Zwischen Anspruch und Realität: die Umsetzung des Schlichtungsverfahrens im Jobcenter

Abstract

"With the citizen's income reform, a conciliation procedure for basic income support for job seekers was introduced for the first time on 1 July 2023 (§ 15a SGB II). It applies when it is not possible to draw up or update the cooperation plan due to differences of opinion between the job centre and the beneficiary, and is intended to enable an amicable solution to be reached. The specific design of the procedure – in particular the question of whether the conciliation is conducted internally by the job centre's own employees or externally by third parties – is the responsibility of the job centre's board of trustees. The legislator thus grants them leeway in the design of the procedure and expressly refrains from imposing a uniform solution. As part of the planned new basic security system, the conciliation procedure is to be abolished. This report is the first empirical study to examine how the institutional requirements for the conciliation procedure are implemented in practice. The analysis is based on qualitative interviews with conciliators and caseworkers from three job centres each with different implementation models and different types of job centres. The analysis was carried out using thematic analysis. Ten institutional parameters derived from the law, the explanatory memorandum to the law and the technical guidelines of the Federal Employment Agency serve as the analytical frame of reference. These can be divided into three groups: requirements for conciliators (neutrality and independence, moderation, professional competence), requirements related to the procedure (legal compliance, transparency, procedural efficiency, autonomy of design, low threshold) and interaction-related requirements (openness to results, participation in the process). With regard to requirements related to the conciliator, it is apparent that neutrality is understood by all conciliators not as a given status, but as a continuous effort to be achieved. Two different understandings can be distinguished here: neutrality through equidistance and conscious abstinence from information on the one hand, and neutrality through active knowledge exchange and mediating on the other. With regard to moderation, too, self-image and expectations vary between passive process support and active steering with conciliator's own proposed solutions. In terms of professional competence, there is a key difference between internal and external conciliators in that internal conciliators have accumulated system knowledge from their consulting work, while external conciliators had to acquire this knowledge retrospectively. In terms of requirements related to the procedure, legal compliance is primarily understood as setting boundaries for the scope of action for conciliation. The pivotal function of the procedure is significant: it offers temporary protection against reduced benefits during its duration, but opens the way to sanctions in the event of failure. Transparency is understood as an ongoing task. Internal conciliators use direct access to the job centre and strategically position the conciliation as a support tool. For external conciliators, information practices are a ‘black box’. The caseworkers’ duty to inform beneficiaries about the conciliation possibility is generally regarded as a central mechanism for creating transparency, but in practice it is unreliable for various reasons. The efficiency of the procedure is assessed by caseworkers as users primarily on the basis of the subjective added value for their further work. The autonomy granted to job centres and conciliators as implementers varies according to institutional location. Internal conciliators tend to make extensive use of their scope for action, while external conciliators limit themselves to the methodological and content-related level. Low thresholds are sought through methods, simple language and the option of an accompanying person. However, this approach has its limits, as internal procedures tend to be low-threshold for caseworkers, but can be burdensome for beneficiaries. External procedures offer symbolic neutrality, but can themselves be high-threshold depending on how access is designed. With regard to interaction-related requirements, two orientations of conciliators can be reconstructed for the requirement of openness to results. Output orientation is characterised by the goal of labour market integration being considered fixed and the means of achieving it as negotiable. Process orientation, on the other hand, accepts the failure to reach an agreement as a legitimate outcome. Participation in the process is understood as an active dialogue, but is not a given. Voluntary participation proves to be structurally limited for both sides. Beneficiaries weigh up participation against the possible consequences, while caseworkers sometimes see participation and initiation as inevitable or as a means of enforcing their demands. Overall, the findings show that institutional requirements are not implemented as fixed rules, but are interpreted subjectively and situationally. The result is not a uniform implementation, but rather variations in local practices. The institutional location of the conciliation structures the framework conditions of practice, but does not determine them completely. The professional orientation of the conciliators is also significant. The roles of caseworkers as users on the one hand and gatekeepers of information on the other are also constitutive. Regarding the institutional requirements in the overall picture, it becomes apparent that these can be mutually dependent and limiting in their implementation. These tensions result not least from the hybrid nature of the instrument itself. Its conceptual vagueness creates different and sometimes contradictory expectations in its implementation and among those involved." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Köppen, M. (2026): Zwischen Anspruch und Realität: die Umsetzung des Schlichtungsverfahrens im Jobcenter. (IAB-Forschungsbericht 06/2026), Nürnberg, 49 p. DOI:10.48720/IAB.FB.2606