Jobs and Work
Agnès Parent-Thirion – Senior Research Manager at Eurofound – presented the main findings form the 6th European Working Conditions Survey. The focus of the report addresses job quality; the rationale being simple: there is clear link between job quality and productivity. Headline findings are twofold:
- progress in improvements in job quality remains limited
- structural inequalities and differences in terms of gender, employment status and occupation are still significant
Mrs Parent-Thirion explained to Congress that the research had constructed seven job quality indices, representing different dimensions of job quality: Physical environment, Work intensity, Working time quality, Social environment, Skills and discretion and Prospects and Earnings selected on the basis of their proven impact (positive or negative) on the health and well-being of workers. Jobs that scored similarly in terms of the different dimensions of job quality were grouped together in five ‘job quality profiles’. The Figure shows the relative relationships between the five profiles of job quality and the seven dimensions. So, for example, High flying jobs (accounting for 21%of workers) scored highly in most dimensions other than work intensity and working time quality. In contrast those in the poor-quality profile (20%) score poorly across the range of dimensions.
Mrs Parent-Thirion pointed out that workers in any particular job profile did not necessarily share the same characteristics. Striking differences are also evident in terms of the distribution of workers according to level of education. For instance, workers with only a primary level of education are very strongly overrepresented (53%) in the ‘poor quality’ profile; conversely, a similar proportion of workers (46%) in the ‘high flying’ profile have a tertiary level of education. One type of job quality profile predominates in certain sectors. More than half of all workers in the financial services have a ‘high flying’ job; and a similar proportion of those in the construction sector have an ‘active manual’ job. Interestingly, a quarter of workers in health and nearly a quarter in public administration have ‘under pressure’ jobs – the highest shares of all sectors. Job quality is not equally distributed between each country. Workers in Denmark, Finland, Luxembourg, Sweden and the United Kingdom fare better in terms of job quality. However, Romania, Greece, Hungary and Latvia stand out with a high proportion of workers in ‘poor quality’ jobs.
Mrs Parent-Thirion repeated the assertion that the research provided a solid evidence base in relation to improvements in job quality bringing improvements in performance and productivity. For HR the message was clear: each job quality dimension can be improved through workplace policies and practices. These might be relatively simple changes such as enabling an employee to take an hour off during the working to attend to some aspect of domestic business or more medium to long term developments to advance the design of meaningful jobs. She added that to ensure that policies to improve job quality can work and be adapted to workplaces the involvement of workers in the decisions that affect their work and their representation needs to be supported.
Eurofound’s European Working Conditions Survey interviewed nearly 44,000 workers in 35 countries. The report is available to download at https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/report/2016/working-conditions/sixth-european-working-conditions-survey-overview-report
Diversity and Inclusion
‘Towards the Inclusive Company’ provided the focus for a Panel Discussion on Diversity and Inclusion led by Dr. Maria Giuseppina Bruna (IPAG Business School). She introduced the session with reference to a number of challenges facing organisations including:
- properly understanding diversity
- exceeding the totems of immediacy
- utilising diversity policies as levers and opportunity for broader organisational change
- harnessing the power of shared leadership
Standards: Panel member, Laurence Breton-Kueny (HR Director AFNOR), reported on increasing momentum in the work taking place, internationally, towards standards in HRM and in which recognition of diversity and inclusion factors was central. Specifically, within France AFNOR, who are at the hub of the French standardisation system, were mid-way through a three-year project to develop standards. Achieving agreement on key aspects of vocabulary had been important to resolve but Ms Breton-Kueny noted that attention was increasingly being paid to linking equitable treatment of people with business benefits. Outcomes and outputs from the project were anticipated late in 2018 / early 2019.
Diversity Policy and Practice: The contributions from the remaining panel members – Manon Poirier, General Manager of the ‘Ordre des conseillers en ressources humaines agréés’, and Benoît Serre, Deputy General Director of HR at MACIF, were significant in a number of respects.
Firstly, from a Canadian perspective, Mrs Poirier, made three telling points in relation to diversity and inclusion ‘success factors’:
- the value of CEO and senior management engagement with diversity and inclusion …from a business perspective
- we continue to lack suitable measures to monitor improvements and progress
- the need to question the default perspective of ‘training’ as the main answer to issues of how best to promote diversity and inclusion within an organisation.
In the context of the latter point she referred delegates to a 2016 article in the Harvard Business Review “Why Diversity Programmes Fail”. This is available at: https://hbr.org/2016/07/why-diversity-programs-fail Secondly, Mr. Serre linked diversity and inclusion to culture. Often it was the culture of the company, she argued, and not that of the country, that presented the main barriers to advancing organisational diversity and inclusion. He questioned if changes at the top of an organisation necessarily changed the culture of company There was a need she advocated, to promote and implement policy and practice throughout out the organisation. By its very nature diversity and inclusion had to be ‘inclusive’!
Two short videos were shown as part of the session. The first focused on networks and specifically women’s networks as a proven means to help break the glass ceiling. The second video drew attention to the notion of a diversity charter.
The EU Diversity Charter Platform: Originally a French initiative in 2004 the idea of a diversity charter was recognised by the EU in 2009 with the creation of the EUs Diversity Charter Platform. A diversity charter outlines the measures to be undertaken to promote diversity and equal opportunities in the workplace. The Charter Platform enables exchange between organisations promoting and implementing national diversity charters. Since 2009 national charters have been developed in 18 EU countries, involving over 8000 organisations and embracing over 50m employees. An impact assessment was shortly to be published and which was expected to reveal over 80% of signatory organisations claiming the charter had had positive impact on organisational performance.
A range of Charter Platform resources and information is available at http://ec.europa.eu/justice/discrimination/diversity/facts/index_en.htm
General discussion, following the Panel member contributions, focused on implications for HR. Whilst there was a degree of consensus that the issue was a bigger management or business problem, it was HR who needed to step up to the challenge to lead on the issue. It was also questioned whether quotas, in terms of the number of women on a company board, for example, possibly created other inequalities.
Europe: Challenges and Change for HR
In many ways this was the over-arching and integrative theme of Congress. At the start of the day a Panel Discussion addressed “A New Dynamic for a New Economic and Social Europe”. Critically, attention was drawn to slowing growth, weakening productivity and which was generating tensions in terms making the economic and social market work effectively. Pierre Moscovici (European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs, Taxation and Customs) began his contribution by reminding the audience that Europe and the EU, in the main, was a success story. It was a force of stability in a turbulent world. But, he asked if it was a wholly unmitigated success then why were we seeing rise in populism, discontent with the EU (e.g. Brexit) and the resurgence of ‘far right’ movements. He regarded the biggest challenge facing the EU as what to do with those that are ‘left behind’. “Inequalities are what keeps me awake at night”. Mr Moscovici argued Europe needed a new generation of structural reforms (Structural Reform 2.0) that paid less attention to labour market reforms and more to access to education and training and critically lifelong learning to facilitate re-training and easier switching of jobs throughout any one person’s career. It was here that there was clear implication for the role and responsibilities of those working in HR to help engender and support an active labour market that worked for all.
European Pillar of Social Rights: Mr Moscovici also argued that Europe needed a comprehensive approach as regards a fairer society. An important development here was the European Pillar of Social Rights launched in April. He acknowledged some had hoped for more but the political realities of ensuring agreement across all member states had to be recognised. Mr Moscovici argued the Pillar “would change how we do things, it may even change what we do but it does not change who does what”…..the political commitment of member states at the highest level was so important if the Pillar was to have real impact.
No rights without jobs Luca Visentini, General Secretary of the ETUC, developed a much more critical analysis of the problems facing Europe. The social dimension was inextricably linked to the economic dimension. Europe, he argued was not recovering economically as fast as desirable to help meet its social agenda. Social progress was being disrupted. He agreed that the Social Pillar was a good start in terms of revitalising Europe’s social model but the challenges were immense. Most important he suggested was the question of whether the new economies (carbon, digital) could create sufficient ‘new’ jobs to replace those that were disappearing and under threat.
HR: Implications and Change? Discussion which followed the panel contributions paid more attention to the HR agenda and the pressures and need for change in HR. So, for example, in the context of digitisation Unai Saez Prieto (HR Director IVECO/Fiat) provided some fascinating illustration of how digitisation was changing salary reports, selection processes and how HR analytics were being used to link data on absence with workforce planning. Ultimately, though, such detailed insight was in short supply and as expressed by several audience contributions there was an absence of the concrete and pragmatic that HR could take on board. A gap remained between the principles embodied, for example, in the Pillar of Rights, and the pathways and means to bring the rhetoric and principles into reality. Peter Cheese, CEO CIPD, offered a compelling analysis of the UK in the context of Brexit. Whilst highly critical of the UK ability to understand the supply and demand for skills and associated mismatches (and which he anticipated would worsen post Brexit) how exactly companies might respond to his plea for “good work” were somewhat lacking. The Panel Discussion on ‘What’s a European Manager’ (Ben Davies, ChapmanCG; Steve Krupp, Heidrick & Struggles’ Leadership Consulting group; Malcom Sclanders, Heidrick Consulting) focussed delegates attention to examples across the globe of “progressive HR”. They provided interesting insights and illustration of HR practice at senior levels in highly dynamic ‘winning’ companies located in the likes of Silicon Valley. It was suggested that the HR tool box needed to change fundamentally changing in order to:
- be involved in futures scenario work
- manage global talent pools
- develop personalised HR -one size fits one
- fight the fear of change
- deal with complexity and
- move from the transactional to the transformational
However, developed insight into quite what this meant for the HR competence toolbox, for the vast majority of the HR profession in a European context and who do not work in ‘leading edge’ organisations in Silicon Valley, remained somewhat opaque.
What should HR start be doing tomorrow? In an attempt to move the discussion towards the more practical and pragmatic the Moderator (Herve Borensztejn, Managing Partner, Heidrick & Steggles) asked this question of panel contributors. Three main responses are noted:
- learn from other functions
- assess how HR is helping learn throughout the organisation and
- spend as much time outside one’s own organisation or sector…what’s out there?
A final thought on this question was provided by Izy Béhar, EAPM Past President, as he closed proceedings. In our discussions and deliberation on the changing role of HR “Don’t forget the social…the contribution we can make to the wider community”.