The Network IQ strives for continuous cooperation with public employment agencies and job centres.

The addressees of the IQ offers for intercultural competence development are mainly counsellors of the labour administration and employees of municipal administrations.

They are sensitised to migration-specific issues in order to encourage long-term intercultural opening processes and discourage discrimination in their organisations and businesses.

Below, you will find an overview of the most important continuing education programs of the Network IQ:

The training sessions provide an overview of the legal basis for the recognition of professional qualifications acquired abroad and their applicability. They cover the recognition procedure and competent authorities in more detail. By examining case studies, the participants learn to translate the acquired knowledge into practice. Furthermore, the counselling centres and formats of Network IQ are presented, and it is explained how customers of the labour market administration can be referred to the IQ counselling centres.

With the training on "Basic Intercultural Awareness with Emphasis on Asylum and Forced Migration", employees of jobcentres and public employment agencies are sensitised for the topic of asylum and forced migration . Thereby they are supportedin dealing with newly arriving migrants and refugees. This training is about giving a cross-cultural and country-independent input, which can be supplemented by country-specific information. The training has been offered in cooperation with the relevant stakeholders of the "Integration of Asylum Seekers and Refugees (IvAF)" programme of the ESF Integration Guideline.

Intercultural competence is not a special competence in "dealing with foreign cultures". Rather, it means skills in the interpersonal interaction with diversity and variety, which build on basic human social and emotional skills. In the basic training sessions, the question is, therefore, what these skills are, how they can be strengthened, and how they can be useful in day-to-day work.

In the field of intercultural competence development, Network IQ also offers the BeKo noV training courses for the SGB II (German Code of Social Law II) area. These courses are subject to charges. BeKo noV stands for "Counselling Concept SGB II: Demand-oriented In-depth Module".

All employees of the German Federal Employment Agency (BA) are attending the training courses on general counselling skills (BeKo) during their initial training. Network IQ, together with the BA, has created the demand-oriented module (noV), which sensitises the employees to think and act in interculturally appropriate ways.

Within the framework of train-the-trainer seminars, many IQ regional networks also train employees of the Federal Agency to carry out the BeKo noV training independently in their own work field..

In addition, the 16 regional IQ networks are implementing individual training concepts with the Regional Directoratesas well as local job centres, and employment agencies.

Network IQ develops versatile materials and projects in order to support the labour administration in its daily tasks. The best ones are regularly published in our publication series IQ Good Practice.

You can find the contact information for the IQ services offered to employment agencies and job centres in your region on our interactive map (German Version).