Health in Restructuring (HIRES) - Recommendations, National Responses and Policy Issues in the EU

3. Discussions about the HIRES recommendations (S. 151-152)

The primary aim of the HIRES Plus project was to evaluate the reception of the policy recommendations that had been developed in the HIRES project. Therefore the concrete 12 recommendations played an important role in the national seminars organized in the 13 EU countries involved in HIRES Plus. The debates in all countries showed an overwhelming overall acceptance of the HIRES recommendations, which went beyond anything expected by the coordinators.

There were hardly any participants who did not emphasize the importance of the subject itself and only few doubted the concrete recommendations in regard to their feasibility or viability. Only the Italian seminar mentioned a specific need to include in the risk assessment of restructuring also the small businessmen who go bankrupt due to the crisis as a target group for considerations on health in restructuring. An evaluation by the participants was done at the Bulgarian seminar: all respondents considered it useful, very relevant to the economic situation of the country and that such national fora with international participation were assessed as very pertinent.

Many other seminars stressed the necessity of a continuity of national workshops focussing on recommendations like the HIRES ones. Only two seminars, those in the Netherlands and in Denmark, systematically prioritized the recommendations. The participants in NL considered the recommendations on managers (4), justice and trust (6) and temporary employees (8) as the most important ones, and identified as the least important ones those on OHS (9), direct victims (2) and monitoring (1). The members of the Danish seminar prioritized as well the recommendation on managers as most important (4), followed by communication plan (7), survivors (3), and justice and trust (6).

3.1 Monitoring and evaluation

The lack of empirical data and integrated data collection on a national level was widely mentioned and criticized. Especially on a company level data was rarely collected with specific regard to the restructuring processes. In addition monitoring needs a joint treatment of the two critical dimensions of employment and health in data collection and research. In order to establish causal relationships and to know more about the after-effects of unhealthy restructuring also in-depth studies with a long-term monitoring should be established parallel to short-term approaches that are of more use for immediate evaluations.

A necessary prerequisite is that the psychosocial risks associated with restructuring are integrated in the risk assessment in general, and in the assessment of psychosocial risks specifically. In some countries risk assessment does not even include the psychosocial dimension (like in the Spanish Mutual Societies).