Hungary EWCO CAR on Recent Developments in Work Organisation in the EU 27 Member States and Norway
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There are very few data available about the current state of work organisation and changes to it in the recent past in Hungary. This paper is mostly based on international data (like EWCS and CIS) and some Hungarian research that are methodologically questionable. The paper tries to describe the current patterns of work organization and the correlation of these patterns with different groups of employees. It also tries to analyse (in a very limited extent) the effects of the work organization on working conditions. Finally there are a few statements about the pucity of opinions of social partners on changes in work organisation.
Block 1: Existing main sources of information dealing with the issue of work organisation at national level and its relation with working conditions, innovation and productivity
Are there national statistical sources (censuses, special surveys, other surveys, etc) that analyse the issue of work organisation or are used for analysing the issue of work organisation in your country?. If so, identify them and explain the way work organisation types are defined and asked in these surveys.
There are no national statistical sources about working organization; Information is only available from international databases such as European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) and Community Innovation Statistics (CIS).
Are there any other main sources of information published after mid-2000s that may provide valuable information on the issue (i.e. ad-hoc studies, sectoral studies, administrative reports, articles, published case studies, etc). If so, identify them.
There is no available sectoral or national study based on statistically valid research (available studies are based on surveys of small numbers of voluntary participators). The state owned organizations financing researches on the labour market and employment (such as the National Employment Foundation, OFA or the Central Statistical Office, KSH), are not financing research on the field of work organization.
Have there been any innovations introduced/expected in the existing national statistical sources intended to take into account the issue of work organisation in your country?
Human resources consultancy enterprises have the highest activity on this field, but their interest is focused mainly on consulting one particular enterprise and rarely publishing any useful and empirically grounded paper.
Block 2: Identify existing patterns of work organisation at national level and recent evolution in time
Describe existing patterns of work organisation at national aggregated level (according to existing used national definitions) and their associated characteristics per pattern, based on the existing information. Provide information on the (quantitative and qualitative) importance of the different forms of these work organisations in the national context. In order to to reflect the workplace practices, NCs are also requested to provide information on different work organisation-related-items, based on the national Working Conditions surveys that stress the main changes that have taken place in the last 5-7 years (i.e. higher/lower presence of team work; higher/lower presence of autonomy at work; higher/lower presence of job rotation; higher/lower assistance from colleagues or hierarchy; higher/lower task complexity; higher/lower degree of learning, higher/lower problem solving capacity, etc), stressing existing differences by sectors and enterprise sizes, and identifying the main reasons behind these changes.
While national data are not available for describing the existing patterns of work organization at sectoral level or its dependencies on the enterprise size, it is possible to get the draft of the general picture based on EU level research. The following draft picture is on the basis of CIS 2008 and EWCS 2010. CIS data (if others not mentioned) covers enterprises with 10 or more employees and with core NACE activities related to innovation.
On the basis of CIS data for 2008, only the changes of work organization and its reason behind can be described. According to that source, 66.6% of the enterprises implemented “new methods of organising work responsibilities and decision making” in the year 2008. This proportion is quite similar to the neighbour countries, except for Romania, that is the leading country in this dimension with 91%. The most important objective associated to organizational innovation was reducing time to respond to customer or supplier needs (84.7%), while the least important objective was to improve the ability to develop new products or processes (49%). These data suggests that the organizational changes in Hungary are motivated by the service function rather than the production.
From the viewpoint of the employee a differentiated picture can be drawn on the basis of the recent EWCS data. Control over work process and time, social aspects of work and involvement in decisions and improvement of working organization are some of the dimensions covered..
EWCS data for Hungary shows that the majority of workers may influence their work both in terms of control over work process and time. The percentage of those who can influence the method, speed or order of their work is between 63% and 75%. On the other hand, the percentage of those who are able to take a break at any time is slightly under half of the total (49,4%.). This dimension does not depend on the workers' sex or age, except for the ability of taking breaks; in this regard the percentage of workers who can take a break at any time is 10 percentage points higher among those who are older than 50 years than among those who are 30 years old or younger. There are significant differences in this dimension between workers in the industry and in the service sector. In general, workers in the service sector have more control over their work in all mentioned aspects (differences range from 14 to 28 percentage points in relation to those working in the industry). There are significant differences among workers with different occupation types in all aspects of this dimension. The differences are very large in the cases of ability of influencing methods of work and order of tasks. In these cases the differences between an average low-skilled manual worker and a high skilled clerical worker are among the highest in Europe with a difference of 50 percentage points in the case of ability of controlling work methods. To sum up, it can be stated that in Hungary the majority of workers have control over their work and working time, but there are significant differences between different sectors and occupations. Some larger differences may stem from different perceptions rather than facts, especially in relation to differences that are observed to a smaller extent in neighbour countries with similar economic situation and work culture.
There are three questions in the social dimension of work organization block of EWCS: ability of choosing working partner, participation in teamwork and autonomy of teamwork. The picture is quite ambivalent in this dimension in Hungary: while teamwork is wide spread in Hungary (88.4%), the autonomy of these teams is restricted (only 18.6% of them have high autonomy) and there is also a very limited possibility for choosing working partners (only 24.1% of workers may choose their working partners always or most of the time). In the case of participation in teamwork there are only little differences among sex, age, and occupation type and sector groups. However, in the cases of autonomy of choosing working partners and autonomy of group work there are remarkable differences (more than 10 percentage points) between older (50+) and younger (-30) and between high-skilled clerical workers and low skilled manual workers. In the case of autonomy of choosing working partners there is a significant difference between women and men: 72% of female workers are only rarely or never able to choose their working partners, while the similar rate for male workers is 62%. To sum up, teamwork is widespread in Hungary but the level of autonomy is quite low (older, more skilled and male workers have a bit more autonomy than their counterparts). The participation in teamwork is 15 percentage points higher than the EU27 average, while autonomy (in relation to choosing the working partners and autonomy of group work) is lower by few percentage points.
The third dimension of the EWCS block about working organisation is the involvement in decisions and improvement of working organization. The results for those two topics show similar patterns: around two-fifths of the workers are involved always or most of the time in the decisions related to their work and the improvement of working organization while another two-fifths never or rarely participate in these processes. While differences among age groups and between men and women in this dimension are small, the differences among occupation groups and sectors are remarkable: high-skilled clerical workers and workers in the service sector have a higher possibility to influence important decisions compared to low-skilled manual workers and workers in the industry. To sum up, the proportion of workers who can influence the important decisions connected to their work and work organization equals the proportion of workers who can not. However, high-skilled clericals and workers in the service sector are in a better position in this regard. Compared to the average of the EU27 the proportion of workers who are slightly or not at all involved in important decisions is significantly higher (around 10 percentage point) in Hungary than the average proportion in the EU27. The sectoral differences are also larger in Hungary than the EU average, and the pattern that workers in the service sector have more influence on decisions is quite rare in the EU (a similar situation only seems to exist in Slovakia).
Identify (if possible), the recent evolution in time of work organisation patterns in your country (last 5-7 years). Pay special attention to the effects derived from the current economic crisis.
Due to the lack of national data, changes in the last 5-7 years can only be described on the basis of EWCS data from 2005 and 2010, but due to the small number of interviewees only higher differences can be interpreted as significant; this is especially true if we are trying to investigate changes within a group of workers. The highest and only remarkable difference in the above mentioned dimensions occurred regarding the possibility of taking a break at any time, which increased from 42% (2005) to 49.3% (2010). This seems to indicate that here was some stability in the patterns of work organization in this period.
Identify existing differences in work organisation patterns accordingly to sector and company size considerations, as well as (if possible) recent changes in these patterns.
Unfortunately there are no data available about work organization patterns by sector of activity or company size. There are however some studies about work organisation in the pharmaceutical industry and manufacturing, in general, which are presented in following two sections.
Identify work organisation patterns associated with high performance working environments/enterprises.
The innovative pharmaceutical industry is a high performance branch of the Hungarian economy, where fast changes occurred in the work organization in the last 5 to 7 years. Zoltán Csedő summarizes the organizational changes in this sector based on interviews with executives of 6 of 10 Hungarian pharmaceuticals (Csedő, 2007). As a result, the author claims that in all enterprises a strong centralization process could be observed. It can be described as a four steps process: increased accountability, optimalizations of processes, centralization of some processes in international teams (the so called 'pre-launch'), and reintroduction of line-management (with strict hierarchical relationships). Most of these changes were ad hoc changes, with top-down origin. In these changes the participation of employees in the preparation of changes were missing completely. Due to their ad hoc characteristics, the changes were many times only partial (not affecting all departments of the enterprises).
Identify the main drivers for change or barriers to change underpinning these recent developments in work organisation in the country, paying special attention to the effects derived from the current economic crisis.
The results of a research based on case studies in the manufacturing sector (10 companies with different sizes) carried out in 2009 suggest that the global economic crisis was an important driver of specific changes in work organization (Boda-Neumann, 2010). As the authors claim, the most important changes occurred in the organization of working time. Those enterprises that used to suspend their production during winter and summer (mainly in automotive industry) have been prolonging these periods of suspension since the crisis. Other enterprises in the manufacturing sector which activity implies to work continuously changed their working time pattern from three shifts of 8 hours to two shifts of 12 hours accompanied by a variable amount of free days to be able to arrange production more flexibly. (Note: due to the Hungarian Labour Code the working time can be defined as time-frame for maximum four months in general or for maximum one year in collective agreement. In these cases, the maximum time of daily work can be 12 hours (section 118-119 of the Hungarian Labour Code). Another small enterprise reduced the number of workers below the optimal amount and required the workers to work overtime in order to keep up the necessary volume of their production.
Based on the same paper we it can be seen that other changes occurred in the manufacturing sector in the scope of employees' activities as a result of the crisis. In some cases, especially in small enterprises the scope of a particular employee’s activities was extended, sometimes accompanied by on-the-job training. While larger enterprises tried to keep up their flexibility by keeping qualified, experienced ('multifunctional') employees and dismissing more specialized ones. In some of these cases the work contract had no connection with the actual work at all. One of the enterprises investigated introduced a training day every week to enhance the competitiveness and to prepare for the introduction of new models. To sum up, all the changes of the work organization during the crisis tried to make the enterprises more flexible, but some of them enhanced the overall competitiveness of the enterprises as well.
Partners are requested to identify one/the most dynamic national economic sector in terms of work organisation changes and for whom information is available. For this selected economic sector, NCs are requested to provide information on existing predominant work organisation patterns in this sector, as well as recent trends and changes in the last 5-7 years and reasons behind these changes. Also, and in the case the selected economic sector is a non-tertiary one, NCs are requested to provide some general information on recent trends and changes in work organisation patterns in the last 5-7 years and reasons behind these changes in any tertiary sector selected by each NC (i.e. consultancy services, HORECA, consultancy services, call centres, etc).
Due to the limited availability of information, it is only possible to point out that, in recent years, the pharmaceutical industry has been a very dynamic sector in terms of work organisation changes in Hungary.
Block 3: Associated effects of identified different forms of work organisation and work organisation-related items on working conditions
Identify associated effects of different existing patterns of work organisation and work organisation-related items on working conditions (i.e. training, skills and employability; health, safety and well-being; working time and work-life balance). Particular elements to be analysed may include stress, job satisfaction, work life balance, workloads and learning
The effects of work organization pattern to the working conditions in Hungary in general can not be described due to the lack of data. Due to this fact in this section only some examples and partial data can be mentioned.
Identify (possible) changes in working conditions associated to each work organisation pattern in the last 5-7 years, as well as the main reasons underpinning these changes
Partners are requested to provide information focused on the existing relationship between predominant work organisation patterns and existing working conditions in the economic sector selected in previous section.
The paper of Némethné (Némethné, 2010) mentions a survey carried out in 2009 by Gazdaságkutató Zrt. (GKI) covering a small sample of enterprises from manufacturing, construction and services sectors. The results of the research show that there is a correlation between innovation in organization and training of the employees: over 60% of enterprises that innovated their organization trained their employees while less than 30% of enterprises without organizational innovation trained their employees in the last two years. The main reasons of the organizational innovation were enhancement of competitiveness and quality (65.2% of enterprises), and increase of cost-effectiveness (59.4% of enterprises). The ‘expansion of production/service capacity’ is less important as an implementation driver for organizational innovation than for other types of innovation, such as production, technologies and market innovations. On the other hand, ‘to use the innovation contribution allowance’ seems more important as a reason for organisational innovation than for other types of innovation (5.8% against average of 2.4%). (Note: innovation contribution is a type of tax that is paid by all business organizations based on their net income (0,3%); legislation allows companies to use a certain part of the calculated contribution for their own innovation projects.)
In the case of innovative pharmaceutical industry (the above mentioned example) the effect of organizational changes on working conditions were predominantly negative (Csedő, 2007). Due to the continuous reorganizations, the commitment of the employees dramatically decreased in most of the cases. Two areas were extremely sensible to the reorganizations: the research and development (R&D) departments and the sales departments. The reasons for this sensitivity are the importance of work experience and the irreplaceability of job specific knowledge. According to the author of the study, reorganization could have been successful had project teams been set up so employees could be tested in new different fields. These project teams could have helped to upkeep employees' commitments and their sense of stability.
Block 4: Social partners’ position with regard to the issue of work organisation patterns
Attitude/opinion of the social partners in your country on the importance of encouraging changes of work organisation in the economic tissue
The attitudes of social partners can be investigated through the contents of the collective agreement as they are mirroring the importance of each issue both for employers and employees. Accoridng to Nacsa and Neumann, it can be said that the contents of collective agreements had become poorer in the time. While older, traditional elements (such as helping reintegration of dismissed employees in a similar sector) had been left out, modern elements did not get in. As examples for the modern elements the authors mentioned that topics such as principles of organization of work, rules from new human resources techniques, and rules of telework or employment of temporary agency workers had not become part of collective agreements.
Main elements identified by social partners and associated with forms of work organisation, which have an impact on the improvement of working conditions and performance.
In this way, work organization does not seem to be of much importance for both the employees' and employers' representative organizations.
Please distinguish (if possible) different views between trade unions and employers organisations.
In some countries, agreements have been signed between social partners or initiatives/programmes have been developed by employers and/or trade unions in order to support changes in work organisation for different reasons (e.g. facing the economic crisis, improvement of productivity/performance and/or working conditions). Please, describe one/two relevant agreements or initiatives with the aim of supporting changes in work organisation.
Most of changes in work organization that have occurred due to the effect of the economic crisis were related to the shortening of the working time. As this reduction requires changes in the employees’ individual contracts in most of the cases trade unions or other employees’ organizations were not involved in these processes. According to a case study research (Neumann-Boda, 2010), employers’ and employees’ organizations entered into discussions more frequently in multinational enterprises. However, these discussions were not successful in general because local branches of a multinational enterprise were competing against each other and wanted to decrease their costs, and the easiest way of decreasing costs was to dismiss employees. The main concern of the employees' organizations – as Neumann and Boda say – in these discussions with the employers was to save employees, but their position was much weaker than in Western Europe.
In contrast, discussions were more successful in the automotive industry and many agreements have been signed. In the case of Audi, all measures of the employer were discussed with the employees' representative organisation and a pact has been signed as well. In many cases of successful negotiations the partnership between the employer and the organization of employees has improved due to the crisis (Neumann-Boda, 2010).
Commentary by the NC
NCs are requested to provide a very brief commentary on main obtained results
Neither the state nor the social partners pay much attention to the issue of work organization. Hungarian enterprises lagging behind their western partners in using new schemes of work organization. While this is less extreme in the cases of Hungarian subsidiaries of multinational enterprises, the lag is more apparent in the cases of SMEs. This lack of interest in work organization may be one of the numerous reasons for the low competitiveness of Hungary (but this issue is not investigated thoroughly). Until now we do not have enough information about the big picture, and in this way it is hard to predict whether this lag of Hungarian companies in the field of work organization will widen or narrow after the crisis.
In relation to the cooperation between employees and employers the crisis had both positive and negative effects: some enterprises learned the lesson and became more flexible (in cooperation with employees’ representative organisations), while others tried to decrease their costs solely by dismissing employees.
References
Csedő, Zoltán: Szervezeti változás és változásvezetés a folyamatos differenciálódás és integráció tükrében: az innovatív gyógyszeripar példája[Organizational changes and change management in the mirror of continuous differentiation and integration: example of innovative medicine industry]. Doktori (PhD) értekezés, Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem, Gazdálkodástani Doktori Iskola 2007.
Nacsa, Beáta – Neumann, László: A kollektív szerződések ereje, a szabályozás hatékonysága [The force of collective agreements, the effectiveness of regulations]. In: Szociális párbeszéd új keretek között [Social discussion in new frame], Foglalkoztatás és Szociális Hivatal, Társadalmi Párbeszéd Központ, no year of publication
Némethné Pál, Katalin: Innovációs tevékenység mérése a magyar vállalatoknál [Measurement of Innovation Activity at Hungarian Companies]. Doktori (PhD) értekezés, Budapesti Corvinus Egyetem, Gazdálkodástani Doktori Iskola, 2010. English draft on the internet: http://phd.lib.uni-corvinus.hu/447/2/pal_katalin_ten.pdf
Neumann, László–Boda, Dorottya: A válság hatása a vállalatok gazdálkodására [The effect of crisis on the management of enterprises] Conference paper, Szirák, 2010. Internet: http://econ.core.hu/esemeny/szirak2010.html
Dávid Simon, Solution4.org