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Socially responsible restructuring
Effective strategies for supporting redundant workers

5. Innovation and better practice

This review has sought to go beyond considering career guidance practices and
other forms of support to affected workers in restructuring situations, looking at
the quality of innovations and also impact achieved. The focus in this chapter is
on examples of better practice by enterprises, all with the aim of assessing how
transferable they are from employer to employer and between Member States.
The particular focus is on:
(a) effectiveness of enterprise and associated practices and achieved impact;
(b) enablers to effective practice and constraints to implementation and impact;
(c) the observed quality of innovations set in national and sectoral contexts;
(d) the relationships between better practice and organisational maturity;
(e) the scope and potential for transferability of better practice.
The evidence for this part of the review draws heavily on the enterprise and
partnership-led case studies. To this is added some contextual information on
national practices, and contrasts, which preceded the case study assessments
within the study. All case studies are attributed, where permission has been
secured, to cite the practices and circumstances from the employers concerned.

5.1. Effectiveness and impact

In assessing the effectiveness and impact of the various approaches to
supporting workers’ employability set out in the case studies, the problem is a
lack of reliable local data. For many cases there are short-term indicators such as
the number of displaced workers finding a job within a few months or the take-up
of training places, but longer-term perspectives are generally missing. This is a
serious omission since the quality of jobs will only become apparent over a
longer period of time and through measuring their sustainability, earning potential
and career advancement opportunities. This means that much of the information
available on effectiveness and impact is of the qualitative sort and can be
subjective. Even in responses partly or wholly funded by external resources such
as ESF, impact evidence seems, at best, limited and short-term. The position for
case studies of local and regional response programmes is little different and the
impact evidence emphasises operational targets placed on contractors.

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