United Nations Public Service Awards Case Studies

Career-interrupted-women’s economic participation has risen as a social issue but public services for these women are mainly focusing on employment rather than career development. Therefore, service provided from a long-term approach is necessary at the moment.
In order to help career-interrupted-women improve their competitiveness and participate in economic activity, Gyeonggi-Women’s-Development-Center(GWDC) has built-up an online career coaching service that supports their employment goal achievement through continuous career development without spatio-temporal constraints.

* Importance of career-interrupted-women’s social participation is on the rise *
Korean women’s economic activity participation rate is 54.7% ranking the third lowest among OECD 30 member countries(as of the end of 2008). Unlike women’s economic activity participation rate by age group of other countries from other cultures, Korean women’s economic activity participation rate by age group shows a transformed M-shape distribution because women’s economic activity participation rate sharply decreases in the early 30s. Women’s low economic activity participation rate in the early 30s can be explained by a tendency that in general, important life time events such as marriage, childbirth, and childcare occur around at this time of life and many women stop working because of it. We call them career- interrupted-women who stop their economic activity for this reason.
It is revealed through investigation that almost half Korean female population are career-interrupted-women. In Korean society, entering into an aging society, a sharp reduction of economically active population is anticipated so economic participation of career-interrupted-women has become a significant social issue in labor policy.

* Problems of current employment support policy *
Currently Korean government’s employment support policy focuses on the unemployed youth who is classified as economically active population, training assistance for the employed and employed women called ‘working mothers.’ But for the country’s sustainable economic development even in an aging society, it is indeed an urgent policy priority to make efforts to change career-interrupted-women classified as economically inactive population into economically active population.
Therefore, Korean government established 77 Centers-for-Women’s-Re-employment and 67,000 career-interrupted-women received assistance for re-employment for one year in 2009. Centers-for-Women’s-Re-employment effectively provide career-interrupted-women who want to be employed again in a relatively short period with employment consulting service off-line. However, career-interrupted-women are not free from the burdens of household work and childcare so it is hard for them to approach off-line service. Therefore, on-line employment assistance policy is necessary.

* Need to reinforce career-interrupted-women’s employment competitiveness *
Career-interrupted-women don’t have social life experiences or they have been away from work for a long time so they are not well aware of current employment market’s condition and their own competitiveness in the job market. For this reason, mismatch between jobs-wanted and job seekers happens so even if a woman get employed again, they tend to quit due to lack of proper abilities required for work.
Thus, rather than a mere employment consulting service that finishes right after employment, a long- and mid-term career development support is necessary that can reinforce competitiveness and help career-interrupted-women seek their career by themselves even if they failed re-employment.

What is the initiative about? (the solution)
Online Career Coaching Service is comprised of employability assessment as the foundation of the service and online-career counselors’ consultancy based on the results of assessment. Main performance of this service can be divided into two parts: qualitative part that covers the number of service users and the employed through the service and quantitative part that covers regular satisfaction survey results targeting service users. * Quantitative Performance: present condition of users and others * Since the launch of the service on January 18,, 2010 centering on Gyeonggi area, the number of employment possibility assessment takers are 10,133, online career coaching service users are 2,842 and the employed are 517 as of December 25, 2010. And more women placed in a blind spot of employment are expected to benefit from the service in case that the service expands into national wide scale in 2011. * Qualitative Performance: driving force of women’s entry into labor market * Also regular satisfaction survey targeting service users shows that 95% responded that service is helpful for career development and employment. In particular, reliability and satisfaction on online career counselor (EM) is very high who recommends what kind of capability development is necessary and what is right job considering one’s aptitude rather than merely mapping with company. Such results prove that our service plays a role of supporting women’s participation in labor market and helping them have their own goal to work. In the end, such change is expected to contribute to improving labor market’s versatility and quality. Other than this, our service will contribute to the effectiveness of budget in implementing government policies by providing service online and overcoming the difficulties of economically-inactive- and career-interrupted-women in participating in outdoor activities due to the burden of childcare.

Who proposed the solution, who implemented it and who were the stakeholders?
* GWDC Director Jung-Ah Cho’s Solution Proposal * The idea of online career coaching service has been drawn from GWDC Director Jung-Ah Cho’s worries on the question of “what women really want?” From the very beginning of the center in 1997, GWDC has already differentiated itself from other women education institutes by providing “specialized IT education customized for women” for the first time nationwide and Director Cho contributed to establishing such a unique identity of center as a member of establishment promotion board of GWDC. In 2005, a newly appointed Director Cho built-up Geonggi Woman’s e-learning Center, an education website for employment and business start-ups specialized for women and enabled education service for women without regional disparities in a donut shaped Geonggi province. Director Cho had created a new service ‘Online Career Coaching’ for the first time internationally based on ‘Employability’ concept which became a worldwide issue through NCDA(National Career Development Association) conference in 2008 in order to provide assistance to career-interrupted-women for stable labor market re-entry by improving their employability. * Participation of professionals in every filed * In online career coaching service, ‘employability assessment’ had been developed in order to figure out how one’s present experiences and career records and capability level concerning a targeted job, work professionalism within various job fields are evaluated according to company size and employment type. Also GWDC built-up various information basis necessary for employment and career development including duties by job, interest type, relevant companies, career path road map and so on. For this GWDC arranged professionals from individual job field, woman field, employment field, employability field and psychology/diagnosis filed and collected various opinions from them. Through this process, GWDC could secure validity for the assessment and information concerning various jobs. Besides, GWDC had established a foundation for employment and training of counselors through gathering professional opinions relevant to vocational counseling and career coaching to operate online career counselors who provide various counseling services on career online from career-interrupted-women’s perspective to make them continue their career development through the service. * Citizen participation of various roles * An important perspective in our employability assessment is employer’s point of view that is a perspective of human resource (HR) managers of each company about job seekers. Thus, the results of interviews and surveys of HR managers on necessary questions for assessment, importance of each assessment question, required qualification and so on were reflected in the development of assessment, and these 600 HR managers are selected from around 50 companies/institutes in IT, business administration, social welfare, healthcare and education field that our service is providing. Employability assessment targets the unemployed and job seekers so we need to conduct assessment for job seekers and the employed in the specific job field in order to prove the validity of developed assessment. If the assessment is valid, a significant difference between the employed and job seekers is anticipated. GWDC could prove the validity of assessment by conducting assessment for 2000 people including the employed and job seekers.

Describe how and when the initiative was implemented by answering these questions
a. What were the strategies used to implement the initiative? In no more than 500 words, provide a summary of the main objectives and strategies of the initiative, how they were established and by whom.
Online career coaching service is a one-stop-service that supports career development from re-employment goal setting at early stage, employability assessment to on- and off-line education and employment connection according to the results of assessment targeting career-interrupted-women. The aim of the service is to reduce mismatch between jobs-wanted and job seekers through scientific assessment and career development from a mid- and long-term perspective through online education and GWDC promoted partnership with various institutes in order to provide practical information and expanded service. * Reduction in mismatch between jobs-wanted and job seekers (Employability assessment) * Mismatch between jobs-wanted and job seeker that occurs among career-interrupted-women happens because they don’t know how their experiences and career and their capability level are evaluated in the present labor market. Even if they are employed, their careers tend to be easily interrupted again and lost their confidence so finally more women will not challenge re-employment anymore. Thus, this problem should be resolved in order to continually induce career-interrupted-women into economic activity participation. For this reason, online career coaching service designed employability assessment which totally evaluates individual career relevant items such as age, academic ability, career experiences and so on including capability level and work professionalism and helps career-interrupted-women understand their level correctly to prepare labor market entry. Results of assessment demonstrate individual employability by the number of points by business size and employment type and help women realize their level in the present labor market. In order women to set proper employment goal and rely on and make use of this assessment GWDC applied proven methodology through literature reviews and secured validity by inducing professionals and citizens’ participation from various fields. * Service expansion through partnership * The strength of online career coaching service is to create synergy effect by making alliances between a service provider GWDC Geonggi Woman’s e-learning Center, a cyber education site and the biggest domestic portal sites as well as other various civil education institutes, universities, companies, public woman education institutes. Not only does e-learning Center operate education program developed by GWDC internally, it connects women to excellent programs through partnership with universities and conglomerates relevant to education such as Samsung SDS and provides sufficient program pool for free to help women’s career development. Additionally GWDC assists career development implementation according to service users’ needs implementing off-line education to support business start-up and employment in IT field. For educational needs that cannot be accepted by e-learning center, it provides real employment and license information and education information by making alliances with the biggest domestic employment portal site and business economy research institutes. In order to inform service more widely and induce more women in on-line career coaching service, we are seeking partnership with universities, civil professional institutes and women public education institutes and connecting to companies by maintaining continuous alliances with various civil professional companies.

b. What were the key development and implementation steps and the chronology? No more than 500 words
* Launch and development of cyber education center (2005-2008) * Our business is built on the foundation of Geonggi Woman’s e-Learning Center that has provided its service in Geonggi province since 2005. Geonggi Woman’s e-Learning Center, a cyber education website that launched its service in 2005, currently provides employment and business start-up service to 65,000 members and 210,000 trainees. In 2007, we built and operated capability assessment service concerning 69 jobs in IT employment area and received the ‘Grand Prize’ in online education area of 2007 Web Award Korea. In 2008, capability assessment service has been expanded into 48 business start-up area and was reborn as a professional education website for women employment and business start-up. And excellence of our service has been recognized outwardly by receiving ‘Excellent Award’ for the first time as a website in public information design field. * Online Career Coaching Service Build-up (2009) * We have gotten a concept of ‘Employability’ from NCDA conference in which head of GWDC participated in 2008, promoted consulting for business feasibility review in March, 2009, planned a service in the name of ‘online career coaching’ in May, 2009 and built up service in September, 2009 by securing job creation budget from Geonggi province. When we built up the service, we trained 180 career-interrupted-women with experiences in vocational counseling within the entire area of Geonggi province in November and December, 2009 and out of them, 60 people are selected initially and placed in the work with the opening of the service in February, 2010. * The spread of online career coaching service(2010) * Ministry of gender equality and family selected online career coaching service as an excellent policy and reported plan of expansion into a nationwide service in the presence of President in 2010. Through an agreement between Geonggi province and Ministry of gender equality and family, trial service has been carried out in Seoul and Geongnam area since last May. In September, 2010, our service was selected as an excellent model and received “Best Paper Award” among over 100 papers presented in 2010 e-learning Week, an international e-learning conference. For the expansion of service, while making an agreement with the biggest national portal site ‘NAVER’ in September, 2010 GWDC opened and has been operating social app service(web application that help vitalize communication among internet users in a social network service within portal site) for the first time as a local government nationwide. And enlarged 112 jobs have been in operation in total by adding 43 jobs in four areas like healthcare, welfare, education to the existing 69 jobs in IT area since November, 2010. By the request of Ministry of gender equality and family, GWDC is preparing additional service expansion into five national areas including Seoul, Geyonggi and Geongnam in 2011.

c. What were the main obstacles encountered? How were they overcome? No more than 500 words
* Difficulties in securing budgets * With the increase of women employment education institutes by the implementation and development of various employment policies for women securing budget in these institutes is becoming more difficult. Particularly, in an environment where understanding that employment assistance service cannot be effective on-line is pervasive, securing budget to build up online career coaching service becomes even more difficult. Thus, GWDC sought service development by securing budget from job creation office not from women policy office and utilizing new purple job (flexible work) item, online career counselors, drawn from the process of constructing service concept. By getting recognition on the excellence of model developed, GWDC could operate service with additionally assigned budget by Geonggi province and Ministry of gender equality and family. * The limit of job offering * In online career coaching service, goal setting, assessment and accompanying career development is being processed by job unit. GWDC built-up cyber education site based on the know-how gotten from the operation of IT professional education off-line and developed capability assessment on IT jobs and online education programs in connection with the results of capability assessment. Our service is designed to use IT jobs and education program infra that had been already built in Geonggi Woman’s e-learning center at early stage but after service opening, it is revealed that service users are having difficulties in selecting jobs. Women want to get capability assessment concerning jobs they want through our service, but no job matches are found among IT jobs provided through service. Therefore, GWCD promoted a project in order to additionally draw employable jobs through career development that are preferred by career-interrupted-women and through this, currently GWDC provides jobs in the fields of business administration/office work, social welfare, healthcare and education other than IT. * Difficulties of system utilization * Since online career coaching service that has unique functions such as assessment, career development and management and counseling, user interface is somewhat difficult compared to other services. In addition, main users of our service are almost career-interrupted-women in their mid and late 30s so their difficulties are anticipated in using service online properly. Therefore, while opening service, GWDC made online career counselors explain service implementation and utilization methods in order not users to feel uncomfortable. Also we tried to improve user interface continually by selecting monitoring staff from main users and conducting specific test and surveys.

d. What resources were used for the initiative and what were its key benefits? In no more than 500 words, specify what were the financial, technical and human resources’ costs associated with this initiative. Describe how resources were mobilized
* Human resources (GWDC staff and private out-sourcing institutes) * In building-up assessment and online counselor’s operation system, professionals from various fields and citizens of various roles participated from contents side but such big scale participation in this project was enabled by the existence of public officers of GWDC. As these staffs are equipped with professionalism, they are placed in the fields of the entire service concept planning, system planning/development for structuring online, contents planning/development concerning education and so on and planned early service model regarding assessment, online counselors’ operation system, possession of contents for career development and so on. In addition, they promoted implementation/direction/management to materialize and build-up model in partnership with private institutes in the fields of consulting and system development customized for HRD. * Securement of budget * GWDC has secured Geonggi province budget for online education continually from 2005 and was able to enlarge education service into nationwide scale by securing national budget from Ministry of gender equality and family as part of central government from 2008. Online career coaching service has been promoted in 2009 by securing budget of job creation office and after opening in 2010 it has been selected as an excellent policy and operated with additional budget assigned from Geonggi province and Ministry of gender equality and family. * Technical (Web accessibility and individual information protection) * In Korea, observation of web accessibility guidelines based on Disability Discrimination Act that requires equal web service access both for the disabled and the non-disabled is recommended and public institutes should provide web services in compliance of it. Since this service is also an online based service that includes the disabled and the non-disabled as users, web accessibility practices committee is organized as a main activity of observing web accessibility guidelines, outside professionals are selected as consultants more than twice annually, actual condition review on the observance of web accessibility guidelines are carried out and efforts to reflect the results of reviews frequently are made in order to follow web accessibility guidelines. Our service is acquiring and managing various individual information for career coaching for career-interrupted-women including individual employment intent and career records and there still remains an issue to improve and reinforce weakness that stems from the characteristics of web service. For this, GWDC is getting inspection by security companies certified by National Intelligence Service and undergoing correction and improvement if necessary. And upon discovering security weakness, efforts are made to take instant actions. Also, important individual information is codified to prevent security accidents such as information leakage.

Is the initiative sustainable and transferable?
* Expansion of Service connected to Universities * Our service is established for the unemployed and career-interrupted-women and we are preparing nationwide scale service in 2011 to help more women who intend to be employed. Other than this, we are making efforts to widen our target group by including university students who are preparing employment. Currently GWDC signed MOU with Hankook University of Foreign Studies, Yong In University, Sogang University, Aju University and Seoul Digital University and help university students get assessment and coaching service in connection with academic credit course such as special lecture on job finding. We are planning to upgrade employability assessment meeting the qualification and conditions of male and female university students in order to expand service through a continuous business partnership with universities that are interested in students’ employment. * Domestic and overseas conference activities * As online career coaching service is a pioneering service that is established for the first time worldwide, we are conducting various activities to promote the service nationally and internationally. As part of promotion, GWDC service had been selected as the only excellent case among domestic public institutes and presented the case in ‘2010 international e-learning conference’ where about 1,000 people from 30 countries attended including education policy makers, e-learning professionals and so on from various overseas countries that is organized by Ministry of Knowledge Economy, Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology, Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Culture and Tourism in September, 2010. After the presentation, GWDC was honored to receive ‘Best Paper Award’ that selects the best of all participants. In this way, GWDC online career coaching service is getting international recognition and the potential to be applicable in various ways afterwards has been proved. Moreover, GWDC submitted application form and abstract in order to participate in ASTD a renowned conference at home and abroad in industry education field and NCDA a prestigious conference in career development field. * Service Expansion by Utilizing SNS * GWDC provided social app service for the first time as a domestic public institute in partnership with the biggest domestic portal site in order to let more career-interrupted-women know online career coaching service by making it available anytime and anywhere. Social app is a web application that helps vitalize communication among internet users in Social Network Service in a portal site and so far entertainment field services such as game are mainly being provided but GWDC participated for the first time as education contents and career development system. Social app service has been provided only for about 18 days beginning from October in 2010 but during this period, 1,545 people visited the service and 551 users installed it. High interest and performance was shown in a relatively short period. In this way GWDC is planning to make continuous efforts to contribute to the career development assistance and economic activity participation of career-interrupted-women and job seekers as a channel to promote and expand the service not remaining the same.

What are the impact of your initiative and the lessons learned?
* The System of Online Career Counselors * In that online career coaching service is targeting ‘women’ who have been an issue in labor market and professional online career counselors continuously encourage and assist their successful labor market entry, we can say that it is an important differentiation and successful strategy. The reason that government’s policy that promotes women’s social participation reaches the limit all the time is because of women’s lack of confidence after career interruption and insufficient preparation for market competitiveness as well as a structural problem such as childcare that prohibits women’s social participation in reality. In this way, if it had not been for online career counselors who help career-interrupted-women to be trained from goal setting stage, systematically mange career and give advices to encourage them to challenge re-employment with confidence from users’ perspective, GWDC service could not have achieved today’s performance. Online career counselors are designed as purple jobs (flexile work) targeting career-interrupted-women so counselors are selected from career-interrupted-women according to their qualification and experiences in counseling and coaching and get trained. With the expansion of service into nationwide scale, this contributes to women employment policy creating new job openings for career-interrupted-women in that it gives opportunities for more career-interrupted-women to develop their careers freely using their time as well as playing a pivotal role in this service. * Overcoming Locality through Online Method * Another differentiated advantage of our service is that it is designed to make more women benefit at a low cost anytime and anywhere through ‘online’ method without spatio-temporal constraints. In Korea, human resource development centers and education institutes are being operated to support women’s social activity participation and each institute provides various education and counseling service for employment. Also Centers for Women’s Re-employment are achieving well in inducing real women’s employment through job referral services. However, these public services are being provided off-line so women who suffer from burdens of household work and childcare have difficulties in access to these services and in local areas other than metropolitan area, these services are not well provided relatively. In this condition, online career coaching service has strength in that it provides equal career development opportunity for all women without regional disparity and spatio-temporal disparity. Through this, we can spread our excellent cases internationally as well as domestically so it is a service that has potential for a limitless growth and expansion.


Institution Name:		Gyeonggi Women’s Development Center
Institution Type:		Government Agency
Contact Person:		Jung Ah Jo
Title:		director of GWDC
Telephone/ Fax:		82-31-8008-8101
Institution's / Project's Website:		82-31-8008-8110
E-mail:		choja@gg.go.kr
Address:		Yong gu street 280, Giheung-gu
Postal Code:		446-912
City:		Yongin-si
State/Province:		Gyeonggi-do
Country:

The Problem

Solution and Key Benefits

Actors and Stakeholders

(a) Strategies

(b) Implementation

(c) Overcoming Obstacles

(d) Use of Resources

Sustainability and Transferability

Lessons Learned

Contact Information