Esangathan Newsletter 10

eSangathan Newsletter N°10

September 2008

• ICT-2008: “I”s to the future – November 25-27, 2008 in Lyon (France) • e-Inclusion Ministerial Conference and Expo – From November 30 to December 2 in Vienna (Austria) • ICT related topics open consultations • Commission consults on how to put Europe into the lead of the transition to Web 3.0

Editorial The final conference of the eSangathan project was simultaneously held on September 18th, 2008 in Brussels and online via webcast. We got the return from the people who attended the webcast version, that they were really happy thanks to the quality provided by the technical team from the EU-Commission premises at Borschette Centre. For those who unfortunately couldn’t make it in Brussels or in front of a screen; there is still an opportunity. The conference was recorded and will be made available online before the end of November on the specific dissemination wiki from eSangathan. By the way, the content of the conference held in Mumbai (India) on April 17, 2008 will also be available on that same wiki. The Brussels conference was the opportunity for the team to gather for 5th time in 2 years and to make the results of the project publicly available. Let’s recall to the reader what the main objective of the project was. eSangathan concentrated for two years on aged workers and collaborative working environments in order to find out, and eventually show evidence, that ICT could be a useful and well adapted tool to keep longer skilled aged workers into the labour market while offering better work life balance conditions than the traditional office. The project focused only on knowledge workers. To do so, the project has managed two pilots with a totally different configuration. The results are presented in the eSangathan Final Report. Based on the findings of the work done during the project, eSangathan has also issued a White Paper with a set of recommendations at several levels: European level, governmental and public bodies’ level, corporate level and worker’s level. Indeed, in order to face the issue of the inclusion of the aged worker in the labour market and the challenge to make it happen, all the actors need to team up to generate possible working conditions for all. eSangathan tells the market that ICT is a fantastic enabler to reach that goal! Nicole TURBÉ-SUETENS DISTANCE EXPERT Project co-ordinator

Introducing the eSangathan Conference to you This eSangathan one-day conference was organized in a way to listen at all the different stakeholders dealing with the issue of active ageing workforce. The morning was dedicated to the input coming from the European, institutional and social bodies dealing with this topic. The introductory presentation was made by Peter WINTLEV-JENSEN from the e-Inclusion Unit in DG Information Society and Media.

res promote age diversity as a key element to retain knowledge workers, indeed the older workforce is more likely to stay (as opposed to younger) in the same company since it has no building career challenges. On the top of that, keeping its elderly workers is a way for companies to develop a culture of excellence and knowledge recognition which is not based on age. Some examples of initiatives have been taken in various countries to give concrete examples of actions that have been implemented. The cases that were analysed have led to conclude to benefits of age management such as: • Rise of the workforce’s overall skills level and capacity for innovation. • With older employees on the payroll, younger staff sees greater potential for career development: their motivation increases as a result, as does their respect for the performance of their older colleagues. • Improvements in the quality of an organisation’s products and services. • In many organisations, the involvement of older employers ensures the maintaining of skills levels and the potential for professional development and internal transfer.

Peter recalled the ambition of the unit to work towards a better inclusion of all the A set of key success factors for age manapopulations who are at risk of being margement in organisation have been identiginalized in the information society and fied: developed further the actions towards the • age awareness aged workforce. • supportive national policy framework Another European presentation was made • management commitment and competence (management commit to by Gerlinde ZINIEL from the European the workforce even if the managers Foundation for the Improvement of Lichange) ving and Working Conditions based in Dublin (Ireland). The interest of this presen- • careful planning and implementation (companies invest money) tation lies in the fact that Eurofound has led a research for several years to identify • cooperation of all parties concerned good practices in age management and age awareness has made a database available with prac- • evaluation, assessment of cost and tical cases. They have issued a “guide to benefits good practice in age management” and proposed a set of measures. Those measu- As a conclusion, the Eurofound represen-

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Last minute

eSangathan Newsletter N°10

September 2008

tative proposes a rethinking of pensions but also disability and rehabilitation schemes to be put in place. The eSangathan White Paper was presented by Nicole TURBÉSUETENS, co-ordinator of the project, in this first part of the morning because it carries a set of recommendations for the institutions and the public bodies as well as for the private sector and the workers. The White Paper identifies two main contextual factors; first, ageing workers represent talents, skills and experience and second, they are precious economic resources.

were Bruno COSTANTINI from FERPA, the European Federation of Retired and Older People; John BALL from TUC, Trade Union Congress in the United Kingdom and Anne-Sophie PARENT representing the Age Platform. Bruno from FERPA insisted on the social dimensions to be considered which are mainly: • Convince workers to extend their working life, in particular those who are close to retirement • Convince companies to concentrate on elderly workers, either by redesigning their own organisation, or by no longer opting to deprive themselves of their experience for the sake of labour costs alone • Harmonise the systems of social protection, safety nets, and welfare, as well as welfare policies, to bring them in line with the required changes ….while John from TUC recalled the attendees that it’s important to understand the age changes because it is a key driver to understand the workplace we have to build in the future which should take into consideration: • War of talent, shortage, replacement cost and impacts of losing strategic knowledge • Cost on individuals decreasing the economic and social stability While we know that 68% of older workers expect to work part time or on some sort of flexibility pattern. So, his question is: what if job satisfaction would be the real challenge? He gave two concrete examples at British Gas and at NHS. Anne-Sophie promotes a holistic approach and insists on the importance for aged workers to be continuously trained even if they actually fear to fail or fear of being perceived to be not competent anymore.

The second part of the morning was dedicated to the social aspects of the inclusion of the active aged workers. The three speakers

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The Active Ageing Workers approach concerns workers who want to stay in the labour market as opposed to the Ageing Well approach, not to be mixed with, which is broader and not specific to the active population. The active ageing workforce belong most of the time to the Knowledge workers segment which can be defined as professionals who work and apply their intellectual capacities to create, process, distribute and connect information, ideas and expertise. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are key drivers in the knowledge co-creation process; this assessment led to several recommendations to: • The public bodies: improvement of the ICT skills of the employment agents who are supposed to coach unemployed aged workers; • Corporates: about the management of “age pyramid”, organization of knowledge transfer and definition of an ageing workforce policy; • Individuals: insisting on the importance of assessing and developing their e-Skills on a regular basis. The White Paper is part of the reports and documents made publicly available by the eSangathan project.

This very rich morning was concluded by Carlo PARIETTI, President of Eurocadres.

eSangathan Newsletter N°10

September 2008

More about eSangathan

graphical locations in India, China and Australia using CWE. The adoption of CWE has proved business benefits: flexibility in customization of CWE as per retired expert requirement are important for adoption; positioning of CWE within organizational information hierarchy intra-department, inter-department, companies, and sectors is vital for adoption, as well as introducing features gradually and have physical meetings (to complement virtual work).

Leif BLOCH RASMUSSEN from Copenhagen Business School

Leif showed the benefits of the social learning curve as a way to learn collectively. The process demonstrates that gradually people work more and more in a collaborative way and put trust at the heart of the sharing knowledge process. His recommendation is to go from “prejects” to “projects”, trying first to formulate ideas before going into projects; indeed, as he says, the way solutions are found to problems today is actually creating problems for other people which most of the time are bigger than the one initially solved. Social connectivity is, according to Leif, the final purpose challenge to traditional way of thinking and working.

Martina Sophia BACH from Folkuniversitetet

The process of recruiting Danish and Swedish aged workers was the prerequisite. There were only few physical meetings for introducing the methods and Collaborative Working Environment (CWE). It appears that one monthly meeting was necessary to share the methods. On the findings side, members actively using CWE needed additional face to face meetings; the introduction phase and the kick-off were diagnosed not long enough compare to the needs that weren’t satisfied when starting the second phase of the pilot. Eventually, the mind shifting from a hierarchical structural thinking to self organizing complex “heterarchical” thinking is a hard exercise. However, the winning are not only about the project itself but also because two consulting firms and two companies want to apply the eSangathan method in the very near future.

Miguel MEMBRADO from Netcipia-UK

Miguel mentioned that over the time and technological development the CWE went from email and files attachments to collaborative spaces including RSS and customizable home pages, social bookmarking, wiki, IM, VOIP and video on blogs. Miguel claims that the mix and many structured and unstructured data contained in the knowledge base must evolve into an organic structure of the corporation. The adoption cycle of an efficient CWE is driven by key success factors such as a strong management role and guidelines to promote collaboration and a contagious dissemination and commitment.

Some examples of good practices The second part of the afternoon was dedicated to a few cases giving concrete and practical examples of what can be done at different levels to favour the employment of aged workers. The panel session was chaired by Leif Christian HANSEN from the Danish Labour Market Authority and consisted of four panellists.

Mandar VARTAK and Chitresh MARKANDA from Mahindra & Mahindra and Tech Mahindra

The context is 10 “retiree experts” and their teams which represent about 140 employees. They operate from various geo-

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The eSangathan partners who were responsible for operational actions leading to findings during the project duration did share their experience with the audience in the first part of the afternoon of the conference. In sequence, the attendees got familiar with the methodological approaches, the two pilots and the technological environment of the project. Some of the reports are publicly available.

A key motivator was certainly not only that and a single platform for customers and suppliers considerably helped to reduce the communication barriers but the possibilities to access from home, offices or from customers and suppliers added a flexibility that convinced people the CWE was hassle free! This pilot has introduced a flexible working culture and CWE have been popularized and developed as they now integrate with ERP and other business critical missions.

eSangathan Newsletter N°10

September 2008

Paul MAILLOT from SNEDA (France)

Paul’s testimony about its company SNEDA, focused on how a company whose revenue was collapsing and which was suppressing agencies has managed to introduce and implement telework and regain profitability. The company gave to each teleworker an “ICT kit” (computer, modem, internet connection, printer and fax) and introduced flexible working time aiming at developing a culture of trust. He, as the general manager, had to fight against his managers who were afraid to lose control. To the contrary, the workers were positive and motivated about this need to reorganize the work. The additional benefits to the profitability concerns the fact that seniors have said they can now envision to work longer in the company. On the other hand, job seekers consider telework as a strong competitive benefit and the distance transfer of knowledge has become a key advantage in the customer relationship.

Lucia FORSBERG from KKiKK (Sweden)

The business company was established to build networks and create learning environments for leaders, both in the private and the governmental sector. The network model is used to support the start and development of networks for participants in work. An example of interest for eSangathan is the case of a pilot of 82 people revealing that seniors appreciated the opportunity to connect, however a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence was observed at the beginning and was quite a killer of the momentum to create. The pilot methodology started with registration by approval, a sharing of principles, getting support in clarifying the use of tools by a demo, working in small groups of 5 to 20 members maximum. In the process of getting people ready, the finding is that age was not creating differences but internet age was.

Christiane ROBERT from SeniorFlex (Belgium)

Seniorflex’ role is to fight against age discrimination and represent seniors from 45 years old. Christiane stands to say that seniors are motivated, efficient, rapidly operational, eager to transmit knowledge and loyal to their company as they are not concerned by building a career any longer. Seniorflex wants to open the discussion about senior workers in organizations and is preparing 3 forums to be held in France and Belgium. The eSangathan Conference was a wonderful opportunity to bring together a set of actors concerned with the situation of the active ageing workforce in Europe and to recall some aspects of the European policy. The European e-Inclusion initiative has raised its voice by launching a set of initiatives: the policy (the ageing well action plan), the research (eSangathan project) the innovation (studies on ICT uses) and the dissemination process (through workshops and events) in order to make sure ageing needs will be included in main-stream products and process. Katarzyna BALUCKA-DEBSKA, the eSangathan Project Officer comments the event to the project co-ordinator

According to Katarzyna, asking powerful questions is key to change the world. Documents are dead knowledge and people don’t tend to use them when they are provided under the document format. What people want is a focused, intelligent answer to their immediate needs, which more and more means that experience is more important than content and that participation, is a key factor. Innovatika helps organisations to get tangible results from managing intangible assets. By guiding an organisation (public or private) through the process of measuring the intellectual capital, they can provide the decision-makers with valuable decision-making material.

And the networking that went on during the day showed that attendees were happy to have this opportunity to share views, experience and projects.

Useful links :

eSangathan Newsletter is published by : eSangathan Consortium Editorial Coordinator :

NicoleTURBÉ-SUETENS (Distance-Expert) assisted by Marie-France MÉDANA [email protected] Editorial Board: Martina SOPHIA BACH, Leif Bloch RASMUSSEN, Chitresh MARKANDA , Miguel MEMBRADO, Mandar VARTAK and Marianne ZIEKEMEYER eSangathan is supported by : European Commission (DGINFSO) Contract FP6-IST-035064, eSangathan Specific Support Action For more information: [email protected] - http://www.esangathan.eu

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@ Website @ Conference @ Dissemination @ Eurofound @ Eurocadres @ FERPA @ e-Inclusion

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Katarzyna KROLAK-WYSZYNSKA from Innovatika (Poland)