What is the Action Plan?
The Action Plan (AP) is a valuable tool to define the next steps to improve your employment situation, like organising an active job seeking, starting own business or proceeding with further formal education and non-formal training/learning in order to improve your competences and skills. Action planning will help you focus on your needs and expectations related to integration/reintegration into the labour market by defining the concrete goals and ways to achieve them.
Here we suggest you to download the Template for the Action Plan (as a .doc file for printing and/or saving, e. g. on a hard disk or a flash drive), which consists of 3 main parts:
- Part I. Education. Your goals concerning formal education and non-formal training/learning. Using this part of the Action Plan you will be able to define your goals related to improvement of your competences and skills.
- Part II. Employment. Your goals related to active job seeking or/and improving your employment situation.
- Part III. Entrepreneurship. Your goals (if any) related to starting of your own business.
!!! Instructions for downloading will be given to you at the end of this page so please continue to read about the Action Plan. After downloading the template of the Action Plan, you could fill in the Part I, II, and III of AP by yourself. However, if you are now a participant of the non-formal Job-Yes training course at the Adult Education Centre, you also can get advices about how to fill in the Action Plan from the adult educator/facilitator in the Adult Education Centre.
By using the Action Plan template you will set the main goals you want to achieve over a particular period of time, define the concrete tasks how you plan to achieve the certain goal, list the benefits you would gain upon achieving this goal (to identify the success criteria for this goal), define the time frame within which you plan to achieve the goal as well as the resources needed. It is also very important to constantly review your Action Plan and to make the notices about the progress in achieving the defined goal. All these information you can fill in the respective parts of the template of the Action Plan.
How does the Action Plan tool work within Job-Yes non-formal training course?
This Job-Yes non-formal training course starts with performing self-evaluation by using the Self-Need Analysis tool which helps you self-evaluate the level of your soft skills (see a picture below). According to the results of the Self-Need Analysis, you will receive the list of your high level soft skills (up to 7 points) and list of your soft skills which have to be improved (lower than 7 points). You can attribute your high level skills into the Knowledge Portfolio and improve the lower level skills by doing the suggested Exercises based on Open Educational Resources (see the picture below). After you have improved your skills, you are encouraged to do the Self-Need Analysis again.
If the result of repeated the Self-Need Analysis still shows you the list of the low level skills and you want to improve them by the end of the Job-Yes training course, we suggest you to include this list of your low level skills into the Action Plan “Part I Education” (see the table below) and to think about the further learning activities that would help you to improve them.
Your steps to fill in the Action Plan (Part I)
Step 1. Self-assessment of the level of your skills and competences by using the Self-Need Analysis tool
It is recommended to start with the assessment of your skills and competences by the Self-Need Analysis tool (see the picture above). If you have got the automatic suggestions to improve your skills after you have completed the Self-Need Analysis, you can start upgrading them passing to Step 2.
Step 2. The process of upgrading the level of your skills and competences through the Exercises based on OERs
Having completed the task on Step 1 you are already aware about the skills and competences essential for the labour market. Also, you have printed and/or downloaded two documents:
1) Self-Needs Analysis results with information about four competences: your level of each competence, the list of your high-level skills within this competence, the list of your medium-level skills within this competence, and the list of your low-level skills within this competence;
2) The Exercises based on OERs recommended for you to perform in order to upgrade your medium and low level skills. You can access those exercises by using the self-learning tool the Exercises based on OERs (see the picture above).
Step 3. Self-assessment of the upgraded level of your competences and skills
After you have completed successfully the recommended Exercises based on Open Educational Resources, we suggest that you go through the Self-Need Analysis once more to assess the level of improvement of your skills. Then you can add those competences and skills which level is lower than 7 to the Action Plan (see the picture above) for the further learning.
Step 4. Filling in the Action Plan Part I for further upgrading your skills and competence
Instructions provided in Steps 1, 2, and 3 give you an overview of self-learning process in Job-Yes non-formal training course. The Action Plan “Part I Education” can be filled in by yourself or together with your facilitator with your goals concerning the development of your competences and related skills. The template of the Action Plan is provided as a document for further downloading to your PC. You are able to upgrade the Action Plan at any time later.
In a nutshell
As you have already read these instructions you are aware about the Action Plan and the steps you have to take within Job-Yes non-formal training course. Please download the template and fill it in by yourself or together with your facilitator. After downloading, you can start with Step 1; if you haven’t completed the Self-Need Analysis yet, you can do it by clicking here.