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Full and summary reports on the Telework in Europe Seminar (The bridge between social and societal needs and new technology opportunities), held in Brussels, 5 June 1997.
* Full report available on-line: ac971762.doc: or download the report in ZIP format
Summary report
Jeremy Millard, Tweuro Project
This seminar was a unique event, but probably not the last of its kind. It succeeded in bringing together Commission staff responsible for most programmes,
projects and activities of relevance to telework. At the same time, the cream of
Europe's great and good thinkers and practitioners on telework were present,
including both seasoned experts and researchers as well as those whose interest
is more recent and who can bring fresh perspectives and insights, for example in
the context of electronic commerce or the rethinking concerning the organisation
of work and business processes.
A great amount of territory was covered in just six and a half hours, but
successfully so. The seminar demonstrated both that telework is an
inter-disciplinary and vital issue, and that immense benefits can be achieved
through holding cross-Service fora like this in order to increase understanding
and coordination as important means in moving both debate and practice forward.
This fact, coupled with the realistic, constructive and wide ranging nature of
the discussion, contributed to its overall success.
The overall purpose was to explore the present status of European telework,
particularly at a European level and from a Commission perspective, but also to
stress the need to link and integrate with local and national agendas in each
Member State.
New Ways of Working
The major theme of the seminar was to underline the need to see telework as an
important component of news way of working, and to show how it can bridge the
sometimes wide gap (in both thinking and reality) between, on the one hand, the
social and societal needs which can be served by telework, and, on the other,
the practical opportunities being opened up by advances in new RTD (Research and
Technology Development). To this end, speakers addressed the new ways of working
theme from a number of complementary perspectives. Claudio Carrelli did so in
his capacity as Chairman of the Information Society Forum; Willy Buschak, the
Confederal Secretary of ETUC, provided a trades union perspective; the social
dimension of work organisation was provided by Jim Mackley of DGV, one of the
authors of the recent Green Paper entitled Partnership for a New Organisation of
Work; and Charlotte Cederschiold, a Member of the European Parliament, reminded
us that the need for awareness is perhaps the most critical issue which needs
addressing.
In addition, and in order to exemplify and flesh out the bones of this debate, a
series of overviews were given on specific EC initiatives across a number of
Directorates General, supplemented by detailed reports on selected individual
European projects. An overview of the likely perspectives for telework in the
Fifth Framework Programme was also provided by Peter Johnston of DGXIII, who is
the focal point for coordination of telework activities inside the Commission.
Current Status of Telework
A number of points of general agreement emerged from the seminar which clearly
illustrate the overall status of telework in Europe today:
1. There is a need to see telework as an integral part of wider changes and
benefits and not as an isolated phenomenon. Telework is just one aspect of
employment and the organisation of work in the Information Society.
2. Telework is very much bound up with work organisation and how organisations
are structured, and can be seen both as a useful method for achieving more
effective and satisfying forms of work organisation, as well as one of the
possible outcomes of changes to the organisation of work. Telework thus tends to
share the same or similar benefits and dangers as other types of work
organisation.
3. The most effective and satisfying forms of telework are those which combine
the participation of the workforce through negotiation, partnership and
consultation with a focus on the economic benefits of telework. There is a need
to find new types of balance between security for the individual and flexibility
for the organisation, and to recognise that in many cases it is more secure to
change than to cling to the status quo.
4. Telework is, in many cases, not a radical departure from existing practice,
but part of the natural evolutionary change process which organisations,
management, workers and individuals are experiencing in the transition to the
Information Society.
5. There is a pressing need to integrate the hard industry view of telework and
of the Information Society generally, with the soft social cohesion view. This
seminar and its follow-up is a useful vehicle for helping to achieve such
integration. Another way is fully integrated research between technology and
socio-economic issues in order both to achieve economic and commercial success
but also to realise desirable societal goals. The difficulties of combining the
hard and soft approaches to the Information Society, and their failure to
communicate, constitute the dilemma at the heart of the telework debate and is
the main barrier to widespread exploitation of its potential.
6. Another main barrier is lack of awareness and problems with understanding and
defining telework. The solution to the latter is not drawing up elaborate
schemes describing different types of telework, but rather to see telework as an
inclusive concept, covering for example tele-office work, tele-home work, etc.,
and overlapping with for example electronic commerce and business process
change. Initiatives to raise awareness need to focus on telework as part of the
wider challenges and changes affecting us all (cf. point 1 above), and
especially on the attitudes of individuals and policy makers to change and risk
in the Information Society and how to tackle these.
7. Related to the awareness issue are education, training and skill and
competence upgrading, which are the keys to the Information Society. Human
capacity is a decisive factor, both at the level of the individual in the work
he or she is doing, as well as at the level of the organisation and how this is
structured and its work is organised.
8. There is a great need for good practice guidance, success stories, etc., as
part of the process of awareness raising and skill upgrading.
Inevitably, because of the variety of perspectives of many of the speakers,
there were also areas of disagreement or, at least, areas where different
interpretations and solutions were proposed.
Regulation
The issue of regulation was one where there appeared to be the most
disagreement. On one side was the plea for little or no interference in order
not to damage the still fragile state of telework and the networked economy. On
the other side there were equally heart-felt warnings that it is in everybody's
interest to ensure participation and consultation between all parties, for which
some regulation is necessary, nor to forget the disadvantaged, the exploited and
the less capable. The need to regulate for social inclusion is paramount in this
view, not only ethically and culturally but also because the most successful
economies cannot afford to waste potential innovation and enterprise, nor forego
consumer demand by cutting off swathes of citizenry from full economic
participation. Maybe, these two approaches should find consensus around a
realisation that forward-looking, as opposed to protective, regulation that can
support new markets while simultaneously mitigating some of the inevitable pain
always experienced during major technological and economic upheavals, is the way
forward.
Balancing individual and organisational needs
Another context in which this difference was expressed was how, in practice, to
achieve a new balance between security for the individual and flexibility for
the organisation. Should the balance tilt towards new forms of security which
release the full capabilities of all individuals as a creative and innovative
force, or should it tilt towards flexibility in order to increase market
benefits and the ability to react positively to the rapidly changing global
economy? To be fair, all agreed that telework could produce better and more
rewarding work for the many, as well as contribute to growth and even more jobs,
and that despite different perspectives, these are vital areas of concern which
deserve our attention in the future.
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