Communiqué, issue 4, 2003
Articles
- An abrupt halt to a brilliant career
- Monitoring industrial change in Europe
- Time for European-level workplace privacy regulation
- Northern Europeans most satisfied with leisure time
- Towards better living and working conditions in Europe
- Planning for the future
- Win-win effect possible with new working time arrangements
- Track record in monitoring working conditions
Previous issues of Communiqué
There is a risk that traditional socio-economic factors such as income, education, geographical location, age and gender could determine access to information in the future, thus preventing Europe from becoming ‘an information society for all’, cautions the European Monitoring Centre on Change (EMCC).
The report, The future of IT – now it’s getting personal, is the first in a series of forward-looking features from the European Monitoring Centre on Change, the Foundation’s information and exchange resource on anticipating and managing change. The report looks at trends and drivers that will affect the future of the ICT industry and could consequently impact on the lives and work of European citizens.
Sector Futures
The Sector Futures series is based on collecting information from existing European foresight studies, scenario work, innovative studies and reliable data sources. Six sectors have been chosen and three articles will be published under each sector. The first will give a broad picture of the changing dynamic of the sector under discussion, the second will present future scenarios for the sector and the third will elaborate on key issues for European policymakers.
Sector Futures is the newest initiative in the EMCC’s monitoring activities. The aim is to identify socio-economic trends and put them in perspective, hence facilitating their use by company managers and workers, social partners and policymakers, researchers and local authorities.
Monitoring industrial change at European level
The EMCC has been fully operational for almost a year. While still in its developmental phase, the Foundation project has gained increasing support from policy and opinion makers at EU-level. In a recent draft of their joint statement outlining a European framework for managing change, the European social partners identified the EMCC as a ‘valuable tool for monitoring and organising exchanges’ . The European Parliament called on the EMCC to co-organise the public hearing on industrial restructuring in its Economic and Social Affairs Committee on 17 June 2003. The social partners and the European Commission, part of the broad coalition of organisations and institutions that originally called for the establishment of EMCC in 2001, are active in the management of the EMCC as members of its Steering Committee.
The EMCC team consists of Gregorio De Castro, Janet Smith, Jacques Terrenoire, Barbara Gerstenberger, Nicole Romain and Catherine Cerf (absent).
Web portal focus
The EMCC portal is the cornerstone of the project. Its structure reflects the different areas of activity of EMCC. The EMCC Exchange section disseminates information related to the company network seminars and the sector workshops organised by EMCC, while the EMCC Monitor section opens the door to all monitoring tools. The browse function provides access to a regularly updated matrix of research findings, company cases, legal framework documents, collective agreements, scenarios, statistics, policies and organisations relevant to anticipating and monitoring industrial change in Europe.
The European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)
Although by no means the only phenomenon related to industrial change, company restructuring is one of its most visible and talked-about outcomes. Between April and June 2003, companies across Europe announced the loss of almost 61,500 jobs as a result of their restructuring initiatives, according to recent data from the European Restructuring Monitor. The ERM is a new tool for monitoring restructuring on the EMCC web portal. It records restructuring cases and their effects on employment in all EU Member States as announced in the financial press.
‘ ERM was established to illustrate the magnitude of company restructuring in Europe – to help quantify the problem while showing which sectors and countries are particularly affected,’ says Barbara Gerstenberger, research manager at the EMCC
Company network seminars
A central task of EMCC is to stimulate the exchange of experience and debate between those who deal with managing change on a day-to-day basis. During 2003, managers and workers’ representatives were invited to a series of company network seminars, examining how businesses are coping with change brought about by international-isation, mergers and acquisitions or restructuring.
‘While each company network seminar has examined a specific change situation, five common factors for dealing with change successfully can be identified,’ says Jacques Terrenoire, project manager of the EMCC. ‘Communication between workers, management and stakeholders is essential to bring about successful change, as well as planning every step of the change procedure well in advance, involving the right people. The allocation of a sufficient amount of time was another key success factor we identified, as well as the importance of creating a culture of change in the company, where all people involved are expecting and preparing for continuous change. The final ingredient is trust.’
The last company network seminar in the 2003 series is entitled Transforming organisations – the importance of leadership and culture in managing change and will take place in Madrid, Spain on 23-24 September 2003.
Research on drivers of change
EMCC research activities focus on the identification of drivers of change in a particular sector. The aim is to provide an overview of recent developments in the sector and illustrate the findings through case studies. An outlook on the future is provided through scenarios developed for the sector under discussion. To date, research has been completed on the graphics and media industry and the fisheries sector, with research projects for the automotive industry and the textiles and leather sector to be completed by the end of this year.
‘ We try to present our research findings in a form that allows us to use them as input for our exchange events: for example, last year’s research results form the basis for this year’s events,’ comments Janet Smith, research manager at the EMCC. ‘This way, we make sure people read our products, think about them, and exchange views on the findings in the sector workshops.’
Log on to the EMCC
For further information contact Gregorio De Castro