Well, after a longer break over Christmas and New Years, I would like to take up again the topic of a modern works council. In my last post I have already laid out the reason why I think this is important as well as positioned where I see the necessity of and for a modern works council:
- Focus on the future of employees, not the past
- Being inclusive in a multi-generational workforce
- Promote the advantages of the digital age
- Align with the necessities of the speedy economy
- Act as co-owner
I have talked about focussing on the future of employees, not the present. Today I would like to provide my view on the other statements.
Being inclusive in a multi-generational workforce
This is a big one. For years consultancies and also research is talking about the multi-generational workforce. It is a fact that very different generations with sometimes even opposing views, values, or expectations have to cooperate in today’s companies. HR as a function is trying to deal with it already – but they have just started. Leaders are struggling hard with that and employees of the different generations are getting frustrated.
What is missing in my last paragraph? – right, the works council! The above mentioned parties are at least realizing the fact of the multi-generational workforce and are trying to do something to solve the arising issues. I have not seen many works councils that are doing the same – or that have actually realized this fact. And just one current trend that works councils try to enforce in Germany illustrates this: Shutdown of email servers on the weekend and after regular working hours. The idea behind this is noble: supporting the employees to have a real work-life-balance. But the question that needs to be asked is: Who wants to have such a regulated work-life-balance? Or better, does everyone want such a regulated work-life-balance? – And the answer is no! Especially the latest generations have a different concept of work-life-balance. A self regulated concept. They want to decide on their own when and where they work as well as how they get the work done (within deadlines). But also parents for example need to have a self regulated work-life-balance in order to enable them to have a normal job. Working hours for these groups might look very different from the 9-5 hours that are used as basis for the email-server-shutdown ideas.
This is just one point where the different generations have even opposing views and the works council only sees one view/ opinion. The general field of multi-generation integration is way open for works councils to act on and to help the multi-generational workforce to play together. But this is not easy as the second step (after realizing that this conflict exists) to play on this field is to understand it. And in order to do so, the works council itself should (and need to be) multi-generational. And by multi-generational I mean official, full members of different generations – not the youth/ apprentice representation blanket. This is where it needs to start. This is what it means to be „inclusive“.
Promote the advantages of the digital age
The next aspect is not too far off from the one I have discussed above. The digital age offers a million different options to do things different (and yes, even sometimes better) than before. This means risks, but also advantages. The works council should actively promote and utilize these new options for its own work as well as for all its employees it is representing. I don’t mean blind adoption, but serious discussion and utilization. This is especially necessary as legal regulations are not yet adapted, still focus on the IT abilities of the last century. Works councils could just hide behind these regulations or they could step up and utilize (with full respect to data privacy) the new possibilities to form current regulation.
A concrete topic are workforce analytics. With the help of today’s Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions as well as the power of analytics the insights into a companies workforce are multiple – and these insights could be used to promote the importance of specific qualifications, trainings, flexibility arrangements, etc. – but of course they could also be used against single employees. And this is what I have seen as a major works council’s argument against analytics. But analytics by itself are not bad. What is done with them is key. So I plea for a utilization of the advantages of the digital age, but have an eye on how they are used.
That’s it for today and in my next post I will conclude my plea with the remaining two statements.
Chief HR Officer 