Online Peer Groups - a Design-Oriented Approach to Addressing the unemployment of People with Complex Barriers

Following a design-oriented methodology, we aim to support unemployed people facing complex barriers like drug addiction or poverty by designing and evaluating an online intervention that complements traditional face-to-face offline counselling with online peer groups. Our peer-group-based job counselling approach provides peer support in an intimate environment, independent of time and place. We implemented our approach at the German Federal Employment Agency with a messaging application and evaluated it in a randomised field experiment and expert interviews. Results indicate that the approach adds substantial value compared to face-to-face offline counselling, particularly with respect to job search self-efficacy, self-exploration, and environmental exploration – proven success indicators for the employment of unemployed people with complex barriers. It further demonstrates the benefits of online characteristics and how online peer groups and offline interventions can cross-fertilize in this context. Our study contributes to the literature on the societal impact of information and communication technologies and to design science research, and answers stakeholders’ call for modernisation of employment counselling in practice.