All countries are being faced with rising retirement ages. Whether their pension systems are pay-as-you-go, fully funded or a combination of the two, the economic constraints resulting from both longer lifespans and sometimes worrisome declines in birth rates have left no choice but to raise retirement ages. Le European Pillar of Social Rights and the Europe 2020 strategy are both aimed at increasing employment rates. Moreover, European social partners have signed an agreement to help older workers to participate actively in the employment market until they reach retirement age.

As part of its recent conference on “active ageing”, France’s Pensions Advisory Council (Conseil d’orientation des retraites, COR) presented two recent Europe-wide studies that decipher the major trends and highlight the effects and impacts of national public policies.

The European agency Eurofound, in its most recent survey, established a connection between the employment rate for seniors and the “sustainability” of work (i.e. high-quality, sustainable work over the life course). While the people surveyed acknowledged an increase in autonomy with regard to working hours and a better work-life balance, they note the difficulties in changing jobs and gaps in updating their skillsets and receiving training. The European Pillar of Social Rights has made education, training and life-long learning its no. 1 priority. For the authors, an analysis of the survey responses indicates that an active ageing policy’s success is determined early on in a worker’s career.

The study also shows that France ranks second (out of 35 countries¹ for the number of people who consider themselves unable to do their current job or a similar one after age 60.

Following a research project with cofounding from the European Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE), the EU’s Active Ageing Index gives qualitative metrics on active ageing to emphasise seniors’ contribution to their country and to determine the available leeway. The index is based on 22 indicators in four domains: employment rate (by five-year age brackets from 55 to 74), social participation, quality of life, and an enabling environment for active ageing. An analysis of the findings provides explanations for the more positive results in some countries, as well as ways to motivate or guide the countries with poorer performance.

Sweden leads this ranking with an index of 44.9; it posted the highest scores in three of the four domains (including the employment rate). The next highest rankings were Denmark and the Netherlands. Moreover, these three countries are those that, proportionally, spend the most for seniors. France scored 35.8 (ranking it 7^th out of 28), a score attributable to its good results in voluntary activities. Like Germany (which has a higher employment rate), France focuses its public spending on younger workers.
 

The OECD defines active ageing as the capacity of people, as they grow older, to lead productive lives in society and the economy.

¹ The European Union plus Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Norway, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey

The new coalition agreement plans to harmonise career management for civil servants and contractual employees working for the public sector (current ratio of 40%/60%). The first two projects will involve merging pay scales for equivalent grades and combining staff representative bodies. Equal representation among top management will also be made law, and is likely to take effect in 2025.

Reassigning public sector jobs according to changing needs, notably by reducing the concentration of civil servants in Dublin, was one of the measures of the ongoing reform (Action 15). The Civil Service Mobility programme goes even further than expected. The minister announced that more than 2,700 civil servants (i.e. 20% of the total) had filed a mobility request, with 711 wishing to leave the Irish capital.

Dedicated to HR innovation, HR Lab brought together HR stakeholders from major corporations, HR consultants and six start-ups to contribute to ten projects tackling three issues: professional engagement, workplace health, and HR data exploitation. Three of the ten projects were awarded prizes: Mobility on voluntary employee exchanges, MyXtraMiles on anticipating the departure of talented staff members, and Mercy Bobby on risk prevention.

The Civil Service Commission carried out a public consultation on proposed changes to its Recruitment Principles. The consultation covered four areas: diversity, skills, Brexit-related changes, and jobs for disadvantaged persons. The updated Principles are to take effect in autumn 2018 and will reflect the government’s priorities for “an inclusive civil service”.

In a document laying out its HR priorities for the next four years, the OPM (the Office of Personnel Management) emphasised performance-based pay. It recommends expanding the automation of clerical tasks and gradually shifting away from tenure-based pay hikes in order to save $10bn over ten years, to be redistributed as performance-based bonuses.

How do Generation X, Millennials and Generation Z get along in today’s workplace? Recruiting consultancy Hays has published a report that breaks with certain clichés, noting that members of all these generations share a common viewpoint, have similar ways of communicating and agree on key skills. While there are sources of conflict, these relate mainly to differences in working methods.

Manitoba’s provincial civil service will roll out a “Balanced Scorecard”-type collective evaluation process. The civil servants will now be evaluated as a group, within their structures, on how well they fulfil their duties, and also as a group within the projects that they participate in. The results of this evaluation will be anonymised and available online for transparency purposes.

ANAC, the Italian anti-corruption agency, is launching a smartphone app that lets public employees signal any illegal behaviour or facts that they might become aware of during the course of their duties. After the initial signalling, a personal code is assigned to allow for secure monitoring of the case by the agency departments, as well as protecting the whistleblower, as stipulated under a law passed in November 2017.

Driven by the idea that a public employee who feels welcome will be happy in his or her job and want to stay, the Île-de-France regional government is hiring its first “Welcome Managers”. The duties for this new job role, designed during a “customer journey”-style workshop, involve providing each new hire with personalised assistance and a specific contact point for any questions. In short, the Welcome Manager becomes a key player in successfully integrating new employees.

A Finnish project was the first project in the world to promote occupational wellbeing with funding from a social impacts bond (SIB). Over the past two years, several governmental offices in southwestern Finland (covering 1,600 civil servants) have benefited from prevention measures and an awareness programme. Halfway through the programme, the average number of days of sick leave has been reduced by one day per person, per year, thus achieving one-half of the programme’s total goal.

As part of its People and Standards modernisation strategy, Malta’s Employee Support Programme aims to meet the needs of public employees who are dealing with problems that could interfere with their work/life balance. It provides confidential and short-term psychological counselling. It also dispenses training to managers about workplace wellbeing.

At the consulting group PwC France, implementing an active policy for workplace flexibility was an obvious solution. It initially created “nomadic agreements” for its employees working at its clients’ premises in order to give them greater flexibility. Gradually, the nomadic agreements have been extended to job roles that require less mobility. Without needing specific approval from their line managers, employees can work remotely up to six days a month.

French luxury goods giant LVMH has launched Inside LVMH, an innovative programme open to students from 50  partner universities and schools in six European countries (Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland and the UK), as well as to its own interns and apprentices. Built around an online platform, the programme gives young talents the chance to gain a better understanding of strategic issues, and to contribute to the theme “Imagine the luxury experience of tomorrow”. The most talented participants will have an opportunity to join the 6,500 interns and 1,000 young recruits that the group hires each year.

More than 3,500 students have already joined the programme, which offers an innovative 360° “behind-the-scenes” immersion in the group and the various job roles available to them: design and creation, brand management, supply chain and manufacturing, digital transformation, entrepreneurship and client excellence. Thus, young talents can plan and understand the challenges facing the luxury goods sector via more than 50 disruptive video capsules on the platform.

This project, designed as “a bridge between the academic and corporate worlds”, according to the HR director, is also a co-creation. The learning content was developed by university professors, then enriched with testimonials from managers in the group’s subsidiaries.

The European Semester for 2016-2017 highlighted a series of questions about the quality of the involvement of social partners in drafting the National Reform Programmes, as well as in implementing country-specific recommendations. A report, published in February 2018, examines Member States’ various social dialogue practices and the role of national authorities in including employers’ organisations and trade organisations in reforms.

This report has four chapters. The first two focus on evaluation over the two-year period, the third examines in detail the progress achieved in a sample of 12 Member States, and the last concludes the report with comments on social partners’ ability to contribute to implementing reforms and to successful social dialogue.

With regard to best practices, Ricardo Rodriguez Contreras, the report’s author and the Eurofound expert in social dialogue, cites these examples:

• In Estonia, a cooperation programme between the Estonian Employers’ Confederation (ETKL) and the Estonian Trade Unions Confederation (EAKL). They combined a portion of their budgets in order to boost the quality of their participation in decision-making by training union representatives and employers’ representatives together, and by developing a joint IT system for draft agreements and collective bargaining.

• In Portugal, a standing committee for social cooperation (CPCS). It acts as an interface between the government, employers’ organisations and unions. A crucial partner, it ensures a constant, regular process of consulting with social partners. It played a decisive role in negotiations when Portugal had to take austerity measures when it was in the Excessive Deficit Procedure.

However, the social partners (except in France and Sweden) are critical of the effectiveness of their participation. They report that the consultation process is too brief, which limits discussions and interactions and does not allow them to contribute to the final version of texts.

Malta stands out as being the only Member State in which all stakeholders agree that the social partners have significant influence. Indeed, in Malta, a ministry is specifically responsible for social dialogue.