Australian recruitment firm opens German branch 05/10/2006 00:00

5 October 2006

NUREMBERG, GERMANY - Australia's Ingeus group opened its first office in Germany on Thursday to provide welfare-to-work services for people without jobs.

Ingeus Deutschland will look after 2,000 long-term unemployed in the southern city of Nuremberg in a pilot project set up with local authorities and the Federal Labour Agency.

The company's chief executive, Wolfgang Teichmann, said Ingeus offered a wider range of services than those provided by its German equivalent, such as arranging childcare for single parents and providing help in finding accommodation.

Thomas Friedrich, manager of the Nuremberg labour services group Arge, said the project would show whether the experience Ingeus gathered in Britain could be applied to the German labour market.

Britain has a jobless rate of 5.4 per cent compared to 8.2 per cent for Germany under standardized unemployment statistics released by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

The Ingeus group started life as WorkDirections Australia in 1989. The group now operates from 50 offices across Australia, Britain and France and employs more than 900 staff in the fields of training, welfare-to-work and recruitment.

DPA

Subject: German news