Context
‘Jobmapa.pl’ is a project created by the Gdańsk Labour Office, presented in the form of a modern website. It was created in 2022 and takes the form of a daily updated interactive map of the Tricity area (which includes the cities of Gdańsk, Gdynia and Sopot) and neighbouring districts, where job offers are placed. ‘Jobmapa’ is the first solution in Poland that provides access to job offers available in the entire public sector for the Tricity area, as well as announcements from the education sector and those submitted by private employers to the labour office.
The project responds to the demand expressed by unemployed individuals to job intermediaries and career advisers employed by the Gdańsk Labour Office. Similarly, it aligns with the expectations of the younger generation of Poles, who, during times of low unemployment, limit their professional mobility and seek employment mainly near their place of residence. An essential factor contributing to the project’s success is the way job offers are presented, in a user-friendly and easily comprehensible format. This project is particularly relevant as many EU Member States are witnessing a growing issue with long-term inactive individuals. As early as 2016, the Council Recommendation on the integration of long-term unemployed individuals into the labour market came into effect, aiming to provide better assistance to these individuals in returning to work.
Objectives
Jobmapa is a tool for shaping an active labour market policy by public employment services. Its goal is to positively impact the employment opportunities for job seekers and improve the alignment of job offers with the needs of potential employees. Consequently, the project aims to increase employment rates and reduce unemployment, especially long-term unemployment.
Implementation
In October 2022, even before the project’s official launch, official consultations were held with other labour offices operating in the Pomeranian Voivodeship. During these consultations, the project idea and its key functionalities were presented. Positive feedback from participants, including the Pomeranian Labour Office, led to the identical solution being implemented in other labour offices operating in the Tricity area and neighbouring districts at the beginning of 2023. From the moment of its launch on 25 November 2022, until 18 August 2023, the portal recorded nearly 250 000 views and over 30 000 unique users.
The innovative aspect lies primarily in the way data is presented. Jobmapa is the first job mediation service in the form of an interactive map and the largest employment offer database in the region, with an average of 1 800 current and verified job offers. Each located job offer contains essential information about the listing, including details about the position, employer name and salary, as well as job description and candidate requirements. Importantly, the map displays not only job offers available through the Gdańsk Labour Office but also current recruitment announcements from other offices and institutions under the authority of the Mayor of Gdańsk. Additionally, the offer database is supplemented with job offers from the Tricity area published by the Civil Service Office, which gathers all public institutions under government authorities in Warsaw. The third group of offers consists of those submitted by private and public schools and educational institutions to the Pomeranian Education Board in Gdańsk.
Six months after the service was launched, in June 2023, the long-term unemployed residents of Gdańsk stood at 47.2 per cent of all registered unemployed individuals. This marks a year-on-year decrease of 5 percentage points (during the same period, the overall number of registered unemployed individuals decreased by 2.6 per cent).