Ortigão, Manuel

Employing 92 full-time staff, SAICA Pack is based in Ashbourne, County Meath. The plant produces paper and cardboard boxes for various uses in such industries as food and pharmaceuticals. SAICA Pack Ashbourne went through a significant transformation process over the last two and a half years. This transformation was the initiative of the newly appointed plant manager, with a high level of involvement on the part of the plant employee representatives and the direct support of SIPTU’s Ideas Institute. The Joint Union Management Steering Group played a central role. Over a period of almost two years, all the plant employees were trained in teamworking, problem-solving, project management and other technical areas. New communication processes were implemented and Continuous Improvement Teams were put in place. Progressively, employees started to take ownership of the larger projects in the plant. Motivation and collaboration improved significantly.

Founded in 1996, ROFF is a Portuguese firm dedicated to the implementation of SAP solutions. Since its early days, the company has grown significantly and currently employs just over 500 people. The nature of their activity, developing and implementing IT solutions for different clients, is based purely on people delivering services to clients. Therefore, their business can only be successful if based on committed and satisfied employees. The company founders are well aware of this and have developed a company culture and a working environment that promotes patterns of high individual engagement.

Abbott, a global, broad-based healthcare company, employs almost 4,000 people in Ireland. The scope of this case study is the commercial operation located in Dublin Citywest Business Campus, which employs 158 people. The staff level in this organisation has remained stable during the past five years. In 2008 they started implementing a programme called Life Navigation which should allow employees to be more efficient and productive but at the same time to have a greater balance between work and private life. It is designed to have gains for both the individual employee and the company. The programme’s principles emphasise the importance of teaching employees how to have a flexible approach to work and also creating an organisational context of social acceptance for this flexibility.

Kellogg Spain, a subsidiary of the multinational with the same name, started activity over 30 years ago. This case study considers some HR practices that are global at Kellogg and common across many other countries, but it pays special attention to specific practices that the company has adopted in recent years in Spain. These practices are innovative and in some cases courageous, in terms of the effort required from the company to put them into place. In 2010 Kellogg used the opportunity of changing office to adopt a new approach to work organisation. This new approach, the so-called ‘Kwork’, implies working in a flexible way, combining different locations (office, home, or ‘on the move’).