Page 183 - Socially-responsible-restructuring-Effective-strategies-for-supporting-redundant-workers

Socially responsible restructuring
Effective strategies for supporting redundant workers

Individuals will lack this and practitioners supplying guidance, outplacement and
associated brokerage to other work or training will be the key intermediaries in
informing more realistic judgments and decision-making. In fast changing labour
markets, the currency of labour market information would seem to be vital.
Even the most effective organisational practice profiled in this review works in
collaboration with diverse service suppliers. These collaborations between the
public and private sector seem to work best where they are anticipated and in
circumstances where they draw on continuing relationships both with the internal
labour market of affected enterprises and the wider local labour market.
In a situation where what individual enterprises are able to offer may be
limited, integration of publicly-funded support through mainstream or other
services is crucial to socially responsible practice, within specially developed
sectoral or regional support schemes. However, public support is not evenly
available across Europe and this is set to be a constraint to socially responsible
practices for enterprise restructuring within some of the newer Member States.
The quality of such collaborations may also be limited where such services are
largely geared to unemployed individuals and not those at risk of unemployment.
While support for displaced workers is characteristically time constrained for
career guidance and related interventions, there is evidence that effectiveness is
enhanced where it is of a longer duration or where those affected have the
opportunity for continuity of support. The ‘pool’ arrangements for some
enterprises in Finland and Sweden are seen to be highly effective in securing
sustainable reemployment, and some of the German transfer companies make
provision for those supported to be able to return to the available services after
re-employment. Having access to such arrangements over a longer period is
beneficial for employee choices about securing more sustainable work.
A final issue for effective strategies is the extent to which enterprises
anticipate the likely future needs for services to support socially responsible
practice. Previously arranged ‘minimum’ levels of support cover notification,
referral and financial arrangements between social partners for redundancy at
company or plant level. This is less common with career guidance related
support. Effective practice seems to call for proactivity by social partners in this
area, as in the case of the Scandinavian and German case studies but rarely
elsewhere.
The review suggests that these issues cannot be isolated and decisions on
planning and practice will cut across each of these areas.

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