Social innovation to increase quality of labour in Flanders Open Days workshop on flexicurity Louis Vervloet, director ESF Agency

Flemish ESF: actions on work organisation Under axis 6 of the OP: –Call for proposals concerning innovative labour organisation: 12 pilot projects financed –Five conferences with projects and all stakeholders in Flanders to raise awareness and formulate policy Under priority 3 of the current OP: –Call for proposals concerning “social innovation”: 16 projects financed –Thematic work with projects / experts to construct an interactive tool to familiarise organisations with the concepts of social innovation –More funding will be made available in the future

Policy issues in Flanders Low labour market participation of 50+ Early retirement Good pension plan Social security costs Performance pressure Quality of labour Absenteism

Quality of labour Meaningless work (low strain) A Stress risks High Low High Exhausting work (high strain) Active work Passive work Job demands Control capacity B Learning opportunities e.g. standardised conveyer belt work e.g. construction engineer with impossible deadlines Work that is not “active” makes people ill through stress or depression e.g. administrative worker responsible for sending standardised letters to clients with open invoices Source: Karasek

Belgium in European perspective Source: EFILWC 2002 Northern Europe Southern Europe

Complex organisation with simple tasks Simple organisation with complex tasks Organisation specialised units with little overview, a lot of scope to create bottlenecks in the next link and, ensuing, a high necessity to coordinate Units organised as teams around integral (front to end) processes with multi-functional team members who have overview and ensure management of process results (= self-guiding) Reorganising for better quality of labour

Key to success is integrated organisational renewal Results People Culture StructureSystems Leadership Organisational behaviour Mission vision strategy goals Change Management Environment If only one aspect is addressed, it will limit how far you can go with the others

Often still remains of bureaucratic configuration separation between thoughts and action functional organisation based on specialisms (staf vs middle management) hierarchical and centralised Structure internal orientation us-them thinking, stereotypes status and power are linked to position in the pyramid Culture lot of rules and procedures controlling and supervising especially of and for ‘the top’ focus on ‘costs’ Systems reactive “implementers” alienated: not my problem controlling “thinkers” People

New external demands: and..and …and Productivity Quality Flexibility Innovation Sustainability Innovation Quality New demands stretch the capacity of bureaucratic organisations

Customer oriented: flexible configuration Structure simple, transparant & smart: - product-, market- or customer oriented thinking & doing: decentralisation in teams Systems decrease rules & procedures supporting, stimulating made to measure result-oriented People flexible people with wide range of tasks (incl. procedural) in teams Culture customer oriented with primary process leading cooperation in teams status based on contribution & expertise ABC Flexible, multi-functional and adaptable workers enjoy greater security in the labour market!

Transnational/regional cooperation Flanders plans to take the lead on a community of practice on social innovation in the ESF: –To learn from each other: How to put together calls How to support project promotors –To identify and disseminate good practice in social innovation projects Are you and ESF authority and interested? Contact before end of October