1. society
2. work
3. unemployment

embers Report
COPENHAGEN
INSTITUTE
F
O
R
FUTURES
S T U D I E S
The PESCI Challenge:
How to Create Productive
and Attractive Service Jobs
2002 2
Contents
Overview and conclusion
Overview and conclusion
3
Introduction
7
Part I:
The Labour Market of the Future: The Certain Trends
11
1.1: The demographic pressure
11
1.2: Work values moving in the opposite direction 18
1.3: Demands of the labour force and content of
PESCI jobs
24
Part II:
Member’s Report No. 2/2002
Prepared by CIFS
This report is solely for the use of members of the
Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies
Idea and Text
Søren Steen Olsen (M.Sc. Econ)
Anders Bjerre (B.Sc. Econ.)
Niels Bøttger-Rasmussen (MBA Econ. & Business)
Lotte Aabel Østergaard (M.Sc. Pol. Sc.)
Søren Jensen (M.Sc. Econ. & Mat.)
Klaus Æ. Mogensen (B.Sc. Phys.)
Possible Strategies
29
2.1: Piece-rate service jobs
29
2.2: Reduced need of service labour
32
2.3: The attractive service job
36
Case: Eldercare: Stimulation coaches or
cleaning robots?
37
Case: Department store Magasin
40
Rational quality in eldercare – or stopwatch tyranny? 42
Art Director
Ole Graversen
www.graphicdesign.dk
Printing
Jungersen Grafisk
The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies
August 2002
www.cifs.dk
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I N S T I T U T E
F O R
F U T U R E S
S T U D I E S
This report focuses on a labour market trend that tends to be overlooked: that service
work becomes industrialised. This isn’t true for all service jobs, but for many, especially
those in the personal service and care. We call them PESCI jobs. The other service jobs,
those that have to do with knowledge service and which are characterised by development, flexibility, communication, and network organisation, we call UFO jobs – an acronym for Unspecified Fleeting Objectives. The number of these has increased, and the
related working conditions have changed strongly and visibly, not least because of the
IT revolution. For this reason, it is often UFO jobs that are identified as the trend. This
carries the risk of misrepresenting the development of the labour market, because the
trend in the PESCI field often goes in the opposite direction.
When the employees at McDonald’s are taught through manuals that carefully detail
the work process, including how much you should smile at each customer, it is an industrialisation of the service work. This is also the case when home help in Copenhagen
receive detailed guidelines and by-the-minute time tables for labour tasks at their customers. Or when schoolteachers have to register in detail the time they spend at different
activities.
The great challenge in the PESCI field is how to handle more tasks without using correspondingly more labour. In industry, the solution is more technology and more and
better machines. In personal service, it is often better procedures and better organisation. In practice this often results in what the employees describe as “we have to run
faster and faster.” For better procedures and better organisation often means standardisation, rationalisation, unification, control, and measurability by objective criteria – with
the associated possibility of ‘benchmarking’ the processes according to ‘best practice’
and an in principle continuing to optimise the employees’ behaviour down to the smallest motions in the procedures. Exactly as it is known from the so-called Taylorist principle of organisation from the assembly line industry.
The PESCI problem doesn’t always reflect an increased degree of micro-management. It can also derive from that those responsible for the budget continually decrease
the appropriations to a framework-controlled field, e.g. with the rationale that the productivity in the field has to increase just as much as other fields of society – or, if it is the
private sector, to keep up with the competition. This simply shifts the burden to institution leaders and intermediate level managers, and their task then becomes to optimise
the work processes and/or make the employees run faster.
When it is relevant to take up this challenge in a future perspective, it is because it
becomes greater in the future:
● The demand for PESCI will increase in the future, and so will the expectations to quality
● The labour force is stagnating
● The work values – the attitude to what constitutes a good job – is largely moving in
the opposite direction, hence the PESCI field becomes less and less attractive
● Even now, there are problems with recruiting and retaining people in many PESCI
fields, from the retail trade to home help
Finally, we can point out that the service field is so large a field of employment that a
poor development in productivity becomes increasingly harmful for the total economic
development. In Denmark, the PESCI field is dominated by the public sector, but it is
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If we are to have more
personal service and
care, this by definition
requires more hands
at work, and idle
hands are even today
becoming scarce.
It will be worse
in the future.
important to emphasise that the industrialisation trend isn’t limited to public PESCI jobs
and that the problems can’t be eliminated simply by moving the tasks to the private
sector (through subcontracting, user payment or privatisation). In the private sector as
well, the increase in productivity is notoriously weaker in the service profession than it is
in agriculture and industry. If we are to have more personal service and care, this by
definition requires more hands at work, and idle hands are even today becoming scarce. It will be worse in the future.
The pressure from demographics
It is by now a well-debated fact that we will have more elderly people in the future and
that the labour force stagnates. The so-called elderly support burden will increase. But
it is still useful to look at some of the proportions, at the time horizon, and at international similarities and dissimilarities. How great is the approaching ‘catastrophe’, and how
quickly will it arrive?
The demand for care isn’t simply a question of the elderly in general, but especially
of the very old – the above-80 – who by far require the most care. This is in return also
the fastest growing group, though only seriously so after 2020. This is true for all Nordic
countries.
The prognosis for the number of dead is perhaps an even better expression of the
development in the demographic demand for nursing and care. This demand is very
much concentrated into the last 18 months of life, regardless of age. In Denmark, the
number of deaths per annum won’t increase until around 2010, after which we will see
an increase of 15-20% over the following two decades.
Where we today in the Western countries have 4-5 people of labour-active age per
person outside of the labour force, in 2040 we will only have about 2.5. Here also, the
decrease doesn’t become serious until 2010.
In the Nordic countries there isn’t very big potential for increasing the employment
frequency in the labour-active ages. The women have already entered the labour force.
In terms of numbers, the greatest potential of increased employment lies with then
elderly. Here, Denmark has a significantly lower employment frequency than the other
Nordic countries.
The employment frequency of immigrants is far below the average for the entire
population, and an approach to the average could thus also contribute to the labour force.
Labour values moving in the opposite direction
Not only can the trend towards industrialisation of the PESCI jobs in itself seem negative
– it also collides with the development of the labour force’s attitude to what constitutes
a good job. This means that the PESCI field is even worse off in the competition for
attracting and retaining good employees.
All surveys of attitudes to what constitutes a good job unanimously point towards:
Lower faith in authority – people aren’t satisfied with simply doing what they’re told to
do
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Increased focus on personal engagement in the work
Increased focus on independent influence on the work
Increased focus on good social relations
Increased focus on meaningful work
F O R
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I N S T I T U T E
●
F U T U R E S
An analysis based on a major survey by the Danish Institute for the Working Environment shows that PESCI jobs generally are characterised by the opposite factors. Things
look especially bad for sales assistants, checkout assistants, chauffeurs, assistant nurses,
cooks, sandwich makers, and nurses. In return, groups like grade school teachers, pedagogues and grammar school teachers are doing relatively well in relation to these job
factors.
S T U D I E S
Three main strategies
What can be done in response to the challenge? The report outlines three main strategies.
Piece-rate service jobs. Sort of a hard line consequence strategy: the industrialisation
is implemented wholeheartedly, the demand for employee speed is increased, but in
return they receive a wage compensation that relates to their measurable performance.
This requires a new ‘social contract’ between the employees and their employers. It
goes against the general developments in attitude, but after all, this doesn’t cover everybody, and you can come a long way by offering sufficient wage compensation.
Elimination of the need for services and/or labour. There are innumerable opportunities for people to service themselves, and with sufficient imagination you can come a
long way with this. Self-service through the internet, cash-card machines, and voice
response. You can do your own health checks and preventive measures. The employees
can get better technological aids in their jobs. Computers and robots can become more
sophisticated and human, and they may in the long run be able to replace human labour
in functions where this is unthinkable today.
Added value in PESCI jobs for both customers/users and employees. If the employees are set free to make their own evaluations of the needs of the users/customers in a
regular dialogue with these, the service can become far better while the job at the same
time becomes significantly more inspiring. This requires willingness among
customers/users/the public to pay for the added value. If this exists, this method resembles the optimum ‘win-win’ solution where the increasing burden of cost of the
PESCI jobs corresponds to an increasing appreciation of the services by the recipients
and/or the community.
Things look especially
bad for sales
Two cases: retail trade and eldercare – barriers and opportunities
assistants, checkout
In order to get an idea of how to tackle the challenges in practice, we have carried out
two interviews. One with the department store Magasin as a representative of the retail
trade, a very large PESCI field in the private sector, and one with FOA, the Danish Trade
Union of Public Employees, which organises some of the largest PESCI groups in public
sector, including eldercare.
Both pointed essentially towards the ‘win-win’ model. It is a matter of organising the
work in a way that gives the employees more responsibility and a higher degree of
assistants, chauffeurs,
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assistant nurses,
cooks, sandwich
makers, and nurses.
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involvement with the labour process. And the most central is the meeting between the
employee and the customer/user and the individual direction of the service in this connection. This is perhaps not very surprising; it is probably more interesting what barriers
are perceived against the desired development.
FOA experiences that the greatest barrier by far is an unwillingness to trust the
employees. The media’s focus on flaws and shortcomings, a political focus on not being
held accountable, and a narrow focus on measurable services, have undermined every
intention of a greater degree of humanity and individual independence in the job. A
pilot project in the municipality of Middelfart hopes to demonstrate that another development is possible.
In Magasin, it is the management’s declared purpose to give the employees more
ownership of the service work and to be open for independent initiatives. Here the finger is pointed to a deeply rooted work and management culture among the employees
as being a major challenge. But it also makes new demands of the management to ensure that the employees aren’t left with too great uncertainty regarding the new role they
have to play.
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F U T U R E S
The challenge consists of a combination of the following factors:
● There will be an increasing demand in the area. The main reasons for this are a growing
number of elderly and increasing expectations regarding the quality and amount of care
and nursing services. On top of this comes the ongoing immaterialisation of the
consumption pattern – the shift towards more value-added services as the homes (and
carports, outbuildings and lofts) are filled with wall-to-wall carpeting, living room sets,
consumer electronics, computers, cooking canopies, tumble-dryers, and Jacuzzis.
● The labour force will not grow at the same pace as the demand for care, nursing and
services.
● The trend towards an ‘industrialisation’ of PESCI work goes directly against the developments on the remaining labour market, and most importantly against the developments in the attitudes towards what constitutes an attractive job.
The challenge thus lies in getting more and better service out of a decreasing number of PESCI workers. This isn’t a challenge that is special for the PESCI field, nor is it
new. It is true for all fields that are driven by conditions of market and competition. Seen
in the long perspective, it is the very engine behind the increase in welfare: the more
that is produced per time unit, the more we can consume.
But it is also obvious that the way in which productivity has been increased roughly
has been a question of replacing or improving human labour with machines. Rather than
having 100 men with shovels digging a trench, one man can do it with an excavator. In
many service functions, IT has similarly provided enormous support and has lightened
and made redundant countless functions from dictation and fair-copying to archiving
and accounting.
But in the field of PESCI jobs it is far harder to make use of the technological development. It is obvious that mechanisation is harder to carry out in functions where the
service is delivered face to face. Where you have to be physically present, where you
can’t be replaced or improved by machines, and where better service almost always
means more time. And this is true for functions from hairdressers, sales assistants and
waiters to nurses, home help, physiotherapists, and kindergarten pedagogues.
F O R
The greatest challenge on the labour market of the future, and the one we focus on in
this report, is that of PESCI jobs. By PESCI jobs we mean jobs in the PErsonal Service
and Care Industry. Jobs where you are physically and temporally present face to face
with the recipient of the service, and where there generally are very limited opportunities for replacing human labour with technology. It is a very large field on the labour market, and will be even larger in the future, and it raises questions that are qualitatively different than for e.g. agriculture, industry or the other great growth area on the labour
market: knowledge service.
I N S T I T U T E
The PESCI challenge:
How to create productive and attractive service jobs
C O P E N H A G E N
Introduction
7
Productivity in service jobs
That the productivity in service jobs and not least personal service as a rule grows slower than in the industry can be seen in the figure below.
Services lag behind...
Production per employed (1948=100)
500
500
450
450
Manufacturing
400
400
350
350
300
300
250
250
Private
services
200
150
200
150
100
100
50
50
0
0
1948
1952
1956
1960
1964
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
Statistics Denmark: ADAM’s databank. Development of productivity (gross value growth in fixed prices per employer).
ADAM’s databank, July 2000. Data before 1966 estimated from growth rates from ADAM’s databank 1997.
The graph compares the development in productivity in manufacturing with the development in the private service sector. (There is no corresponding easily available and
meaningful measure of productivity in the public service sector). Today, manufacturing
produces almost five times as much per employed as it did fifty years ago. In the private
service sector, it is only three times as much. In agriculture the growth has been far
greater, increasing more than twenty-fold, due to an almost total automation of agricultural labour functions.
Another way to illustrate the slower development in the productivity of services is to
look at the growth of costs.
The expensive services
Consumer costs of products and services (1948=100)
2500
2500
2000
2000
Services
1500
1500
1000
1000
Products
500
500
0
0
1948
1952
1956
1960
1964
1968
1972
1976
1980
1984
1988
1992
1996
2000
Statistics Denmark
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F O R
Automation, rationalisation and international competition has contributed to making
products relatively cheaper. We can even see that the divergence in the development of
costs has become more pronounced in the last few decades as the competition on the
global market for products has increased and greater use has been made of computers
and robots in the industrial production.
F U T U R E S
Are you an ‘UFO’ or a ‘PESCI’?
S T U D I E S
The labour force is usually divided into categories such as agriculture, industry, crafts,
trade, and services. This can be useful when describing society in broad strokes, and it
has for decades been possible to describe the development from agricultural society to
industrial society to service and information society by looking at how the labour force is
divided between these categories. However, if we want a picture of the future working
life, it may be meaningful to add more categories. A few years ago, Robert Reich, the
minister of labour in America at the time, introduced the category of ‘symbol analysts’ in
order to describe the growing part of the labour force that worked with transforming
information to knowledge.
On the background of the rapid and very visible growth in this category and the new
types of jobs, terms of employment and working conditions that grew out of this field,
not least within information technology, this group has achieved enormous attention,
and it has often been used as a harbinger of where the labour market was going.
This has been towards immaterial jobs characterised by activities in development.
Analytical, communicative and creative jobs that increasingly are independent of normal
office and working hours, of traditional hierarchical and function-divided organisation,
and of being physically present at a specific place. Independence of geography and
time, supported and promoted by the rapid developments in information and communication technology. The archetype has been the computer programmer who has been
able to sit at home and be logged onto his company’s network and who perhaps was a
so-called ‘free agent’ who has worked on tasks for different employers and who participated in changing network connections. The work is organised around projects, and
every project generates its own organisation, which can be based on networks both
within and between companies and individuals.
The Copenhagen Institute for Futures Studies has also focused a lot on this group.
There are potentially a lot of positive aspects associated with a far more flexible, projectbased and development-oriented work form, also when compared to the development
in attitudes and work values.
The archetype has
been the computer
programmer who has
UFO jobs
But there are also disadvantages, primarily in connection with the high degree of individual responsibility in a work situation where the criteria for success often are vague,
with development tasks that in principle always can be handled differently and always
can be improved by spending more time (there’s never enough time), and where there
hence may be a lot of uncertainty among the employees of whether they are up to the
current situation. A classical cause of stress. They work with Unspecified Fleeting Objectives – UFO.
Many jobs in the labour market, particularly in management, have always had UFO
elements, but a lot of these have gained more such as organisation and management
have become far less tied to chains of command and formalised procedures, and simul-
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been able to sit at
home and be logged
onto his company’s
network and who
perhaps was a
so-called ‘free agent’
9
taneously the development has extended the UFO conditions to far more groups on the
labour market. This means that the question of the psychosocial working environment
becomes importunate for more and more groups on the labour market. Burnout, stress,
frustration, and depression are all on the rise. This is the flip side of a labour market
group where all surveys simultaneously point towards very high job satisfaction. We are
facing a paradoxical problem, for it is probably the same factors – orientation towards
development, changing tasks, increased independence, professional and personal challenges – that give rise to both the great job satisfaction and the problems with the
psychosocial working environment.
PESCI jobs
All the boring manual and physically demanding jobs in industry and agriculture can be
almost entirely eliminated through rationalisation, mechanisation and automation. But it
isn’t possible to replace people in functions that deal with other people. This means that
when you have to improve performance in personal service and care, you are more or
less forced to either hire more personnel or make the personnel work harder. This is
what the employees refer to as “we have to run faster and faster.”
A common way of approaching this is to analyse procedures, divide the work into
individual processes, survey and control the performance of the work, and make norms
for expenditures of time and resources. After this, it is possible to continually identify
opportunities for increasing the tempo and/or decreasing quality in order to produce
more.
This is done at McDonald’s and it is done in the Danish healthcare. But there is a risk
of estranging the employees and of reducing the recipients of the services to passive
objects that are ‘handled’ on the basis of objective standard criteria instead of being
treated as people with individual needs.
Seen in a future perspective, this is a presExamples of PESCI jobs:
sure that not only is constantly present, but
also in all likelihood is going to increase. And
at the same time, the attitudes of the labour
Home help
Nurse
force towards what constitutes a good worPedagogue
king life is rapidly moving away from the
Assistant pedagogue
industrial concept of work. People desire
Schoolteacher
individual responsibility and development
Hairdresser
through work. It is thus important to look this
Dentist
situation in the eyes in order to be able to
Doctor
correct a potentially very unbalanced devePhysiotherapist
lopment.
Chiropractor
Acupuncturist
Masseur
Sales clerk
Checkout assistant
Foster parent
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S T U D I E S
An important reason why a number of service fields may have a hard time attracting and
retaining sufficient labour in the future can be found in the overall development of the
population and the labour market.
We can illustrate this by examining the current population in Denmark. The age
groups that enter the labour market in the coming years are relatively small. At the same
time, the very large age groups from the forties are about to leave the labour market.
But even after the biggest age groups have left the labour market, the age groups that
enter the market will remain smaller than the exit groups for many years.
F O R
1.1 The demographic pressure
I N S T I T U T E
The future is in principle unpredictable, but that doesn’t mean it can become anything.
There are some relatively certain boundaries within which the developments are going
to take place. Main trends of the demographic development can be predicted quite far
ahead. The development in attitudes is more uncertain, but there are some stable lines
of development in the general trends regarding what people want from their working
lives. These main lines will be outlined in the following.
C O P E N H A G E N
Part I – The Labour Market
of the Future:
The Certain Trends
Population Profile 2001 - Denmark
Number of people in 1-year age groups January 1.st 2001
100000
34
6
54
17
75000
50000
25000
0
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Statistics Denmark
All else being equal, this means that companies face greater challenges in securing the
necessary labour, whether by recruitment or retaining. It will be a ‘seller’s labour market’.
Seen from society’s viewpoint, this gives rise to a general problem. The number of
people engaged in active employment will drop in relation to those not engaged in active employment – the support burden increases.
Add to this the special problem that the number of elderly, old, and especially really
old people will continue to increase for many years. This creates a greater demand for
care of the elderly at home or in institutions. These are very labour intensive areas
where there even now are problems with recruitment and retaining.
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It is not a
person’s age
in itself that
creates a need
Source: Nordisk Statistik
for eldercare.
The very last years of life require most care
It is not a person’s age in itself that creates a need for eldercare. But the very last years
of life generally require a lot of care and result in many admissions to hospitals and
such. Hence it is to some degree possible to consider a prognosis for the number of
deaths as an indicator of the need for care, since most after all die old and/or sick. The
figure below shows that for Denmark, the number of deaths is fairly constant around
60,000 the next ten years and starts increasing considerably after about 2012. This
means that from about 2010, there will be a significant increasing need for eldercare –
when the frailties of the large age groups start to make themselves known. In the next
two or three decades, this indicator grows about 15-20%, and a similar development
must be expected for the health sector’s treatment of the elderly and the need for care
of the weak elderly. Something similar is expected for the need for labour in these
fields, since we can’t expect any noticeable growth in productivity within personal service. The pattern of large age groups born in the 1940s after small age groups from the
1930s is a general European phenomenon, so the general picture is the same in many
other countries.
Number of Deaths
according to the population prognosis from Statistics Denmark
80000
Deaths
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0
1975
1985
1995
2005
2015
2025
2035
www.statistikbanken.dk
Labour force and support burden
The support burden is typically defined as the number of people in age groups not
engaged in active employment compared to the number of people in age groups engaged in active employment. The first includes both children/youths and elderly nonemployed.
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F O R
With prognoses extending beyond 10-15 years, the number of children/youths is
very uncertain. On the other hand, the number of elderly is known with some precision.
We know the sizes of the age groups that already have been born but haven’t yet entered the labour market; i.e., we know the sizes of the labour market age groups about
two decades into the future. For this reason, the elderly support burden is known with
some precision 20 years ahead. After this, it will ‘only’ be characterised by uncertainty
regarding the sizes of as-yet-unborn age groups.
This elderly support burden calculated from labour market age groups of course
depends on when age groups are expected to enter and leave the labour market. Below, the elderly support burden for the Nordic countries is for reasons of international
comparison based on an old OECD standard where people are expected to be actively
employed from age 15 to age 64.
F U T U R E S
S T U D I E S
Source: Nordisk Statistik
The trend of the development is quite clear and the same for all Nordic countries: An
increasing elderly support burden. Where there today are 4-4.5 persons in the labouractive age per person who has left the labour market, in 2040 there will only be about
2.5.
Below, the same development in elderly support burden is illustrated for a number of
other OECD countries, and for Europe and the OECD as a whole.
The trend of the
development is quite
clear and the same for
all Nordic countries:
An increasing elderly
Source: OECD, 1997 and own calculations.
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It is worth noticing that Sweden even today has a significantly higher elderly support
burden than e.g. Denmark. This reflects among other things that Swedes actually live
significantly longer than Danes do, as seen in the Nordic life expectancy table below.
This also illustrates that the life expectancy, and a possible unexpected extension
hereof, will shift the picture towards an even higher elderly support burden. After all,
the life expectancy is an important parameter in demographic prognoses.
Source: Nordisk Statistik
Through the later decades, the average age for entering the labour market has
increased significantly and is today far higher than the 15 years that still is the general
assumption in calculations of support burdens. But even when selecting a higher age of
entry, the elderly support burden is going to increase in the future.
Below, the elderly support burden in the Nordic countries is calculated based on
labour market entry at age 15, 20 and 25 years. There are naturally level differences
between the three calculations, but the trend is quite clear and univocal: an increasing
elderly support burden.
Source: Nordisk Statistik and own calculations.
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F O R
More working people – an answer to the elderly support burden?
The increasing elderly support burden doesn’t have to lead to serious problems. The
important thing is whether there exists a labour reserve that can (and will?) be active on
the labour market in the future.
For one thing, there exists some unemployment, and it is obvious to reduce this. For
another, there is a potential reserve among part-time workers. Unemployment is low in
Scandinavia in these years, but not negligible.
In addition, it is imperative how the employment rate develops. Not everybody in the
labour-active age groups is on the labour market today. In Denmark and Norway, the
employment rate is about 80% of the age groups between 16 and 65 years old, while it
is a bit lower in Sweden and significantly lower (74%) in Finland. Generally speaking, the
employment rate in the Scandinavian countries is among the highest in the world, with
corresponding limitations to the potential for further increase.
F U T U R E S
S T U D I E S
Source: Nordisk Statistik
Various reserve groups can contribute to an increased rate of employment. This can
happen by:
● Reducing various leave-of-absence schemes such as maternity leave, childcare, education, etc.
● Increase the age of retirement, e.g. through having fewer retire early
● Get (more) retired people to join the labour market at part time
● Get more students to take part-time jobs
● Make use of the labour reserves of less capable people in e.g. light jobs
● Get more people to work from the immigrant groups characterised by low employment
● Get the homebound, healthy people (mostly women) to join the labour market
The increasing
elderly support
burden doesn’t have
to lead to serious
problems.
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In spite of the reform
of early retirement
benefits, the number
of people (especially
women) who retire
Young people’s spare time occupation
Part time occupation for young students is a well-known opportunity to
increase the labour force in the PESCI field. Especially in Denmark, but
also in Norway, many young people work part time in e.g. the retail trade.
This field has thus found low-wage labour reserves outside of the general
labour-active age groups to handle ‘boring service work’. But this can turn
out to be a very transient labour reserve, and its potential is being reduced
because the young age groups grow smaller.
early has grown
In many countries, a lot of the themes are familiar from innumerable reports and from
political attempts to influence participation in the labour market. But no one has found
an easy solution; especially not for Denmark and Norway, both of which already have
record employment rates.
In many of the above-mentioned areas, the development has gone the wrong way in
Denmark in the later years:
● In spite of the reform of early retirement benefits, the number of people (especially
women) who retire early has grown. It will take a long time before the reform shows
results.
● The duration of maternity leave has been increased.
● Many work part time, and a new law pulls in the direction of more people working
part time.
● Experience doesn’t immediately suggest that people by their own initiative wish to
spend more time or more years on the labour market.
The labour market relation of various age groups in Denmark can be seen in the
figure below.
Labour market relation by age group
Denmark - 2000
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
Education
and other
Retired
Early retirement
etc.
Leave, maternity etc.
Unemployed
Employed
Source: Statistics Denmark
16- 20- 25- 30- 35- 40- 45- 50- 55- 60- years old
19 24 29 34 39 44 49 54 59 66 years old
It can be seen that the potential of increasing the employment rate seems greatest in the
oldest age groups, particularly the 60-66 years old. There actually is a significantly lower
employment rate of this group in Denmark compared to Sweden and Norway (though
not Finland). An obvious explanation would be the Danish early retirement benefits.
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As mentioned, there are no easy solutions for increasing the labour force. Many thick
reports have been written about this, and it isn’t the main theme of this report.
But it does mean that it is necessary to seek out supplementary solutions in the
attempt to increase the labour force. Getting more people to work is at best a small part
of the answer to the elderly support burden. However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t do what can be done.
F U T U R E S
Labour force solutions
S T U D I E S
If the problem in the next decades is too small a labour force, it is obvious to look at the
possibilities for increasing the labour force. In principle, there are a number of ways to
do this. It is e.g. possible to increase immigration, increase the age of retirement, shorten education, and increase the employment rate for groups where it is low.
The very big potential ‘keys’ are here estimated to be immigration, retirement age,
employment of women, and the integration of immigrants.1 In the following, various
models for increasing the labour force are roughly outlined.
Immigration
Immigration from the 3rd world is a possibility – but the question is if it a solution. Experiences so far suggest that it isn’t a solution because the actual productivity has been
relatively low for large 3rd world immigrant groups. There are ‘sunshine stories’, but
there are large groups that are poorly integrated; employment is low, and many of those
that are employed, are employed in positions of relatively low productive value. And the
net economic result of immigration from non-western countries is on the average negative for the public sector. They cost more than they contribute – at least in the first many
years.2
It is obvious that if a far better integration of immigrants can be achieved, the picture
may look different. This could be done through a general integration effort in the community – or by handling the ‘new’ immigrants of the future differently. It should be noted that if immigration implies the immigration of entire families, where children and
parents of retirement age come with the labour-active groups, additional service needs
would follow, including childcare and eldercare. Hence a very great immigration is required in order to deliver a ‘surplus’ of labour of a certain size, and it must be questioned if
this is politically realistic.
Increasing the age of retirement
The potential of
Increasing the average age of retirement from the labour market a few years will have a
significant effect on the labour force. The state can increase the age of early retirement,
reduce the benefit or limit it to those who are especially worn down. For all types of
increasing the
1. There are several initiatives that theoretically can shorten the time young people spend educating themselves. One of these is economic incentive, including a closer connection between student grants and educational results - or resigning the students after a specific number of years. There is however a basic problem in making it harder to be educated and in forcing the
young more rapidly through the system. For other reasons, it is good for the community that as many as possible get a good
education. The discussion is extensive. In similar ways, it may be possible to integrate less capable groups in the labour market. However, this discussion requires an analysis that is too extensive for this report.
2. Source: Calculations made by the Danish Economic Council of the Labour Movement, Newsletter 4/2002, where a loss is
shown up to 2022 - with a similarly huge profit if full integration on the labour market can be achieved.
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employment rate
seems greatest in
the oldest age groups,
particularly the
60-66 years old.
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pensioning schemes, working can in principle be made more attractive by reducing
structural problems in the tax system; i.e., make it attractive to contribute a little bit
more even when benefiting from a pensioning scheme of one sort or the other. However, this is not without problems of its own, since it may make it more attractive to leave
the ordinary labour market and entering such a scheme.
The attitude towards age is changing – and may keep changing. Old people aren’t
worn down the way they used to be. But there still is a common opinion about age as
such – that you have done your part if you have worked until you’re 60 or thereabout.
Culture and expectations can’t be changed by decree. If the supply of elderly labour
is to be increased significantly, and if this labour is to be productive, a change in attitude
is needed in relation to both employment and education even after an age of 60 years
has been reached. Initiatives towards this, which each organisation may undertake, are
discussed in the second part of this report.
The employment rate of women increased to that of men
The employment rate of women has historically always been lower than that of men.
Women’s biologically determined special role in care of the youngest children doesn’t
necessarily have to mean a lower employment rate than men have, not even in the typical parent age groups. There is nothing that prevents giving men and women equally
long maternity leave. However, it doesn’t add to the total labour pool to decide that e.g.
men and women have to divide 12 or 18 months of maternity leave evenly among
themselves, rather than dividing the same duration unevenly.
It is however striking that the employment rate of women over 50 is lower than that
of men, at an age where very few have small children. When we consider that the
health of women generally is better than that of men – as seen by their higher average
life span – this difference becomes conspicuous. Increasing the employment rate of
women in the older age groups require either changes in attitude, regulations, or both.
The employment rate of immigrants increased
to the level of native citizens
There is a certain untapped potential among ethnic groups. The unemployment in these
groups have dropped significantly in the later years – relatively far more than for others
– but it is still significantly higher than for native citizens of the same age groups. In
regard to the groups that already are in the country (immigrants and their descendants),
there will most likely be a continuing reduction of the difference in the years to come, if
the employers are willing to hire them.
1.2 Work values moving in the opposite direction
In the last few years, there has been a long range of surveys of the work values of
Europeans. What do the young want? How do generations differ from each other?
Many surveys are associated with mismatch problems and bottlenecks on the labour
market – and in these years not least with the so-called ‘support burden’. The space
doesn’t allow a full image of the many labour surveys that have been done in the later
years, so we are going to focus on just a few.
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It is seen in the newest edition of “Danskernes værdier” that the ‘youth effect’ – the tendency of making greater demands of the workplace and having less faith in the authority of the boss – has spread to the rest of the population. The table below shows the
development for the general population. The downward movement on the authority
scale is noted in the table. The numbers reveal that Danes in the last 10 years not only
think that it is wrong to always follow work instructions – they also think that the possible actions depend on the situation. There is thus a relatively large proportion of “it
depends” answers in 1999; respondents who don’t think that it is possible to give a
general answer to whether an order from a superior should be followed or not. There is
a statistic connection between level of education and the tendency to answer “it
depends”, and it is thus reasonable to assume that the future labour force as a whole,
concurrent with an increasing level of education in the population, will have even less
faith in authority.
F O R
Lower faith in authority – a general tendency
I N S T I T U T E
Work values change over time
One of the very few labour market surveys that are based on solid data over time and at
simultaneously makes it possible to compare generations, is “Danskernes værdier” (“The
Values of Danes”), which has recently been published for the third time with Peter Gundelach as editor. For this reason, this section will largely focus on this survey, which has
been carried out three times – in 1981, 1990, and 1999.
Responsibility at work
With a basis in the extensive literature about changed work values from material, instrumental aspects to immaterial aspects, the value survey gives an account of the development in whether different aspects of self-realisation have become more important in
work through the last two decades. The table below shows the development of the
fraction that finds different aspects of self-realisation important.
The aspect of self-realisation at work is more important for the labour force than instrumental aspects (such as wages, job security, and advancement), and the difference has
increased through the last two decades. A conclusion which is supported by economic
studies in the 1990s that question the idea that the labour force is ‘wage rational’ – that
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The development can
perhaps be roughly
interpreted to mean
that wages have to be
very high to in themselves to attract
labour, but that low
people are driven to the labour market or to choose between jobs mainly because of
different wage opportunities.
The movement towards a relatively larger focus on aspects of self-realisation in the
working life does not mean that e.g. wages have become less important – they still
mean a lot, and their significance haven’t dropped over time. The development can perhaps be roughly interpreted to mean that wages have to be very high to in themselves
to attract labour, but that low wages can repel potential employees. In other words,
employees in general expect both high wages and a job that provides self-realisation.
Next to meeting nice people, which is the most important aspect over the entire period, self-realisation is the most important reason to go to work. In this connection, it is
very interesting to note that the aspect that has grown most in importance is to have
responsibility: a development that doesn’t harmonise very well with the increasing control over and systematisation of service jobs.
wages can repel
Greater demands – less significance
potential employees.
The general image of the labour force is thus one of an increasing desire for self-determination in work, and of a decreasing trust in that the evaluations of other people per se
are better or truer than your own – even if these people are placed higher in the hierarchy that you are a part of.
In view of the more sophisticated and relatively less instrumental and comfort-based
demands to working life, it is interesting to note that the work as such simultaneously
has lost relative importance in the lives of Danes. As seen in the table below, the importance of work has dropped significantly through the 1990s. The group that considers
work to be very important has thus dropped from 51 to 39 percent.
Friends, acquaintances and especially family have in a single decade become far more
important than work. That work no longer takes up quite so central a part of people’s
lives can probably be attributed to that it is no longer considered a necessity, just one
among many opportunities to do something interesting with nice people, and take on
responsibilities in a non-hierarchical structure.
That work is considered less important than other spheres of life doesn’t mean that
the demands to working life become any less. The numbers more likely reflect that
many employees don’t get their desires for their working lives fulfilled – as is also pointed out by the authors of the survey. In addition, the immediately contradictory results
can reflect a changed set of work values. This is discussed in more detail in the section
below about the relationship of young people to the labour market.
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Voluntary, unpaid work
It may be interesting to take a look at voluntary, unpaid work to get an idea of what the
self-realising labour market of the future will be like. It has become more common to
make an effort as unpaid labour in social work, in sports clubs, in political movements,
etc. The voluntary, unpaid work can hence to some extent be considered a real competitor to the labour market. It is characteristic that the unpaid volunteers work where the
work provides meaning and context for them. There are for instance connections between political, social and religious opinions and the work that is done.
The continuity in the work that is done by the individual voluntary worker and the
connection between opinions and choice of unpaid activity means that the volunteers
can’t in any sense be considered ‘resources’ that can be moved around depending on
where there are bottlenecks in the system. Though it naturally isn’t possible to draw a
direct parallel between the unpaid work of today and the labour market of the future, it
may still be worth looking at what people do when they do something entirely voluntarily and with the lowest possible instrumental interests.
F U T U R E S
S T U D I E S
The young at work – the pleasurable work
The value survey makes the in this connection very interesting conclusion that the values of the young actually can be taken as indicators of how the participants in the
labour market of the future are going to value different aspects of life. The surveys in
1981, 1990 and 1999 thus show that the values of the young in e.g. 1981 have spread
to the rest of society in the following decade. It thus seems sensible when Strategisk
Forum, in their review from 2001 of the work values of the young, emphasise how
important it is that the workplaces shouldn’t expect that the young are going to adapt to
the structures and values on the labour market we know today – it is the workplaces
that will have to adapt.
A clearer change among the young
The evaluation of different aspects of life doesn’t differ strongly from the rest of society
(those over 30). The young have higher scores in many aspects, but this can to a large
extent be contributed to that they are young, rather than that they are bearers of an
entirely new concept of work. The difference is that the trend that work should involve
responsibility as the most important factor of self-realisation, and be interesting as the
second-most important, is even stronger among the young than in the rest of the population. In addition, the survey shows that the young value their work significantly less in
relation to other aspects of life than the older generation did when they were young.
The above-mentioned paradox, that the work at once is less important and higher
demands are made of it, is also more pronounced among the young. Finally, meeting
other people at work has become less important for the young since 1981 – though it
still is an extremely important factor for all.
Even though every other person under 30 still in 1999 states “job security” as an
important aspect of work, the value of job security has become less among the young in
the past two decades. For the older part of the population, this factor hasn’t become
any less important.
Perhaps the greater focus of the young on factors of self-realisation, and lesser focus
on good colleagues and job security, can be explained by that it no longer is enough to
have a nice time with the colleagues and feel safely employed. For the young, the work
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That work no longer
takes up quite so
central a part of
people’s lives can
probably be
attributed to that it is
no longer considered
a necessity, just
one among many
opportunities to do
something interesting
with nice people,
and take on
responsibilities in
a non-hierarchical
structure.
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The young don’t care
about brands and
image. They are
attracted to a
company if it is known
to be credible and
has skilled employees,
since these two
things are proof
of good conditions
for development.
to a greater degree has to act as a partner in the life project of the individual.
In line with the conclusions of the value survey, Strategisk Forum emphasises that the
young don’t care about brands and image. They are attracted to a company if it is
known to be credible and has skilled employees, since these two things are proof of
good conditions for development.
The pleasurable work
The young don’t feel an obligation to work. It is in this respect that the young generation differs most from the rest of society today. For the young, the workplace isn’t primarily a place they go to make money, to achieve prestige, or because of duty. The workplace is place where they go to get some good experiences. And if they don’t get the
good experiences, they don’t hesitate to change their workplace, or even to stop working if this fits the period of their life. In 1981, the young could appreciate a job they
were dissatisfied with. In 1999, the young have to be able to feel a high degree of
responsibility and satisfaction in order to appreciate their jobs.
The new young have been called many things from “rootless zappers” to egoists.
In the report from Strategisk Forum a point is made – which goes well in thread with
CIFS’s hypothesis – of stating that the young are romantics looking for the perfect partner that can join them in their project of self-realisation.
Another interesting result of the survey is that even the poorly qualified youths need
a large degree of influence on their work in order to be satisfied with it. As can be seen
in the table below, the poorly qualified youths of 1981 could more easily be satisfied
with their work, even if they didn’t have as much influence.
The expectation to having a lot of influence on work is thus general among the young.
The frustrations are highest among youths without any education, because they experience that they can’t realise their desires and expectations regarding their jobs. This
change is quite significant in relation to the idea that there is a part of the labour force
that is satisfied with more control and schedule-based work. This is not the case for the
young. And if this trend spreads to the rest of the community to the same degree, the
increased control and systematisation of the service jobs can become a significant problem.
Cult of the individual
In his book from 1997, The Silent Revolution, Ronald Inglehart writes that modern society is undergoing a fundamental change in values, and he predicts that the young very
much will be characterised by an unwillingness to work because working isn’t viewed as
a duty or vocation. The work moral and the traditional virtues are broken down, and
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with them also the ‘protestant work ethic’ of feeling obligated to work and hence contributing to the society, which the capitalist society is based on according to Max Weber.
According to a number of surveys that Jørgen Goul Andersen, professor at Aalborg
University, examines in an article from 1996, the unemployed don’t necessarily view
their unemployment as being especially socially expulsive in relation the rest of society.
About half the unemployed would even like to be without work for an extended period.
A number of unemployed remark that their general well-being has improved since their
becoming unemployed, and many of the unemployed under 40 feel that they could find
employment if they wanted. The same writer has during the 1990s been an advocate of
the viewpoint that the young weren’t unwilling to work as such – but that the work
available to the poorly qualified was so far from the dream job that a life without work
was more attractive.
Results like these – which can also be found in analyses up through the 1990s by e.g.
International Labour Organisations –to some extent support Inglehart’s thesis that the
work ethic, which can be considered one of the foundations of our society, is fading
away. While writers like Inglehart think that the fading of the work ethic is negative and
contributes to breaking down the capitalist society, Goul Andersen thinks that the
modern solidarity simply is based on an organic division of work that leaves room for
individual choices of ideals instead of a mechanistic adoption of the work norm. The
modern solidarity is according to Goul Andersen and other writers based on an organic
interdependence in a differentiated society that cultivates the perception of the integrity
of the individual; a cult of the individual.
In view of the results of the value survey, it is important to consider the remarkable
difference in the evolution of work values and the developments in the structuring of
the service jobs. It may be possible to ‘compel’ the labour market to match by having
efficient unemployment offices, activation arrangements and rigid availability duties. But
in the long term, the effects of such a ‘compelled market match’ will probably make
themselves felt in the companies in the shape of recruitment problems, loss of productivity due to frequent job changes, and low employee satisfaction. If it is true that the
young are driven by desire, the compulsion will probably affect the productivity of the
companies.
In view of the dissemination of the values of the young to the rest of the population,
as seen in later years, this is an interesting conclusion in relation to the evaluation of the
recruitment opportunities of the service industry in the labour market of the future. The
general tendency to perceive the role of the job as less central in life, taken together
with the new pleasurable work concept of the young, means that the lack of productive
labour can become even greater in the future than what results solely from the shifts in
age group sizes predicted by demographic statistics.
For the young,
the workplace isn’t
primarily a place
they go to make
money, to achieve
prestige, or
because of duty.
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1.3 The demands of the labour force
and the content of the PESCI jobs
The Danish Institute for the Working Environment (AMI) has produced a general survey
of the psychosocial working environment for a long range of job types. The analysis survey isn’t finished yet, but some preliminary results can be seen (in Danish) on the website: www.ami.dk/research/apss/3daekker.
“By mental working environment we mean factors that relate to the organisation of
the work or the interpersonal relations on the workplace and which influence the
mental well-being and health of the employees.
“These are influences like: employee influence, job variation, demands made of
employees, social support and social network, meaningfulness, predictability and
security, violence, chicanery and mobbing, conflicts of role, and group processes.
“Psychosomatic effects that can be derived from these influences are: self-estimated health, mental well-being, stress, mental weariness, and job satisfaction.
“In addition, questions will also be made regarding mastering problematic situations.
“Both in the case of the psychological influences and of the mental and somatic
effects, positive as well as negative aspects will be viewed. It will thus be possible
to identify e.g. stress and weariness, but there will also be developed tools for capturing engagement, motivation, work satisfaction and personal development.”
Source: www.ami.dk/research/apss/3daekker.
In the survey results for different job types have been sorted into various subcategories
of psychosocial working environmental conditions. However, only factors that have
achieved relatively large weight in the population (see the section above about work
values) have been taken into consideration. The analysis is thus limited to the 9 factors
shown in the table below. In addition, the focus is on PESCI jobs. In the appendix, you
can see a total account in schematic form of all the 19 mental working environmental
conditions. The following 9 positive organisational characteristics have been considered
in the analysis below.
Selected factors – self-realisation and interpersonal relations
Employee influence
Opportunities for development
Degrees of freedom in the work
Meaningful work
Involvement on the workplace
Social support
Social community
Feedback
Social relations
The chosen method of viewing working conditions is naturally only a selection and a
simplified account of the many complex working environmental conditions of the original survey.
The job categories in the survey are here categorised by UFO, PESCI and other jobs.
We have selected PESCI jobs to be person-to-person service jobs in a rather broad sense.
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The job categories within the PESCI professions are listed below. The number of
plusses and minuses for each job category indicate how many of the chosen working
environmental conditions that are better or worse than the norm.3 The method doesn’t
indicate how much poorer or better than the norm the specific condition is, but with the
preliminary and limited data we have chosen to stick to a fairly coarse-grained method.
F U T U R E S
S T U D I E S
The job types are ordered according to the ‘net numbers’ for these chosen 9 categories. The net number is chosen for the sake of clarity, not because negative and positive
factors are though to cancel each other, since this may not be the case. It must e.g. be
expected that there is some sort of threshold value for negative influences.
Nor is it feasible to assume that the various factors carry equal weight or that they are
independent. But the table probably still gives a reasonable overall comprehensive view
so that the job types with the better working conditions are at the top and the job types
with the poorest working conditions are at the bottom.
On the basis of the preliminary results of the survey, we have given various job types
‘points’ based on how high they score on the psychosocial working environment variables, so that the job type gets:
● The value –1 (minus one) if the value is below the norm; i.e., significantly worse than
average
● The value 0 (zero) if the value is within the norm; i.e., close to the average
● The value +1 (plus one) if the value is above the norm; i.e., significantly better than
average
3
The preliminary analysis output of the survey consists of data with values between 0 and 100, where 40-60 is the normal
level while numbers outside of this range are expressions of either critically poor conditions or of remarkably good conditions.
We have translated these numbers to values of +1, 0, and -1.
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In the bottom of the table, PESCI jobs are compared to UFO jobs, which generally
have a significantly higher score, and other jobs, including industry, which have a lower
score (see appendix 1).
The overall picture is that PESCI jobs on the basis of the chosen criteria are less attractive than UFO jobs. Based on these criteria there are ‘other’ jobs, including some industry jobs, that are less attractive than PESCI jobs. However, the chosen aspects don’t
reflect a comprehensive analysis; it may well be that e.g. the wages within industry
today compensate for poorer job satisfaction and/or working environment – something
which isn’t the case for most PESCI jobs today.
Working conditions in different PESCI jobs
There are quite big differences between the job types that we here have chosen to define as PESCI jobs. Teachers and pedagogues get a good net score in spite of negative
elements. A common element between the care sector and teaching/pedagogics is that
the degrees of freedom for these jobs are critical; i.e., there are few degrees of freedom. But the similarities end there.
There is a significant difference between the PESCI jobs in the teaching sector and
the care sector. Both the opportunities for development and employee influence within
pedagogics/teaching have a favourable influence on working conditions. This may be
because these professions lie on the borderland between PESCI jobs and UFO jobs,
where the academic level of education and the opportunities for development both are
higher.
In the health area, the opportunities for development are neutral while the lacking
employee influence is directly negative for the working conditions.
Jobs within health and care have few positive and more negative factors that influence working conditions. All jobs within healthcare and eldercare score disastrously. This
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should make the alarm bells ring loudly among employers in the field.
The same is true for the retail trade, since sales/checkout assistants are at the absolute bottom. Things don’t look too good for chauffeur/transport employers, either. Next
lowest are office clerks; but if the future office clerks move up to become secretaries or
something equally specialised, things look a bit better.
An education-based hierarchy is perceived within related PESCI fields. Nurses are
above assistant nurses, pedagogues are above assistant pedagogues, and bank clerks
are above stores clerks, which again are above sales clerks. Office clerks are below
secretaries. However, grade school teachers lie marginally above grammar school teachers, though below teachers at business schools. But across professions and sectors,
there is no clear educational pattern or hierarchy.
F U T U R E S
S T U D I E S
Conclusion
This survey shouldn’t be interpreted too rigidly, since it is a rough sorting of preliminary
data. But the results do fit well with a number of already observed trends, e.g. the problems several of the mentioned professions have with recruiting and retaining personnel.
For employers within the health sector, transportation and the retail trade, the survey
should provide food for thought.
Poor working conditions and environment for a job can perhaps to some extent be
compensated for with high wages, and hence still attract labour in the future – but in
many professions, the cost of the service will become unacceptably high if this solution
is chosen. The second part of this report deals with the switches that an organisation
can turn in order to contain the problem.
In the second table in the appendix, the same analysis is listed for all the 19 criteria
the survey has for the mental working environment. These 19 criteria are listed in the
box below. The table shows a very clear additional point, namely that the emotional
demands are critical for the mental working environment for all job types within
health/care and teaching/pedagogics. This, and the analysis as a whole, lends strength
to the argument that especially health/care employers may face severe problems.
On the website mentioned initially, www.ami.dk/research/apss/3daekker, more of
the results used in the survey can be seen.
Jobs within health and
care have few positive
and more negative
factors that influence
working conditions.
All jobs within healthcare and eldercare
score disastrously.
This should make
the alarm bells ring
loudly among
employers in the field.
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1: quantitative demands – 2: sensory demands – 3: emotional demands – 4: demand for hiding feelings – 5: low job security – 6: role conflicts –
7: cognitive demands – 8: employee influence – 9: opportunities for development – 10: degrees of freedom in work – 11: meaningful work – 12:
predictability – 13: clear roles – 14: involvement in workplace – 15: social support – 16: quality of management – 17: social community – 18:
feedback – 19: social relations.
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As seen in Part I, many organisations must make serious considerations in the years to
come. Succinctly put, we are faced with a situation where the most able employees are
going to be attracted to the organisations that can offer exciting tasks, qualified colleagues, significant personal responsibility, good co-workers, and freedom from unnecessary managerial control. At the same time, many service jobs are becoming increasingly
rationalised and controlled – either because we feel that this production method is economically feasible per se, or because we experience that customers and users in the
public sector demand objective transparency in whether they get ‘value for money’ or
not. Finally, a number of service organisations have a tradition for rigid, hierarchical
systems, which can be difficult to change because both employees and management
have been trained to function in it.
Literature and media are in these years overflowing with ideas about how to handle
the problems with structural, macroeconomic tools. However, these aren’t tools that the
individual workplace can begin using tomorrow. This chapter discusses the switches
that the workplaces individually could and should consider when planning future strategy. Roughly speaking, there are three mindsets that the organisations can make use of
in the part of the strategy that deals with the mismatch problems on the labour market
of the future.
The first is to increase wages considerably, rationalise, and accept high employee
rotation – because you realise that the type of tasks that the organisation needs to solve
aren’t ever going to be the basis for attractive jobs in the labour market of the future.
The second is to simply remove the service or parts of it – either because you ascertain that the will to pay among customers or voters is lacking, or because you change
the conditions so that the need for the service disappears.
The third is to create jobs that the labour force finds attractive – because you realise
that satisfied employees, satisfied customers/users, and long-term high productivity are
one and the same thing. At the end of this chapter, we are going to get acquainted with
two organisations, the Danish Trade Union of Public Employees (FOA) and the department store Magasin, who each in their own way have tried to handle the problems.
Below we provide a number of ideas of how these solutions can be implemented in
practice. The sections are both dispositions for potential new market areas and for alternative management strategies. In the real world, organisations are going to have to
combine several types of solutions.
C O P E N H A G E N
Part II:
Possible Strategies
2.1 Piece-rate service jobs
“Forget all about job enrichment, a stimulating job, and the social environment in the
workplace.” At least for some working conditions?
All attitude surveys and expert quotes support the overall ‘megatrend’ that the work
concept of the industrial society is being replaced by a work concept based on independent, interesting, and meaningful work with good opportunities for professional and
personal development. The work of the future will be less ‘martyrdom’ and more ‘hard
fun’. This is the overall message from all branches of work. It is in full accord with CIFS’s
idea about the development from industrial society to knowledge society and dream
society.
Even though the overall direction of development thus is fairly certain, there are a
number of reasons why it is far too early to do away with that part of the work concept
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It isn’t unthinkable
that more people –
even those with long
education – in the
future will have a
more down-to-earth
relation to their job
and stop having
illusions about
satisfying a number
of personal values
through their work.
of the industrial society that says that work primarily is the means to get a good sparetime life. This is partly because there still are many of the ‘old jobs’, partly because there
is renewed influx to the field in the case of both supply and demand.
● The industry jobs aren’t replaced just by symbol analyst jobs and ‘hard fun’ jobs, but
very much also by ‘industrialisable’ service jobs.
● The information part in many service jobs is ‘automated’, and the jobs are divided into
80% standardised services (which in principle can be handled by poorly qualified people) and 20% more knowledge-intensive jobs that require good qualifications. This polarisation is e.g. characteristic of the bank sector, and may be implemented in other fields.
● There is a group on the labour market that either don’t like or have a hard time functioning in the modern, independent jobs, and who risk becoming losers.
● Immigrants, who often come from agricultural societies that are moving towards industrial societies, often have a hard time adapting to the work values of the Western society, which is moving from information society to dream society.
● In the knowledge society, we tend to find a lot of our values and identities in our work
and career. But it is likely that many people in the dream society will tend to find their
values and identities in their family, an exciting spare time, or a cause they believe in.
The group that still finds work to be very important has dropped from 51% to 30% between 1990 and 1999.
● Still more jobs are temporary; e.g. student jobs. In a more changeable world, where
jobs aren’t as permanent, we don’t tie our identities to our jobs in the same degree.
Being a teacher, bank principal or local government worker no longer carries the prestige it did in the agricultural and industrial societies. In the same way we must expect that
the glitter will fade from many of the prestigious jobs of the present like journalist, doctor, barrister, etc. In most of these jobs there are about 20% ‘hard fun’ and 80% ‘hard
work’. This is how most jobs are; even the so-called dream jobs once you get behind
the facade, the illusions and the dreams. Many people are so attracted to the 20% ‘hard
fun’ that they accept the 80% ‘hard work’ as a necessary evil. Others burn out at an early age because the demand for involvement becomes too much.
It isn’t unthinkable that more people – even those with long education – in the future
will have a more down-to-earth relation to their job and stop having illusions about satisfying a number of personal values through their work. They are instead going to focus
on their personal lives and spare-time interests, and are going to see the job as a means
for having a good spare-time life.
Garbage collectors and McDonald jobs are two ‘archetypes’ of these types of service
jobs, where one pays well and the other doesn’t. They are job types that we may get
many more of in the service sector of the future, especially in the high paying end – not
just within cleaning, but also within entirely different job categories.
We can imagine doctors, e.g. knee surgeons or oculists that make ‘assembly line’
operations at piece-rate payment and a very high hourly wage. They can’t do anything
else, and aren’t interested in medical progress in other fields. As expert systems, standardisation and tele-medicine gain ground, we may even imagine that operators with a
short, but very specialised education handle 80% of such operations, with the doctors as
back-up/supervisors. The lack of doctors can promote this development.
The increasing use of temp agencies reflects that there is a market for the type of
labour that prioritises high wages, few restrictions and little involvement. You aren’t to
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the same extent subject to the restrictions of the workplace or the labour union. You
deliver a well-defined service and then leave, within getting deeply involved in colleagues or workplace.
The call centres, which are growing, are a sort of ‘service factories’ that are based on
standardisation through IT, a high degree of specialisation, short training times, and
often also rapid rotation. The jobs are in themselves not very well paid, but they provide
employees with low education with an opportunity for relatively higher wages through
result-based payment.
We can also imagine ‘service factories’ within a number of other areas. As service
gets more expensive, so does going to a hairdresser. As the level is raised in many places, a market grows for consumers that don’t want to pay € 50-70 for a haircut. “Get a
haircut for € 10 – it only takes 10 minutes.” If not, an increasing part of the field will be
covered by do-it-yourself solutions.
The ‘hard work’ jobs of the future are different from the traditional jobs of the industrial society. The jobs are different, but so are the reasons and the means:
The work is organised so that there are as few barriers as possible against achieving
the most in as short a time as possible. Hence, the wages are higher than normal for the
field, perhaps because it is based on result-based payment, e.g. through piece-rate
work. They are no-nonsense jobs where there is a minimum of time ‘wasted’ on meetings, involvement in company culture, social togetherness, etc.
There is as great a degree of specialisation as possible in relation to the job, often
across the traditional professional boundaries, which reality respect less and less. There
is a high degree of standardisation in service jobs. This involves short training times,
often through e-learning. Rapid rotation is possible. If it is a 24-hour service job, which
additionally must be manned all week and all year, you need 6-7 employees that can
replace each other without friction.
Individualisation is here to stay. The labour union is seen as more of a hindrance than
an aid. As a rule, there isn’t any single profession or workplace that is entirely characterised by this type of job; they are rather individual jobs that perhaps are solved on contract basis or by free agents. There is total flexibility with regard to working hours and
hence no restrictions to working hours, professional boundaries, etc.
You don’t identify yourself with your work. The work is typically not life-long, but
temporary. It is a matter of getting the highest wages possible and working as few hours
of the day/life as possible. Tomorrow you may be somewhere else, and work only accounts for 20% of your waking hours. It is a role you accept for a limited time. You have
to wear the ‘uniform’, step into the role and do the job. Job and identity are two different things. You don’t take the work home with you, you hang it in the wardrobe along
with the uniform.
It is likely that one of the means for getting more service jobs in the future can be to
focus more on higher wages based on rationalisation, industrialisation and result-based
payment. This can be true for jobs in home help, shops, etc. The jobs may additionally
be marketed as being hard and challenging, but especially as paying well. Not something for sissy-boys or –girls. It is simultaneously likely that there will be a significant
group on the labour market that will be interested in this type of job. For this reason it
becomes ever more important to have a diversified strategy that appeals to as many
groups as possible and is open to many models for labour market association, including
contracts with independents, outsourcing of special tasks, etc.
Job and identity are
two different things.
You don’t take the
work home with you,
you hang it in the
wardrobe along with
the uniform.
31
Automation of the
service society is still
in its infancy.
We are rather in an
industrialisation phase
than an automation
phase because the
jobs are far harder
to automate than
production of goods.
2.2 Reduced need for service labour
Overall, it is possible that labour-intensive production of a service becomes uninteresting to sell on the market for three reasons: First, that the organisation replaces the
human labour with machines and the production thus becomes automated. Second,
because the customers lose the will to pay due to the service becoming too expensive
or too poor. In other words, the customers will substitute the consumption with something else – buy holidays rather than haircuts.
A third possibility is that the organisation or its competitors invent ways by which the
demand for a particular service becomes uninteresting – the need disappears. The reasons can be technological or societal innovations. It can be that the house requires less
maintenance – a large-scale version of permanent press shirts. It can be medical innovations that require less or shorter-term hospitalisation. And it can be preventive health
measures and social work that reduces the need for service and care. Public and private
service organisations may together defeat each other – or themselves.
The last factor, that the need for a specific service disappears, is for one thing very
hard to control for an organisation. Secondly, it may require or depend on great societal
changes that lie outside the scope of this report. The following hence focuses on automation of PESCI work and the possibility for substituting the consumption.
Automation of PESCI work
There can be little doubt that the coming lack of labour advantageously can be mitigated through increased automation of service production – where it is possible, acceptable and profitable to do so. Just as the automation of agriculture did its part to move
us into the industrial society, and the automation of the industry into the service and
information society, we will most likely in the years to come see an automation of the
production that occupy a considerable part of the labour market today. Any labourintensive organisation can with advantage evaluate what parts of their production that
can be automated without experiencing losses in the form of reduced demand.
As mentioned initially, productivity increases through automation aren’t very easy to
get in the service professions because they by their nature involve a large use of time
where the employees – as human beings – deliver service and care. However, there will
be many areas where e.g. digital technology can lead to less labour-intensive service
production. Examples are cleaning robots that may replace cleaning staff or various
internet-based solutions that work automatically and don’t require labour. Consider the
lady in the train who tells us what the next station is, the salesman who even today uses
the GPS system in his car rather than spending time roadside consulting maps, and the
student who finds his literature on the library’s electronic search engines without ever
meeting a librarian.
Automation of the service society is still in its infancy. We are rather in an industrialisation phase than an automation phase because the jobs are far harder to automate than
production of goods. Standardisation is normally required before we can have automation. ‘Taylorising’ implies a ‘decomposition’ of service jobs with the opportunity for subsequent standardisation, specialisation and timing. Jobs in home help can e.g. be divided into components like meal service, cleaning, washing, shopping, nursing, and care,
which again can be divided into sub-components. This division is often a prerequisite
for automation, e.g. of meal production or clothes-washing. Also see the box on page
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Robots controlled by operators can handle simple ‘assembly line’ operations so surgeons can be released to do more demanding tasks.
Electronic patient journals can relieve doctors and medical secretaries from a lot
of administrative tasks.
F O R
The health sector:
I N S T I T U T E
Automation involves a broad range of technologies. Robotics, expert systems, surveillance by cameras and scanners, and ‘smart’ devices/products with built-in sensors, e.g. cameras, scanners and bio-sensors connected to microchips. In the following, we point to some possibilities for relieving PESCI labour groups through
automation:
Home help:
Vacuum cleaner robots can handle the floor so that the home help only needs to
handle the less accessible places.
The municipality can buy small tabletop dishwashers for the elderly and the handicapped – the investment quickly pays off if it saves work for the home help.
Supermarkets and retail trade:
Information screens at the shelves can save a lot of customer guidance. Electronic
price cards can be updated automatically for sales and price changes. Checkout
machines can save checkout personnel.
The fast food business can also favourably use automation. The sales staff at
McDonald’s can be replaced by sales machines that the customers can contact on
the mobile phone on the way to McDonald’s. The order is ready when the customer arrives and is prepaid via the phone. The staff at McDonald’s only has to keep
the place clean, keep an eye on things (with the help of cameras) and cheer the place up.
Industrial cleaning:
Robots handle floor washing and vacuum cleaning, both on the large areas and in
nooks and crannies. Strong ventilation systems create a ‘draft’ at night to remove
dust and humidity.
Schools, kindergartens and day nurseries:
Electronic surveillance of hallways, classrooms and playgrounds. Intelligent alarm
systems give warning if things go wrong (pattern recognition of mobbing, etc.).
Sensors in diapers tell when they have to be changed. Computers help with
scheduling and duty rosters.
42 about ‘stopwatch tyranny’.
Knowledge sharing in service jobs can to some extent be automated through digitalisation. This goes for both professional knowledge and formalised as well as informal
knowledge about users/customers. In addition, the organisation of the tasks can to
some extent be digitised/automated (at employee level as well as management level).
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Examples of automation with elements of do-it-yourself
Bank service et al:
The internet offers lots of opportunities for self-service. It is today possible to service yourself at the bank, at least in the case of normal bank transactions. Bank clerks
are still needed to advise the customers, but many practical functions can just as
easily be handled by a computer – and you simultaneously achieve the extra service
that the bank can deliver these services 24 hours a day to the customer’s personal
computer.
The internet combined with the mobile phone contains many opportunities for a
society without (physical) money, forms or tickets. You order, pay and identify yourself with the mobile phone. Travel, parking, theatre visits, public transport, etc. is
handled without service personnel.
Citizen service:
Even today it is possible to handle tax returns, calculate your additional taxes, and
pay them through the internet. The digital city hall contains the vision that citizens
to a higher degree should be able to service themselves in a number of areas – not
just to save money/labour, but also to avoid waiting time and achieve a greater
degree of individualisation, flexibility and user involvement.
Citizens who actively engage themselves in ‘troubleshooting’, rather than view
themselves as passive, demanding receivers of service, often achieve better solutions.
The health sector:
Internet pages can guide patients with regard to self-diagnostics, correct medical
usage, and much else.
In the health sector we are going to see a wealth of equipment with which to test
and monitor health and sickness at home. But this doesn’t necessarily mean less
need for professional aid.
The doctor’s waiting room can have a device where the patients can measure
their own blood pressure and pulse before seeing the doctor. An interactive computer screen guides the patients in its use.
Supermarkets and retail trade:
Hope shopping: the customers order and pay their purchases via the internet and
get it delivered to their doors (like amazon.com).
Self-service in supermarkets, where ‘smart carts’ guide the customers and scan
the articles for automatic payment.
Standardisation is usually required before you can digitise, but on the other hand
digitalisation also supports standardisation by making the standards easily available to all
involved.
What especially characterises the PESCI professions is the personal contact. This
means that technology probably can’t fully replace labour. The human and emotional
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factors can’t be standardised to that degree. People (e.g. customers) are unpredictable
and situational.
It isn’t just routine work that can be automated. A lot of mid-level knowledge tasks
can also be automated. Many traditional jobs consist of a combination of knowledge
work and ‘practical’ work. In many ways, it is easier to automate the knowledge part of
service jobs than the physical service work. Physical service work usually is very different from industrial production where a lot of stationary robots have been developed for
standard production in structured surroundings. It is far harder to make mobile service
robots that perform tasks that are hard to standardise in unstructured surroundings.
But it is often possible to standardise, centralise and automate parts of the service
task; not least that which has to do with information handling. It is more difficult for the
executive part of the task, like meal delivery. What remains is often the physical and/or
the unskilled. Automation, especially automation of the knowledge part of service jobs,
can result in making many service jobs non-professional, in the way the coachbuilder
during industrialisation was replaced by unskilled automobile workers. Increased internet trade will reduce the needs for skilled assistants in shops and offices, but in return
provides many distribution tasks that can be handled by unskilled labour. Food service
and fast food restaurants increase the demand for unskilled labour because the craft is
industrialised and the food is delivered.
Another example is the development of ‘service factories’ after the call centre model.
Digital networks provide increased opportunities for specialisation (especially of the
knowledge work). The individual service worker can cover a larger geographical area,
but in return often works with a much narrower professional field. Mergers of banks
and municipalities can contribute a lot to this kind of solution that uses economics of
scale. If there is no demand for greater specialisation in depth (or if knowledge workers
with higher education handle these tasks), it is often possible to train unskilled labour to
handle these narrow functions through IT. You are guided electronically through the
task, and you are perhaps also trained through e-learning – with the risk of perceiving
yourself as an appendix to the IT system. This is e.g. the case in many call centres.
Finally, the technological development makes it possible for producers of public and
private services to offer service with a greater element of do-it-yourself. Technological
equipment makes it possible for amateurs to do things that formerly required professional aid. Even today we see e.g. the realtor trade offer various levels of service with
varying levels of do-it-yourself – perhaps in the recognition that they otherwise would
lose some customers for whom the expensive realtor service isn’t worth the cost.
It is finally important to emphasise that automation doesn’t necessarily lead to fewer
people employed in the service sector – but it can lead to a better service, which the
citizens and customers are more willing to pay for.
Physical service work
usually is very different
from industrial
production where a
lot of stationary robots
have been developed
for standard production
in structured surroundings. It is far harder
to make mobile service
Customers substitute the service consumption with other products
robots that perform
That customers choose to substitute service consumption with other products isn’t an
unlikely development. An increasing demand for service products with do-it-yourself
elements, as described above, in itself constitutes a substitution of the consumption. If
labour becomes relatively more expensive and productivity doesn’t increase, then service becomes relatively more expensive. And then we will see optimising economical
consumers consume fewer services and more of something else that has become relatively less expensive. This is of course going to affect those companies the hardest that
tasks that are hard
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unstructured
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35
The hair care may not
disappear all a once;
but if most people join
this change in
consumption pattern,
the social norm may
change gradually. It
becomes acceptable
to have somewhat
more unruly hair.
produce services that aren’t vital in the daily life.
In much the same way we have earlier cut down on some highly labour intensive
types of consumption. We eat fewer oysters than we did in the Stone Age; oysters have
become luxury goods. We have far fewer street sweepers than we did 50 years ago and
simply accept more dirt in the streets. And fewer have a nicely raked backyard. Perhaps
more of us wear wrinkled shirts now? This has happened in step with us having a far
higher consumption than our grandparents did. We are cutting some corners that they
wouldn’t have cut – in return we use the time and money on a skiing holiday to the
Alps.
The same can go for personal care and similar services. If it becomes relatively more
expensive to have your hair washed, cut and dried, but cheaper to get decent entertainment on the television, then perhaps we would cut back on hair care and turn the telly
on. The hair care may not disappear all a once; but if most people join this change in
consumption pattern, the social norm may change gradually. It becomes acceptable to
have somewhat more unruly hair.
2.3 The attractive service job
In principle, substitution of consumption or elimination of service requirements will be
important contributions to the solution of the lack of labour. And at the same time, they
will mean that fewer people have to handle functions that don’t immediately give them
a higher quality of life. For organisations that solely make their living by producing services, and for those that solve significant social tasks, elimination of demand is of course a
threat. This type of organisation will naturally have to work at attracting customers,
users and positive opinions through better service products and/or attracting labour
with more attractive working conditions.
The ideal is a ‘win-win’ situation where happy PESCI workers that are given independent responsibility and stimulating working conditions also become more productive
and continuously deliver higher quality for customers and users. Higher value for
employees, customers, users, organisation, and society.
Visions from Magasin and the Danish Trade Union of Public Employees
In the following, we present viewpoints from Magasin and the Danish Trade Union of
Public Employees (FOA) regarding these questions. The first is based on an interview
with a manager from Magasin, a private company on a very competitive market; the
other is a viewpoint from an employee representative from the big public eldercare
field. Both support the ‘win-win’ model; i.e., an upgrading of the field with an increased
value growth in the delivered service and proportionally higher job satisfaction. But
there are significant differences in the barriers against such a development, and these
are identified. Is it a coincidence that the manager points to the employees’ opinions
and attitudes as barriers that have to be worked with, while the employee representative points to the employers’ lacking will to be flexible? It may be a point-of-view effect.
But at the same time, it may also reflect the differences between the private sector,
charac-terised by a development-oriented managerial mindset, and the politically led
public sector, which is oriented more towards budgets and rationalisation.
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Such were the intentions. But since
then, the development has gone in the
directly opposite direction. We have seen a
development towards an almost archetypal
industrialisation of eldercare.
●
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●
●
●
More control through rules
Quality standards in the eldercare sector
Micro-management
Pricing of individual services
‘A to A’ time registration
The development in the direction of an
industrialisation of nursing and care jobs is
a result of a focus by the media, and hence
politicians, on mistakes and shortcomings
in the service, and partly also because of a
desire to remedy the increasing need for
care as a result of the elderly support burden with the least possible strain on the
public budgets. The first pull in the direction of a strong focus on a detailed description and standardisation of the delivered
services, the second towards that these are
weighted and measured in relation to their
strain on the resources; i.e., norms are
made for how many resources (minutes)
are used on the individual sub-functions.
The continuing development towards
standardisation has been promoted from
central political quarters by the Ministry of
Social Affairs, which has issued an executive order to the effect that the municipalities formulate quality standards for the
eldercare field, and which has organised
inspections of the institutions. There is an
Institute for Service Development that
gives advice in relation to such standards,
and Local Government Denmark has developed an IT-based tool that provides precise definitions of care services for use at the
S T U D I E S
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The development in the last ten years in
the care and nursing field in Denmark has
been a story of good declared intentions
that systematically have been ignored or
smothered, all in the effort to make the
work efficient, optimised and rationalised.
At least according to Jens Folkersen, sector
deputy chairman for the social and health
sector of the Danish Trade Union of Public
Employees (FOA).
The good intentions were expressed
and decided on when a new education for
social and health assistants was introduced
in order to train employees that were better and more broadly qualified that the former home help, assistant nurses, nursing
home assistants, and employment councillors.
It was legislated that the care and service work in the nursing sector should have
an ‘activating and preventive aim’. The trade
union for nursing and care employees,
FOA, was one of the standard-bearers for
this educational reform, and the clear aim
was to get a broader perspective into the
job, to provide better service by providing
the tools for identifying and developing the
potential of the clients, to contribute to stimulation and dynamism in their lives, e.g.
through promoting skills that fully or partly
could compensate for the loss of mobility
and health that the elderly might have
experienced.
From a job perspective, this would make
the work far more interesting and stimulating, with a basis in meeting people. A job
where you would have independent influence and where you would perform your
services in a dialogue with the user with
regard to tailoring them to the needs of the
individual.
F O R
Eldercare:
Stimulation coaches or cleaning robots?
The development in
the direction of an
industrialisation of
nursing and care jobs
is a result of a focus
by the media, and
hence politicians, on
mistakes and shortcomings in the service,
and partly also
because of a desire to
remedy the increasing
need for care as a
result of the elderly
support burden with
the least possible
strain on the
public budgets.
37
Instead of defining
quality as “the
customers get what
they have been
promised,” where you
typically come to
focus on individual
elements and
checklists, the focus
should be moved
to perspectives of
development; the
potentials that the
customer has and
which the care worker
can help stimulate.
38
evaluation of the nursing needs of the
individual user. It is intended as an aid,
but in some places the employees feel it is
used as a rigid tool of standardisation.
According to Jens Folkersen and FOA
there is a second agenda, namely to prepare these functions, which mainly are
managed by the public sector, for outsourcing. The more specific and documented the requirements are, the easier it
is for a private supplier to evaluate if the
task can be handled profitably and what
price to offer. We could also say that it is
in the interest of a potential inviter of tenders to make sure that the suppliers commit themselves to a very precise task description, the concrete performance of
which the inviter then can check up on.
Result: alienation and flight from
the profession
Seen from the viewpoint of FOA, one of
the results of the ever-tighter micromanagement and organisation of work is
an increasing alienation. The employees
experience frustration because their
opportunity for independent organisation
of their work vanishes when they are continually controlled and measured according to how well they stick to the detailed
demand specifications and work plans. At
the same time, the perception is that the
risk of potential outsourcing is a cause for
insecurity among the employees and that
they generally aren’t optimistic with
regard to working conditions at a future
private employer, or that they even fear
losing their jobs. There is also a great
public focus on mistakes and shortcomings, and this likely contributes to
making people feel less appreciated.
Folkersen mentions that there are
examples of care workers seeking other
employment in industry where they are
paid approximately the same, but where
the working conditions are better.
In spite of the debate’s often rather
negative image of the field, there actually
are many that desire to work in the care
sector. They do this because they wish to
work with people. But there is a flight
from the profession because the working
conditions are alienating and increasingly
remove the focus from the human contact
in favour of minutely detailed control of
the work process. At the same time, there
is a high rate of absence due to illness and
problems with unpredictable working
hours due to covering the duties of the
absentees.
FOA’s suggestion:
increased flexibility
FOA would like to contribute to turning
the developments in a more flexible direction where the service continually is
adapted to the user’s needs in a close dialogue between user and care worker. This
should facilitate a better service for the
customer and a better work situation for
the employee. Instead of defining quality
as “the customers get what they have
been promised,” where you typically
come to focus on individual elements and
checklists, the focus should be moved to
perspectives of development; the potentials that the customer has and which the
care worker can help stimulate.
FOA is participating in a pilot project
called “Project Greenhouse” in the municipality of Middelfart, where it is attempted to organise the service sector in such a
more flexible manner. Other participants
are the Danish Nurses Organisation and
DaneAge Association. The aim is to ensure that the social and health assistants get
a far higher degree of freedom when
planning their tasks and working hours,
but in co-operation with the users and in a
fashion that also considers the different
and varied needs of these.
The government’s proposal
The strong focus on complying with stan-
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But in actuality, there are no centrally
dictated minimum requirements for service in the elderly sector, and in practice
there are very great differences between
the municipalities, both regarding service
level and regarding how they organise their services. It can be mentioned that Søllerød Municipality has a highly developed
system for both surveillance of quality
standards, employee care and user influence, which according to the municipality
itself contributes to increasing all-round
quality, as measured by e.g. compliance
with agreements and absence due to
illness. The users here have the opportunity to choose other offered services than
those they have been assigned, and the
municipality has produced a catalogue of
several hundred choices. However, according to FOA’s Claus Cornelius, the municipality reports that very few users actually
choose other services than those they
have been assigned.
F O R
Søllerød Municipality
– another solution?
I N S T I T U T E
dard measures has, as might have been
anticipated, also been the subject of massive criticism by media and politicians in
Denmark. It has been called ‘stopwatch
tyranny’, not least during the electoral
campaign November 2001. The present
government is in this connection focusing
on introducing a greater degree of free
choice by the users, and this can lead to a
break with the current dynamic. This also
because the government declares itself as
a warm supporter of autonomous local
government and the increased variation in
the supply of services that entails – and
also of that the public receives competition
in its role as supplier of these services.
The strong focus of the Danish administration on local autonomy – on municipal
self-rule – hasn’t been denied. There actually is a lot of variation between municipalities in how they in practice have handled
the task. The Ministry’s role as promoter of
standardisation and equalisation has mainly consisted of controlling how far the
municipalities have come in their introduction of quality standards, and in addition
of making ‘benchmark’ analyses that have
focused on differences in productivity
between the municipalities. According to
the latest analysis, the average municipality is 39% less productive than the best
municipality (DEA analysis on the elderly
sector, the Danish Ministry of Social Affairs
2001). Such analyses of course puts pressure on municipalities to improve the use
of resources, and the obvious thing is to
adopt the ways by which the most productive municipalities have organised the
work. (The analysis also shows that there
has been only a marginal increase in the
total productivity in the period 1995-2000,
but that there is a tendency for the municipalities to lie closer to the average).
Future challenges?
It is naturally very interesting if you can
achieve better results by organising the
work in a manner that doesn’t focus on
detailed control that may alienate users
and employees. This is the very essence of
the goal to at once increase productivity
and make the jobs more attractive. And it
seems possible to come farther along this
path by organising the work in a more flexible manner.
But we can’t guarantee that this model,
too, won’t come under pressure when
the increased service requirements of the
future have to be matched to the smaller
labour force of the future. In order to meet
the challenge, more is probably required
than simply a large once-and-for-all change. Continuing and recurring innovation
endeavours are required for methods,
technologies, management and organisation.
In order to meet
the challenge, more
is probably required
than simply a large
once-and-for-all
change.
39
C A S E
Department store Magasin
Based on an interview with Lise Sørensen,
senior consultant, Magasin.
The challenge of more employee
responsibility: barriers of culture
and attitude
Magasin is an old and well-established corporation in the Danish retail trade. The corporation consists of the two Copenhagen
department stores Magasin du Nord and
Illum as well as seven other Magasin stores
and recently also three warehouse shops,
the so-called M Outlets.
Magasin operates in a highly competitive
field, not least in the later years where the
competition has been intensified considerably. This strongly limits the price policies,
since prices as a rule can’t differ from what
similar articles are sold for in other places.
This means that Magasin has to focus on
efficiency and competitiveness in all steps
from purchases and product handling to
administration, PR, marketing, and sales.
New strategy focuses on
employees and customer service
The employees get the central role in the
strategy that the new management (of
March 2000) launched in the autumn of
2000. In Annual Report 2001, where the
strategy is presented, the employees have
been given their own chapter in which it
can be read:
“If the corporation is to reach it goal of
turning the development of department stores, it has to be done through the employees and the competence they radiate when
meeting the customers. The creativity, initiative and responsibility of the employees
must be mobilised so that each employee
becomes a personal carrier of the message
that Magasin should be the most attractive
40
universe of adventure in the retail trade.
The employees are the keys to the customers – and hence the most important asset
of the corporation.”
It is also expressed that Magasin should
become the most attractive workplace in the
field at all levels of organisation.
The fancy words have been followed by
e.g. a new organisation of the company
with:
● greater responsibilities for the sales assistants
● a new role for managers who have to be
coaches and delegate tasks
● a managerial development programme
● training of selected employees to become so-called Coaches that handle practical
training of the sales staff
● seminars on several levels to ensure that
strategy and goals are communicated to the
entire organisation
The intent is specifically to make the
employees feel greater ownership in relation to their workplace and its goals. This
should happen through giving them a higher degree of influence on their fields and
greater involvement in the entire process
from ordering of articles to functions like
trimming and decoration of the store, presentation of the products, service, and sales,
and providing them with knowledge about
the products and their placement in relation
to customer needs, fashion movements, etc.
The aim is to create a broader framework
within which the employees can work independently and to make the management
supportive, inspiring and based on common
values.
Uncertainty about the new roles
Since the strategy was launched, the experi-
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One element in the development is the intro-
duction of a higher degree of result-based,
individual payment. As a large and traditionbased workplace, Magasin has had a relatively
rigid salary structure, and it has been impossible to match some of the bonus agreements
that can be found in the retail trade in general.
However, the desire was to create better relationship between performance and payment
for the individual employee without coming
near commission-based payment as such.
Experiences from an experiment with a generally higher wage level in a single department
were mixed: sales did in fact go up, but not so
much that it paid off.
F O R
New salary system
I N S T I T U T E
ences have been mixed. The changes haven’t
immediately led to an explosion of initiative
and industry among the employees. This probably wasn’t expected either; it is a lengthy
process which has been initiated, and it is still
in its implementation phase. But the general
mood is still optimistic, not least because the
employees in internal surveys have expressed
a desire for greater influence and responsibility
in their work.
However, one of the experiences with the
new structure has been that many employees
have experienced uncertainty regarding their
new role. They haven’t felt clear on what precisely their area of responsibility was, just as
many managers perhaps also had to get used
to the role of coach.
Magasin has old, well-established traditions
and an associated corporate culture. Lise
Sørensen describes the old Magasin as a corporation that wasn’t just hierarchical, but
almost divided into classes; there was a perception of several degrees of ‘refinement’, and
there was a clear path of command. This led to
a narrow functional division of the individual
employees so that it e.g. wasn’t thought natural to help ‘next door’ if other departments
were very busy.
A characteristic trait is also a classical wageworker attitude among large parts of the staff;
i.e., a sharp focus on rules, areas of responsibility and working hours. People were loyal to
their workplace, but not to the extent that it
was natural to stay a bit longer or work at odd
hours.
It can be interjected that perhaps the change has been too large a leap at once, but the
intention has been to take this leap, see what
happens, and then correct the problems as
they arise. It has been acknowledged that it is
important for the management to continuously
spar with the employees, come up with good
questions about the work and make suggestions.
Pride, self-worth and service:
the opening of the new Food & Wine
In Lise Sørensen’s opinion, it is crucial that the
employees feel that they supply something
essential. This creates pride, identification with
the corporation and ‘ownership’ in relation to
the work, and hence makes them deliver a better service. If this is the case, it is possible for
everything to come together in a greater whole.
“It is evident that when the customers experience that they get something special, it reflects on the staff, which then becomes extra
motivated for delivering good service. When
we recently opened the new Food & Wine
department in the Copenhagen store, we
sensed this very clearly. Something special was
going on here, where both customers and
employees were happy,” Lise Sørensen says.
Such an opening is of course a solitary
event, and there is no guarantee that the positive spiral continues. But the change can probably contribute to providing motivation and
inspiration in the work and ensure that the job
on the one hand includes a greater degree of
independence, responsibility and influence for
the employees and on the other hand ensures
that they become able to lift this responsibility
and fill out the framework. Not least if they
continuously get the coaching and guidance
from management that makes it possible to lift
the independent responsibility.
Many employees have
experienced uncertainty
regarding their new
role. They haven’t felt
clear on what precisely
their area of
responsibility was.
41
Rational quality in eldercare
– or stopwatch tyranny?
Eldercare in Denmark gets a lot of attention. It is a highly prioritised welfare area
for citizens, and this hasn’t escaped the
politicians’ attention. Periodic stories in
the media about criticisable conditions
and singular cases have great sensation
potential and contribute to the great interest and to the perception of the field.
During the last electoral campaign, a
handbook for the eldercare in the city of
Copenhagen was put forth as an example
of inhuman bureaucracy and standardisation of eldercare. The handbook specified
in detail what tasks the home help should
handle and additionally had very detailed
norms for the required time. There was
broad agreement in the debate about the
problems with this way of achieving standardisation and industrialisation of the
care jobs – ‘stopwatch tyranny’.
The example is however far more
expressive of the development in the field
than you could perceive from following
the heated debate. And it is a good illustration of the dilemma in the field. For
the industrialisation of the PESCI field is
constantly undergoing and has been so
for the last decade. It follows the sequence below:
1: Specification of requirements
What does the work imply? Very detailed
descriptions of what specific tasks that
have to be performed.
2: Standardisation
It is important to have defined in detail
what is meant by the words and concepts
in the description of the work, so that you
can be sure that all employees give all
users equal treatment of the decided quality. Local Government Denmark has
developed a standardisation tool called
‘Common Language’ specifically in order
to ensure standard definitions in the field.
42
3: Control
After this, the management can regularly
control whether the specified tasks are
handled according to the defined standards, typically through random checks.
4. Optimation
Finally, it is possible to optimise the process by allocating time and resources to
each individual function – the way the city
of Copenhagen has been criticised of
doing. It is then possible to evaluate
whether any of the tasks can be handled
faster, and you can lower and raise priorities in relation to specific requirements or
regards to expense.
Denmark has autonomous local government, which implies that there are great
degrees of freedom for the local authorities. But since all municipalities are
responsible for servicing the same social
areas, they make comparisons between
themselves, both in terms of service quality and management principles. This pulls
in the direction of unification – and the
national authorities promote this. The
Ministry of Social Affairs has thus issued
circulars for quality standards in the municipalities.
Outsourcing
It is then possible to outsource the tasks
to the private market; a model that has
been used more and more in the later
years and which the current right-wing
government desires promoted even
more. It is e.g. hoped that private actors
in the field can contribute to greater
dynamics where new and better methods
are developed for organising and performing the tasks. This doesn’t in itself change the 1-4 sequence above. Outsourcing
typically requires very detailed specifications of demands, standardisation, and
control. When making contracts about
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the performance of services, it is necessary that both inviter and supplier agree fully on what the service covers and how the
quality – the upholding of the contract –
is controlled. It is also important in the
invitation phase to be certain that suppliers are all making offers for the exact
same task.
Step 4, the optimising of the work process, also comes into the picture; it is just
left to the supplier, just as other working
and wage conditions naturally are. If we
add an increasing number of elderly and a
shrinking labour force, the optimisation
strategy is obvious – it has after all already
been started.
The text below has been snipped from
the tender document for an eldercare
facility in Kolding Municipality. The Institute for Service Development has been a
consultant and has put the tender document out on its website (http://www.serviceudvikling.dk) for inspiration, as it is
called. A part of it reads:
The outsourcing of Dreyershus isn’t a
typical outsourcing.
After consulting the Institute for Service
Development, Kolding Municipality has
chosen to follow entirely new paths.
For the first time it has been possible to
include the values for the local eldercare
in an outsourcing of a care facility.
The outsourcing of the administration
of Dreyershus can be the starting signal
for an entirely new generation of outsourcing where it is ensured that the ‘soft’
values in relation to eldercare become the
cornerstone in the tender document.
The total tender document takes up
253 pages. Of these, 100 pages are specifications of requirements for the task.
Example of specification of requirement: Main area Nursing and Care. From the tender document for outsourcing of the care facility Dreyershus in Kolding; the Institute for Service
Development and Kolding Municipality, October 2000. The document can be found in PDF
format at: http://www.serviceudvikling.dk/juni2002. Also available in printed format.
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