subscribe and use the benefits of the Job Rotation e-service have to fill a subscription form. Their data are verified by the system’s administrator and the unemployed working profile becomes active. The unemployed feeds the system with personal information and all these required metadata in order the system to make all the appropriate matches (working sectors, work schedule, area interested to work to, etc). 3.2 The matching system The matching system of the Job Rotation e-service is a tool dedicated to manage and process Job Rotation offers. In that sense, a company that submit job vacancies can then select from a pool of registered unemployed individuals that applied for these offers. Job seekers (unemployed) depending on their working profile will find in their personal pages the job offers that match their qualifications and preferences. The components of Job Rotation, adapted to integrate these preferences, differ in the framework of the matching criteria from country to country. These criteria are subject of localization, like work schedule, currency, financing, etc. These offers, for the comfort of the users, are categorized from the most recent to older ones. Figure 4 presents an example of a match made from the e-service. Figure 4: A match made from the e-service.
3.3 The e-learning platform The e-learning platform [6] is a tool for developing and offering asynchronous and blended learning methods. The internal users of the platform (experts from training institutions) can easily developed on line courses that will be offered to both unemployed and companies’ staff. The e-learning platform, offers the developer of the e-learning course, an authorised tool for creating course content as well as
23
Nikolaos V. Karadimasa and Nikolaos P. Papastamatioub
exercises and tests for each course. The tool is user friendly, offers a number of different types of exercises and it is compatible with the IMS Question and Test Interoperability Standard (QTI) [7] standard. The e-learning platform of the Job Rotation service offers basic courses to unemployed in order to prepare them in the best way for replacing adequately the departing employees during a Job Rotation. These courses are different in accordance to the market needs for each country the system is customized for and include among others: • Information Technologies (Basic Skills). The course is important for unemployed to obtain basic IT skills as a key competence to become competitive in the labour market. • Marketing. Unemployed and employed with skills in marketing and marketing technologies will enter and strengthen their position in a labour market with organizations that really need to make a difference. • Self marketing for jobseekers. The course is a guide to job hunting and tips for a successful job application • The Job Rotation – a tool to get back to work. The course is about how a Job Rotation model works and which financial and organisational supports for Job Rotation measures exist. • Business English Training. The course is aiming at learning English in a range of professional situations giving the participants much needed skills on the labour market characterised by the intensified internationalisation and globalisation. • Communication Skills. The Communication course aims to create relational skills that are particularly requested by companies The described e-service is being market validated at the moment in five countries (Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Greece) in the framework of the e-TEN program. Each course is setup in the national language of each partner providing it, and is available from the relevant pilot site. More elearning courses will be added later on from the learning institutions that will register in the system and will offer vocational training to SME’s staff and unemployed using the system’s tools. Figure 5 illustrates an example of a course offered from the e-learning platform. The e-learning platform is an independent content and every organization-member of the system can easily create its on-line course. Figure 5: A course as offered from the e-learning platform.
Software Agents Integrating Job Rotation with e-learning
24
4. Users of the service The system addresses to different categories of users. They belong to a "networked" community: in the simplest case, all users access one public server via Internet connections. • NGOs and other public organizations that want a tool to support them to apply and monitor their Job Rotation programs. • SMEs and Micro enterprises: the system’s concept is directed towards providing specialised Job Rotation services from a wide pool of training subjects and unemployed. This is not restricted to SMEs but those are the firms that want to train their personnel and replace them while they are undergoing a period of training. • Unemployed: Unemployment is one the EU’s main social concerns since it represents a major drawback to the development of several EU countries. Those people will have a voice and a chance to work partially or even on a regular basis by covering the vacancies created by the training needs of companies in order to maintain competitiveness for their employees and firm. • First – time job seekers: These are young people that have considerable difficulty entering the labour market. The system deals with this unemployment as it soaks up joblessness by integrating these people into a real working environment while counteracting their potential devaluation of their skills and competences. • Educational organizations: This category of users involves universities offering postgraduate studies, colleges and other training organizations, which will offer training courses for the SMEs. They will offer specialized education to SMEs’ employers and proper education to unemployed in order to be flexible and ready to fill the vacancies created. • System’s experts: These experts will be very important for the system since they are going to have updated and deep knowledge of the market. They will analyse each case specially and will advice the SMEs’ managers about the training courses that are available and suitable for their enterprises. Of course if the SMEs have already decided the training that their employers should obtain, the system’s role will be reduced to find the proper unemployed to replace them. • Training organizations: The training organizations will be responsible for running the distance learning courses. Their job is very important as they are going to prepare the unemployed to enter the real market. These organizations will use the systems e-learning platform to offer adequate training to the unemployed that should be prepared to cover the SMEs vacancies. • Administrators: Apart from managing user’s registrations and other common responsibilities that administrators undertake in any kind of e-activities, the Job Rotation system’s administrators ensure users’ rights monitoring Job Rotation agreements taking place through the system.
5. Systems Infrastructure The proposed infrastructure of the system is composed of three equally important modules: • The user environment: this module consists in a front-end web interface, through a simple web browser, that takes charge of logged user to the network at any portal. It is comprised of personalisation utilities, query tools, and any other component needed to bring up the service to the end user with a user friendly Graphical User Interface (GUI). This client module can visualise stored data and documents both on a free or restricted way. • The Job Rotation web server: this module is the core and the backbone of the service. It is a transaction manager that controls traffic, checks user’s rights, gathers data to the central site, replicate data if needed, etc. Each server will manage the local content of its web portal, maintain the repository index that the client component will access, interoperate with existing databases and establish connection with Relational Database Management System (RDBMS) and document storages.
25
Nikolaos V. Karadimasa and Nikolaos P. Papastamatioub •
The data manager: this module is responsible for the metadata codification and maintenance of the content that is available to the end user. This module categorises data and create all needed workflow necessary to access, publish or restrict data. Job Rotation e-service is a Web-fronted network that includes user personalisation, advanced security, workflow management and flexible design capabilities. The service is developed using the Microsoft tools and uses all the capabilities offered from the .NET framework, IIS 4 and SQL Server 2000. All the transaction, having to do with sensitive information, runs on an SSL secure web server. The front end Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 offers technologies (ASP.NET, ADO.NET, COM+) that support the successful development of distributed multi – tier applications. These technologies support the implementation of layers in levels distributed in many servers. These levels support User Interface (UI), the implementation of Business Layer (BL), the communication with data base systems (Data Access Layer - DAL) and the communication with other applications that offer services. In addition, the components of the e-learning and the matching module can be easily integrated to serve other related e-activities.
6. Expected results The results are expected in two bases. • Decrement of the unemployment. It is estimated, through the programs already run on Job Rotation, that 75% of the unemployed that participated to Job Rotation models were hired on permanent basis at the company after the end of the rotation. • Improvement of the unemployed skills, offering them vocational training on themes needed in the labour market and real work experience. Concluding, the Job Rotation system is a positive and cost effective way for all concerned that will: • give the ability to companies to educate their employees lifelong, replacing them with suitable trained un-employed (reskilling), • give the time margin and the means to employees to educate without their personal lives and work relations to be disturbed (Life long learning), • fight the long-term unemployment by training unemployed in real production procedures (access to e-learning), • boost the productivity of SMES by the adoption of new business models and organizational structures, • reduce the gap between the demanded and offered qualifications in market, and • increase the availability of e-learning services for unemployed and SMEs staff. However, there are some barriers that prevent Job Rotation model for generalizing in all European Countries, which are: • Lack of knowledge about the Job Rotation model. In many countries the Job Rotation model is not known and it benefits are not disseminated to the relevant stakeholders. In the contrary, in the Scandinavian countries the model is well known and applied with promising results. • Legislation barriers. The Job rotation model faces problems with the legislation in some countries that does not allow short term employment, and prevent many companies for adopting it. All these barriers will be overcome, through upcoming interventions around employment (EQUAL2, etc) that enclose Job Rotation practices in their work programs. Moreover, in technical level, future work should focus on improving the information flow between all the stakeholders involved in the system. Hence, the introduction of the web services technology to the system’s architecture and the decentralization of several services will help the system’s administrators to keep all the contained information up-to-date.
Software Agents Integrating Job Rotation with e-learning
26
7. Acknowledgement The described e-service is being market validated at the moment in five countries (Germany, Italy, Poland, Slovenia and Greece) in the framework of the e-Ten program, (call 2005) [1]. The duration of the Job Rotation project [8] is 18 months. During the project five pilot sites will be build in each country and several e-learning courses on basic skills will be uploaded to each prototype.
References [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
Europe’s Information Society Thematic Portal http://europa.eu.int/information_society/ activities/eten/index_en.htm Janssens, J. (2001) Innovations in lifelong learning: Capitalising on ADAPT. Office for Official Publications of the European Communities, ISBN 93-896-0129-9, Luxembourg. WEA Job Rotation – An Employer’s Guide. http://www.wea-ni.com/jr (visited November 2006). Job Rotation, Programme Implementation in Poland: Job Rotation in the Łodzkie Region. http://www.jobrotation.de/archiv/file/40-1102588403.pdf (visited November 2006). Job Rotation platform. http://www.job-rotation.com Job Rotation e-learning platform. http://www.job-rotation.com/e-learning IMS Question & Test Interoperability Specification. http://www.imsglobal.org/question/ Project’s reference. http://europa.eu.int/information_society/activities/eten /cf/opdb/cf/project/index.cfm?mode=detail&project_ref=ETEN-029316
