Page 110 - Socially-responsible-restructuring-Effective-strategies-for-supporting-redundant-workers

Socially responsible restructuring
Effective strategies for supporting redundant workers

In terms of success of the outplacement programme, 34 out of 35 redundant
workers reintegrated to the labour market. However, at the beginning of 2008, the
Slovak economy was in a phase of economic growth and the employment was
rising, so it is difficult to distinguish the effect of economic growth from the
contributions of the outplacement programme on reintegrating redundant
workers. Further, it is difficult to evaluate the most effective components of the
outplacement programme. It could be only inferred, from the internal survey and
from discussions with affected employees, that the most fruitful components were
face-to-face discussions with Labour office specialists, including individual career
assessment, and techniques to search for vacancies. No wider impact of the EM
outplacement programme on collaborators, community, or local labour market
was measurable. However, there was some positive impact on the morale of the
workforce in the company, as the outplacement programme was perceived as a
fair treatment of employees.

6.3.6. Innovation and effectiveness
The outplacement programme supported the morale of the workforce and
strengthened trust in the company. The whole outplacement programme was
perceived as an innovation both by the company and the labour office, where
there was previously little take-up by restructuring firms of services such as
these.
Integration with PES and flexible delivery of services were the two most
important success factors of the whole outplacement programme. The main
message of this case study was the need to foster active cooperation between
companies and local labour offices in designing appropriate forms of support, in
particular career guidance in the early phases of company restructuring. In
Slovakia, companies rarely provide careers guidance to their employees; labour
offices and companies operate separately when it comes to providing support to
employees threatened by dismissal. The main barrier in providing extra
assistance to employees is that assistance might be too expensive. In this case
study, through the cooperation with the labour office, the company did not incur
extra restructuring costs and the impact on career opportunities for redundant
workers was markedly positive.

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