ESWT

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ESWT Establishment Survey on Working-time and
Work-Life Balance 2004/05

• Experiences and future prospects

2nd WORKS Workshop on Measuring changes in work
by organisation surveys Leuven, 19/20 March
2007 Presentation by Arnold Riedmann, TNS
Infratest Sozialforschung, Munich
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Contents

• About TNS Infratest
• About the European Foundation
• Key features of the survey
• a) Technical specifications
• b) Contents
• Challenges with regard to comparability some
  selected issues
• Questionnaire design
• Choice of the unit of enquiry Company vs.
  establishment
• Address sources and statistical background
  information What is available?
• Coverage of the public sector in organizational
  surveys A specific challenge
• Interviews with formal employee representation
• Our experiences an overall assessment

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About TNS Infratest Sozialforschung

• Private research institute with own
  data-collection unit
• Part of an international network with fieldwork
  institutes in almost all European countries
• Social research unit, specialised in research for
  public organisations (government, research
  institutes, universities, EU bodies etc.)
• Specific profile Expertise in the subject matter
  (labour market issues) and experiences in survey
  design, data-collection (e.g. German
  establishment panel and several multi-national
  surveys) and analysis
• Our role in the ESWT project
• Role of co-ordinator and main responsible in all
  stages of the preparatory and fieldwork phases
• Supported by a large team of international
  experts in working-time and work-life balance
  issues
• Co-ordination of part of the analysis phase and
  responsibility for first analysis reporting

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About the European Foundation for the Improvement
of Living and Working Conditions

• European Union body
• Specialised in research aiming at providing
  policy makers and social partners with
  information, expertise and advice for decisions
  in the field of EU social policy
• Ultimate aim improvement of living and working
  conditions in Europe
• One of the instruments for gaining information
  European-wide surveys
• Three mayor European-wide surveys
• Working Conditions Survey (individuals)
• Quality of Life Survey (individuals)
• Establishment Survey on Working-Time and
  Work-Life Balance (ESWT)
• ESWT fills gap of knowledge about European
  companies (much less knowledge about the European
  company than about the European employee)

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Key features of the survey I Technical
specifications

• 21 countries in two phases 15 countries January
  2004 November 2004 6 countries January 2005
  July 2005
• Telephone interviews
• Net sample 350 1,500 establishments per
  country
• Stratified samples with establishments of 10 or
  more employees
• Inclusion of all relevant sectors
• Respondents Management (MM) and Employee
  Representation bodies (ER) in same establishments
• Total of more than 21.000 MM and 5.200 ER
  interviews

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Key features of the survey II Contents

• Measurement of incidence and specifications of
  various working-time arrangements at
  establishment level, such as part-time work,
  working time accounts, overtime, shift work, work
  at unusual hours, parental leave, long-term
  leave, early and phased retirement
• Analysis of reasons for implementation and of the
  experiences made with these working time
  arrangements at establishment level (flexibility
  strategies, work-life balance philosophies etc.)
• Identification of flexibility needs and
  strategies on the employers side
• Repercussions of the applied working-time
  arrangements on the employees, especially on
  their work-life balance (e.g. predictability of
  working time patterns)
• Nature of the social dialogue within the
  establishments with regard to these working-time
  arrangements
• Policy context Flexible working-time
  arrangements as a way to
• increase employment rates (Lisbon strategy)
• enhance the competitiveness of the EU economy
  (e.g. by raising flexibility at the company
  level)
• Improve peoples work-life balance (in a
  short-term and life-course perspective)

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Questionnaire design Striving for the highest
degree of comparability

• Trade-off in the conceptualisation of
  cross-national surveys
• Design a custom-tailored survey for one country
  and subsequently adapt it to others (possibly at
  the expense of comparability)
• Start with a concept taking into account the core
  variations across countries (possibly at the
  expense of national details)
• Example
• Working-time accounts a term/concept well
  known in some countries but little known in
  others
• High importance of translation process

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Definition of the unit of enquiry Company vs.
establishment

• Differences
• Company level sampling Single-site companies and
  headquarters of multi-site companies
• Establishment level sampling Single-site
  companies and both headquarters and (legally
  dependent) subsidiaries of multi-site companies
• Limited awareness of the differences especially
  in countries where company/establishment level
  surveys are a new field of research
• What is the appropriate unit? (? topic and aim of
  the study!)
• Establishment level more suitable to investigate
  everyday practice (e.g. working time)
• Company level might be more appropriate for
  research on company policy issues decided at the
  headquarters level (e.g. outsourcing strategies,
  IT strategies)
• Does the difference matter?
• ? Highly significant correlations between types
  of establishment (single-site, HQ/subsidiary of
  multi-sites) for most issues asked in the ESWT

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Address sources and statistical background
information I What is needed?

• An up-to-date address register of either
  companies (in all countries) or establishments
  (in all countries) with
• Clearly defined units (either establishments or
  companies)
• Information on sector and size for all addresses
  (stratified sample!)
• Telephone numbers
• Representativeness with regard to sectors of
  activity (and sizes)
• Up-to-date statistical information on the
  universe of companies or establishments with
• Corresponding information on distribution of
  est./comp by size-class and sector of activity
• Completeness with regard to sectors and sizes (or
  at least information on weaknesses)
• Information on distribution of employees by
  sectors and size-classes

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Address sources and statistical background
information II What was available?

• Address sources
• Good establishment registers in several, but not
  all countries
• Company registers in several countries only from
  commercial providers (usually not best source,
  widely varying quality)
• Deficiencies with regard to comprehensiveness in
  both commercial and official sources (comp./est.)
  in some countries
• Statistical background information
• In some countries only information on
  establishments, in others only on companies,
  rarely information on both types of units
• Still no EU-wide establishment or company
  statistics and registers available for research
  purposes
• Little comparative methodological research

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The public sector a blind spot in several
national address sources and statistics

• Three sectors with major involvement of public
  establishments/organisations
• Public Administration (NACE L)
• Education (NACE M)
• Health and social services (NACE N)
• Many address registers commercial as well as
  official ones do not or only partially include
  these sectors
• In many countries limited knowledge about the
  universe of these sectors, e.g. size composition
  and ratio between public and private units
• ? Coverage of these sectors in European-wide
  company surveys difficult and costly, limitations
  with regard to quality/comparability
• ? Check of importance of these sectors for aims
  of study recommended

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Interviews with employee representation bodies
an innovative element of enhancing knowledge

• Brings in an additional perspective, adds
  important information on decision-making at
  establishment level, e.g.
• Role of the ER in the shape of working-time
  arrangements at establishment level
• Assessment of the establishment practice
• Identification of most conflictive work-life
  balance issues in the social dialogue
• Employee representative perspective ? employee
  perspective! (no replacement for a linked
  employer-employee dataset)
• Three major methodological challenges
• Identification of the appropriate national body
• Getting access to the employee representation
  within the establishment (ESWT via MM)
• Handling of the differences in ER-incidences
  between countries in the analysis phase

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The analysis phase

• Involvement of a large (centrally coordinated)
  group of experts from different institutes and
  countries in the analysis phase (BE, ES, FR, DE,
  HU, NL, PL, SE, UK)
• Three stages with an output of 7 reports in
  total
• (1) Overview report covering all topics in a
  first analysis (published)
• (2) Specific reports on selected arrangements
• Part-time work
• Parental leave (published)
• Unusual hours
• Early and phased retirement (published)
• (3) Further in-depth analysis of broader topics
• Flexibility at company level (e.g. interrelations
  between different working-time arrangements)
• Social dialogue at company level regarding
  working time arrangements and work-life balance
  issues

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Final remarks overall assessment

• Pioneering work with the ESWT 2004/05
• Pan-European establishment survey with a high
  degree of comparability
• Employee representative interviews in same
  establishment as an innovative element
• Analysis of the data from many different angles
• High investments in quality in all stages of the
  survey, from survey design to analysis
• At some points compromises with regard to
  methodological quality were (and will be)
  necessary
• Experiences drawn from ESWT 2004/05 as a good
  basis for future surveys
• Survey provided many interesting insights, e.g.
  in different work-life balance concepts, national
  company cultures and approaches towards
  flexibility