21-12-2016
What has been going on in the financial world, is also emerging in other branches; one reorganisation after the other. Having a continuously changing and therefore flexible organisation has entered the business landscape for good. This means that both the organisations, the works councils, the trade unions and the employees are undergoing a change that they can better get used to. Or better yet; anticipate on. Rarely is an organisation really designed to adapt to this flexibility. That’s why companies, employees, but also the trade unions find it difficult to cope with this changing landscape.Organisations are looking for an organisational form that provides a quick adoption of the customer’s wishes and needs, in which new products can quickly be brought from idea to production. All in all, the internal organisation is being closely looked at, with uncertainties as a result. Examples are:- Flexible workforce; in response to the fast automation wave.
- Agile working; searching for flexible forms of organising
- Functions / job matrix; increasingly generalist roles
- Individual remuneration forms;instead of cascading reward systems
- 365 days feedback; more and more sounds are being heard to move away from the traditional planning, progress and review cycles.
The workers councils continue to run behind and are being bogged down by stacking requests for advice. Between their own elections, the constantly changing workers council members are trying to keep track of the organisations. Here the question arises as to how participation can be organised more effectively, without the working council having to consider the often-complex reorganisational approach in every organisational change.With all these reorganizations, trade unions see opportunities. Where they have lost more and more members in recent years, they are now seeing opportunities to help employees (and thus potential members) in this new flexible world. Last week trade union De Unie announced its intention to help their members from the financial sector with the transition to other sectors. Also, because it’s difficult for these people to get a job (both in the same or a different sector).Employees feel the shift too. Old-fashioned certainties have never been so far away. Even though the economy is advancing, we are predicting that consumer confidence will increase in the coming year. Job security at ‘your current company’ is much less pronounced. With this development towards continuously changing organisations, there is also an important responsibility for companies to make good arrangements to overcome the consequences. Both workers councils, trade unions and employees benefit from a proactive role of organisations in shaping this organisational flexibility. This means thinking about how the function house and remuneration of the future looks, but also a new way of consultation or realizing the assent of workers councils. And at the same time think about supervision of in- transit- and outflow, but also beyond your own organisation.In short, where extra attention for ‘ time to market ‘ is combined with rapid automation speed up the desire to realize a new flexible organisational form, make sure reorganizing has become a Status Quo. And so, it is also necessary to quickly get a number of components in order and to work on appropriate solutions.
