Reflective practice, appreciative regard and organizational wellbeing: An experience in Swiss employment services

The article presents experiences and lessons learned in the framework of a participative appreciative action and reflection (PAAR) laboratory organized in Ticino (Switzerland) by the ECAP Foundation, testing methods and tools developed by the Reflect-OR project. PAAR potentialities and pre-requisites are evaluated in a specific organizational context, provided by a public-private partnership in the field of active labor market policies. Coaching jobseekers, according to principles of empowerment and self-direction, is the task of private service providers; they work on behalf of public employment services, aiming at fostering activation and social responsibility of the 'clients'. Clients are in fact asked to activate themselves for a quick reintegration in the job market, in order to reduce costs due to welfare indemnities. Well-established rules, reducing the autonomy of professionals and their organization, inform the partnership, producing sometimes tensions and misunderstandings. The article draws on representations and codes affecting the relationships between coaches, clients, mandatory institutions and service providers, detecting how and to which extent reflective practices and tools could be valued to improve the overall quality of the partnership. We focus on appreciative regard and story telling as means to improve awareness and competences of the actors, enabling personal and organizational learning processes. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.