🧭 Grass Brief

The state has tested what really helps jobseekers over 50. The answer: individual coaching.

July 27, 20267 min readDennis Gorican

Every year Switzerland spends hundreds of millions of francs on labour market measures: courses, programmes, application workshops, training modules. For decades, one question has hung over this machinery without a definitive Swiss answer: what actually helps people back into work?

Now there is an answer, and it comes from an unusually credible source. SECO, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, has published its activity report on the labour market and unemployment insurance, and with it the results of multi-year, scientifically evaluated pilot projects. The overarching synthesis is remarkably clear: individual job coaching, targeted support and practical accompaniment strengthen reintegration in a lasting way.

Not more courses. Not more standardised programmes. Individual coaching.

For those of us who have built our working lives on exactly this premise, the finding is a confirmation. But the details of the most important pilot project deserve a closer look, because its target group was not the general population of jobseekers. It was people over 50.

The “Supported Employment” pilot: first place, then train

Between 2021 and 2025, twelve cantons tested a concept called Supported Employment within unemployment insurance. The target group was specific and, frankly, the hardest segment of the Swiss labour market: jobseekers over 50 who were close to exhausting their benefits, in other words close to the end of their entitlement to daily allowances.

These are people for whom the standard system had in effect already failed. Months of RAV processes, applications and conventional measures had not produced a job, and the safety net was about to run out.

The pilot reversed the traditional logic. Instead of “train first, then place”, the approach followed the principle of first place, then train: find the job first, then provide targeted support directly in the workplace. Participants received individual advice and accompaniment from external Supported Employment coaches, during the search and later, where needed, in the job as well. Participation was voluntary. The coaching was personal, continuous and built around the individual person, not around a programme curriculum.

The results, evaluated in the final report by the team led by Professor Giuliano Bonoli: by June 2025, more than 13’500 people had been invited to take part, 12 per cent participated, and more than half of the participants found a new job. The most specific finding of the evaluation deserves to be quoted precisely: individual job coaching in the placement phase proved particularly effective.

Read that against the starting point. These were candidates the market had in effect written off: over 50, long-term unemployed, months away from exhausting their benefits. With individual coaching, more than half found employment.

Why this finding matters far beyond the RAV system

It would be easy to file this away as social policy news with no relevance for senior professionals. That would miss the point entirely.

Consider what the evaluation actually shows. It is not a finding about a particular target group. It is a finding about a mechanism. When transition support is individual, continuous and built around the person, outcomes improve measurably, and they improve most precisely where the hurdles are highest. The Swiss state has now confirmed, with its own money and its own scientific evaluation, what decades of international research on coaching and reintegration suggest: standardisation is cheap and weak, individualisation is demanding and effective.

If individual coaching achieves these results with candidates facing the steepest structural hurdles, the mechanism does not weaken on the way up the career ladder. The hurdles change. A 55-year-old executive in transition is not facing the end of unemployment benefits; they are facing a shaken sense of identity, a network locked inside their former employer, a hidden job market that never advertises, and the age-related hiring gap we described in our Grass Brief on the focus50plus study: more than 90 per cent of Swiss employers praise the experience of their employees aged 60plus, while only 20 per cent clearly confirm that they also hire them. Different hurdles. The same mechanism for overcoming them: individual, continuous, person-centred support.

A second detail of the pilot deserves a moment’s reflection. The principle of “first place, then train” reverses the assumption that people in transition must first be repaired, retrained and perfected before they are allowed back into the market. The pilot found that the opposite works better. Go into the real situation, then support the person within it. We see the executive version of this all the time. The candidate who spends eight months polishing documents and collecting certificates before they “feel ready” to activate their network is usually moving away from re-employment, not towards it. Contact with the real market, real conversations, real feedback, accompanied and processed with a coach: that is where transitions actually happen.

What this means for buying outplacement

For the HR leaders among our readers, the SECO findings carry a practical consequence for a decision many of them make several times a year: what kind of transition support to offer departing employees.

The evaluation evidence now available draws a clear line between two philosophies. On one side, standardised programmes: fixed modules, group workshops, document templates, a defined number of sessions. Efficient to buy, easy to compare on price, and, according to the growing body of evidence, structurally weaker. On the other side, individual coaching: continuous, adaptable, built around the specific person, their market, their hurdles and their time horizon.

The state has now tested this distinction on the most difficult cases and published the result. When companies choose transition support for a 52-year-old head of division, the same logic applies with more force, not less, because at senior level the challenges of transition are almost entirely individual: positioning, narrative, network architecture, identity. There is no standardised module for that.

As we wrote in our article on choosing an outplacement provider, the questions that reveal quality revolve around exactly this point: who will actually coach me? Does the programme adapt to my situation, or does it end when the contract ends? Is this individual work or a curriculum? The SECO evaluation is, in effect, the public sector’s confirmation that these are the right questions.

An honest note on the limits

We should be precise about what this evidence shows and what it does not. The pilot studied a specific population, long-term unemployed jobseekers over 50 in the unemployment insurance system, not executives in outplacement. The participation rate of 12 per cent also tells its own story: even when individual support is offered free of charge, most people do not take it up, which says something sobering about how hard it is to accept help during a transition. And the evaluation notes that some elements worked less well than the coaching in the placement phase, a reminder that no approach succeeds across the board.

But the direction of the evidence is unambiguous, and it matches everything international research on career transitions shows, from the literature on coaching effectiveness to the resilience research we have covered in earlier Grass Briefs. Transitions are individual events. So is the support that works.

The quiet significance

There is something quietly significant about a state institution reaching this conclusion. Public employment services are under constant pressure to standardise, because standardised measures are easier to budget, procure and administer. When such a system runs a multi-year, scientifically evaluated pilot in twelve cantons and concludes that the individual approach works, that deserves to be taken seriously, precisely because the institutional incentives pointed the other way.

For people currently navigating a transition, the message is simple and encouraging. The evidence says: you should not go through this alone. And the evidence says: the right support changes outcomes measurably, even and especially when the situation looks most difficult. More than half of the pilot participants, people over 50 whom the standard system could not place, found a new job with individual coaching at their side.

Support is not an admission of weakness. According to the best Swiss evidence we now have, it is simply what works.

Sources: SECO, Activity report on the labour market / unemployment insurance 2025; SECO / arbeit.swiss, “Bundesmassnahmen zur Förderung des inländischen Arbeitskräftepotenzials”, 2026; Bonoli et al., final report on the evaluation of the “Supported Employment” pilot, October 2025 (twelve cantons, 2021 to 2025, participants aged 50plus shortly before exhausting their benefits; more than 13’500 invited, 12 per cent participation, more than half of participants back in employment; individual job coaching in the placement phase particularly effective); evaluation of the reintegration impulse programme, 2025; focus50plus / Alixio Group Schweiz, “Arbeitskräfte 60plus im Fokus der Unternehmen”, 2026.