Evaluation of community service from the viewpoint of employers

Unemployment, particularly if long-term, represents a serious economic and social problem, which brings along negative effects on the unemployed individual, his/her family and the society as a whole. This unfavorable situation may be addressed by a pro-active employment policy through its tools. One of the tools is the community service. I have selected Evaluation of community service from the viewpoint of employers as the subject of my thesis as it is very topical and it has not been explored by student works at our faculty. The objective of the thesis was to map opinions of employers about community service as one of the tools of the pro-active employment policy. Another objective of the thesis was to compare different levels of unemployment in the regions of České Budějovice and Havlíčkův Brod. In the theoretical part I focused on the national employment policy and on the community service in detail. Further, I covered the significance of work for the individual, unemployment and its economic and social consequences. In order to achieve the outlined objective and to confirm the set hypotheses I used a quantitative research, specifically a questionnaire survey among selected employers in the regions of České Budějovice and Havlíčkův Brod. As a complementary method I performed a secondary analysis of the data. The hypothesis ``Community service may help to find prospective employment for problem categories of job applicants `` has been confirmed; the hypothesis ``Community service is used more in regions with a poor situation on the labor market `` has not been confirmed. The thesis proposes potential solutions of problems and shortcomings, based on the evaluation of community service from the viewpoint of employers. The conclusions of the thesis may also serve as a feedback for Employment Offices as the administrative authorities that conclude agreements with employers about creation of jobs in community services and provide financial contributions to the employers for such jobs within the pro-active employment policy