Social Partnership that is worthwhile
Date: 15-3-2004
by Head of Planning, Lars Holm Sorensen, Falck A/S
In 2002, Falck A/S Region Nord (a Danish security services company) entered into a contract with the vocational rehabilitation centre RevaCenter Aarhus Nord, whereby RevaCenter Arhus Nord would provide tasks and continuous initiatives, which would secure help for the employees of Falck in finding future work opportunities inside or outside Falck. This as a part of job retention scheme designed to cope with long-term sickness and other incidents which can threaten the employee's ability to keep their job.
Or in other words, Falck A/S Region Nord, has out-sourced part of the job retention effort in serious/complicated job retention cases to RevaCenter Arhus Nord.
This short text explains the reason for this decision.
Falck's background for undertaking social responsibility.
Since Sophus Falck founded the company in 1906, the philosophy of Falck has been to prevent accidents in happening, to help people and animals in danger, and to reduce damages and save assets.
In that way, Falck's philosophy contains a large element of social responsibility. A condition that historically has characterised the company in relation to taking social responsibility.
Among other things, several of the company's collective agreements contained "social chapters" long before this term was widely known and used in other collective agreement areas.
The company's wish to be socially responsible is defined in the personnel policy, which has been drawn up in cooperation with the employees. Among other things it appears
- that we shall try to obtain a workforce that reflects the surrounding society's composition,
- that we are tolerant and understanding towards colleagues who are seriously ill, or who as a consequence of an accident are not able to work with the usual effort for a period, and
- that there should be shown special attention in connection with possible dismissal of seriously ill employees.
Complicated legislation
The experiences from the work with job retention of employees in connection with seriously illness and injury, and/or reduced working capacity is that it takes much effort, and often it is difficult, e.g. because the social legislation is complicated and not transparent for the common man and the companies, and because the access to the legislation and the local authorities' cooperation with the companies varies very much from municipality to municipality. In fact decisions can vary very much among the social workers in a given municipality.
Development of a model for job retention
Founded on the wish to work specifically with social responsibility, and noting that the legislation in this field is complicated, and that the interpretation of this therefore is not unambiguous, Falck A/S entered into project cooperation with RevaCenter Arhus Nord in 1999. The aim of the project was to develop a simple model for job retention. Further, the aim of the project was to implement the personnel policy's words about social responsibility in specific initiatives, and ensure that the work with job retention became a natural and integrated part of the company's way to act, when the employees are seriously ill, or for other reasons are threatened in their job.
The project was financially supported by the coordination board from the municipality of Arhus.
Besides the work with job retention, the project also covered integration of people who were outside the labour market. Though the main focus of the work was job retention, it may be argued that if the companies (both private and public) are good at handling retention of workers, then the need for integration of people who are outside the labour market can be reduced. Furthermore, experience shows that it is easier and demands less resources to retain an employee in a job, than it is to re-train the employee for a job in an other company.
In the course of the project, a model was developed for handling job retention. Today the model is integrated as a permanent part of Falck's way of working with job retention.
The model is built upon the "absence dialogue". In that way, it is the local leader's job to carry out an "absence dialogue" with the employee who has a serious illness or injury, (or if they encounter a large period of absence or unusual absence), to find out what the reason for the absence is, and find solutions to reduce the absence.
In the cases, where the absence can be reduced by simple internal measures, the local authorities where the employee lives will be involved, and a round-table discussion will be carried out.
As support for the local manager in connection with more complicated retention cases, and for the preparation of the cases for the round-table discussions, Falck has decided to work with and gather experiences using two models. One model is based on outsourcing of the job to company service by RevaCenter Arhus Nord. As mentioned, the outsourcing model is in use in Region Nord, including in Nordjylland, Viborg, Ringkobing and Arhus Counties.
Experience with the outsourced model.
The experience with the outsourced model is good, for a number of reasons, some of which are mentioned below:
- Due to the work of helping people back into the labour market, the Reva Center's company service has great knowledge and experience in identifying the professional capacities and problems of individual workers,
- Company service contains a wide range of competences (e.g. social, medical and psychological),
- Company service is a neutral party in the case, with respect to the round-table discussions,
- Company service has updated knowledge on the social legislation, and has become the company's "window" into the public system.
- Last, but not least, the arrangement is simple from the company's point of view. The case is transferred to Company service, after which Company service uncovers the problem through conversation with the affected person. Company service prepares the case for round-table discussion, including scheduling time and place.
Furthermore, the model with out-sourcing of the task to a public company contains an exciting perspective in developing, and establishing partnerships between the private and public sector.
The company's social responsibility is not a guarantee for continued employment.
That Falck takes its work with job retention seriously does not guarantee that the company at any time and in all cases is capable of retaining employees who are threatened with losing their job in the company. There can be cases, where dismissal is the best and right solution for both the company and the employee. But the model ensures that the individual case is uncovered thoroughly and professionally before the dismissal. Further, the model ensures that the municipality gets a known 'case', in case of dismissal. People who are being dismissed are in other words passed on to the local authorities, where their needs can be met.
Taking a social responsibility pays off.
During the course of the project, it has been agreed that, in order to make company's social responsibility succeed and blossom, the three parties involved
- The individual (the person, who must be retained)
- Society
- The companies (private and public)
- must all gain from it. If it one of the parties always loses, the party will, in the long term, withdraw and the work is not likely to succeed. The total effect of the work must be summed up in terms of both the hard and the soft values.
For the individual, it is relatively easy and simple to sum up, if a non-attachment to the labour market has more value, than a life on passive provision. Furthermore, cost-benefit analysis shows that it is expensive to society to have citizens on passive provision as opposed to the citizen actively contributing to society's provision, with what the individual can. On the contrary, it is hard to find solid documentation to support the claim that work with CSR "pays off". Therefore, it was decided that a large part of the project should consist in trying to document that the work with social responsibility also has business economical value for the companies. The work with this documentation was handed over to Cosmos Group A/S and Carl Bro A/S. The documentation is described in the Report: "Den sociale Platform - Falck A/S, Evaluering af de organisatoriske og driftsokonomiske aspekter ved fastholdelse af medarbejdere, samt udkast til ledelsesvrktoj til vurdering af disse aspekter, juli 2002". (The social platform - Falck A/S: Evaluation of the organisational and cost aspects of maintaining workers in employment, and proposals for management tools for assessment of these aspects, July 2002).
The conclusion of the report is that there is strong evidence that the company's work with job retention, also from a business economical and competition point of view is a good idea. Because documentation for what companies gain from work with social responsibility is almost non-existent, as mentioned earlier, the people behind the report hope that others will take over the baton and continue the work with documentation of the area.