Page 130 - Socially-responsible-restructuring-Effective-strategies-for-supporting-redundant-workers

Socially responsible restructuring
Effective strategies for supporting redundant workers

6.7.6. Innovation and effectiveness
One of the biggest obstacles in supporting the redundant employees in
Swedbank has been their unwillingness to use counselling and other support.
While groups of redundant employees meeting and helping each other prepare
and search for employment opportunities might seem an innovative practice, less
than 20 people out of 550 responded and applied for these meetings.
Counselling for the redundant employees was also not very popular; about 30
people used this opportunity.
The two main practices that could be transferable to other enterprises are
retraining and responsible outsourcing. The massive retraining programme was
performed by the enterprise’s internal training centre, recruiting external experts
where internal competences were lacking.
If outsourcing reduces costs and improves the quality of service, it often is and
should be used. The better practice here is ensuring that the employees
performing the service are not negatively affected. In this case, transferring these
employees to the other company benefits all, since the bank continues to receive
high quality service by experienced employees, and the employees keep their
positions with similar terms as in the bank.

6.8. Siemens beE, Germany (CASE STUDY 8)

6.8.1. Background and context
The German company Siemens is a customer and investment goods
manufacturer with a focus on electrical applications, energy production and
medical technologies. Siemens has around 410 000 employees worldwide and
realised revenues of EUR 77.3 billion in 2008. In Germany there are about 130
000 employees. In this context, Siemens is one of the biggest private employers
in Germany. Besides the corporate HR department, the three main sectors,
industry, energy and healthcare, also have their own operative and strategic HR
departments.
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Siemens beE ( ) is the department responsible for organising the transfer
company projects at Siemens and comprises several transfer companies, set up
for every restructuring project. The first Siemens internal transfer company (beE)
was set up in 2002 for the telecommunication branch Information and
communication networks (ICN), with the objective of socially compatible

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( ) ‘beE’ is the abbreviation for ‘organisationally independent unit’ (betriebsorganisatorisch
eigenständige Einheit).

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