Dear Reader,

In 2004 the Employment Service of Slovenia (ESS) completed the majority of the tasks set out in the Business Plan, thus demonstrating once again that it is one of the most important players on the labour market. We have shown in the work that we do that in addition to acting as a mediator between labour supply and demand, i.e. between employees and employers, we have a large number of other tasks whose implementation allows us to exert a significant influence on the volume and composition of this supply and demand. In 2004, for the third year in a row, there were fewer than 100,000 registered unemployed people at the end of the year (90,728 people registered with the ESS at the end of December 2004, a fall of 5.5% on the figure for December 2003). It is important to recognise here that as a result of the application of various active employment policy measures (involving some 68,274 people, with a further 86,289 taking advantage of services supplied by Vocational Information and Guidance Centres, giving a total of 154,563), there was an improvement in the unemployment structure (chiefly through a reduction in the share of long-term unemployed people and of those without professional qualifications), regional discrepancies were reduced, and ESS activities to improve efficiency in job mediation were stepped up, etc.

In 2004 cooperation with employers reached an even more intensive level than previous years. Our associates throughout the country made 1,975 visits to employers. The high level of cooperation with the Revoz company (through the ESS we succeeded in finding employment for 530 people, with several Regional Offices working in concert to achieve this) and ESS activities to secure seasonal workers for a wide variety of agricultural tasks deserve special mention. With the help of the ESS, 54,257 people found employment in 2004, a rise of 8% on 2003. We are also greatly encouraged by the fact that the average duration of unemployment has fallen by ten months in the last three years.

In 2004 the ESS also undertook a great many tasks relating to EU entry. To this end we established the EURES system, which is a network of public employment services within the EU that helps realise the principle of the free movement of workers through the distribution of relevant information. It is aimed at jobseekers (and not only the unemployed) and employers, and at others with an interest in international mobility. Between Slovenia’s entry into the EU and the end of 2004, Slovenian EURES advisers held 6,343 information and advisory sessions; these were mainly for jobseekers and employers. In order to carry out tasks relating to the use of resources from the European Social Fund, the ESS had to adjust the way it planned and used these resources (monitoring, reporting, applied support, etc.). In the assessment of experts involved in the Twinning process, the ESS managed to make the necessary adjustments that enabled it to carry out these demanding tasks (through continuous adjustments to its internal organisation and to the training of staff to carry out the relevant tasks); this was also borne out by a number of inspections carried out by the intermediary body (the Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs). In 2004 the ESS managed to maintain international contacts with other institutions through bilateral meetings with neighbouring countries, and was extremely active in the WAPES international organisation.

In 2004 we introduced a quality management system for business processes in accordance with the requirements of ISO 9001:2000 standard. When introducing the system we were consistent in our realisation of all the principles applying to the standard, in particular the principle of the involvement of unemployed people at all levels in determining processes and activities in order to improve the quality of our work with users of ESS services. At the end of the year the ESS obtained the ISO certificate for the ‘Increasing Employment and Employability in the Maribor and Koper Regional Offices and in the Central Office’ process.

We enforced the Access to Information of a Public Character Act consistently and in compliance with all the deadlines set. In 2004 we established a uniform system for communicating and deciding on information of a public character. We also established daily direct online communication using a dedicated email address to which interested parties could send questions, suggestions, etc. In 2004 we received and replied to 1,739 such questions. Everything we do has the same purpose: to satisfy the needs of our users in the best and most efficient way possible.