Guidance practitioners’ approaches to building client relationships and solving institutional dilemmas in the Finnish public employment services

This article explores public employment service (PES) guidance practitioners' interpretations of and approaches to building working relationships with their clients in the context of different kinds of institutional expectations placed on client work. The study was conducted in the context of the recently reformed Finnish PES and focused on new categories of practitioners in municipal service organisations. A discursive analysis of thematic interviews with practitioners (n = 16) identified four interpretative repertoires that were, namely, (1) the moral educative, (2) the holistic care, (3) the pragmatic alliance and (4) the socio-critical repertoire. These repertoires represent different ways of solving dilemmas, in particular, between holistic ideals of guidance and the prevailing outcome-focused expectations placed on client work within PES. The results shed light on how dilemmas embedded in guidance work within PES contribute to variation in approaches that practitioners take and may have consequences for service outcomes.