EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1 PROGRESS UNDER PARTNERSHIP 2000
1.1 In the private sector, progress on partnership has occurred in three ways. In enterprises, there has been widespread introduction of new technology, new forms of work and greater levels of employee involvement. Among the social partners, there have been innovative pilot projects in which employers associations and unions have deepened knowledge of partnership, and designed new approaches, working in conjunction with bodies such as the NCP and IPC. At national and EU level, there have been programmes to disseminate the partnership approaches designed in the innovative pilot projects.
1.2 Partnership 2000has seen significant progress on partnership in the public service. Every government department and office has established a partnership committee, and most have formulated Action Programmes to implement the department's strategy in a partnership mode. In the health and local government sectors, unions and management have negotiated partnership agreements and created national advisory groups. The commercial state companies have continued to develop their partnership structures and procedures in an environment of increasing competition. Individual government departments have created sub-groups and empowered them to address a range of external and internal issues. Individual local authorities have used partnership structures and procedures to radically improve their work environment and service delivery.
1.3 The National Centre of Partnership has played an important role in promoting this extension of partnership. It has promoted the concept of enterprise partnership and disseminated information on 'best practice'. Its staff have provided highly-valued training and facilitation to many organisations. It has documented the progress of partnership in the public service and initiated discussion of partnership and performance management among public service unions and staff.
2 PRINCIPLES FOR FURTHER DEVELOPMENT OF PARTNERSHIP
2.1 These unprecedented developments in partnership confirm the validity of the approach adopted in Partnership 2000, provide valuable new information on the nature of successful partnership and reveal the principles which should underpin policy in future.
2.2 Organisational capability is an increasingly important determinant of competitive advantage and quality of life. To succeed, organisations must achieve continuous improvement, through engaging the commitment, intelligence and energy of employees, members and citizens, empowering them to contribute to the full.
2.3 The innovative experiments of recent years show that while differences remain on how partnership should be ideally defined, employers and unions can reach a consensus on procedures for assessing current conditions and initiating partnership activity.
2.4 Partnership involves a combination of incremental change and over-arching agreement.The nature of over-arching agreement varies. In the case of enterprise partnership, an adequate shared understanding cannot be achieved by high-level analysis and deliberation alone. Many work matters can only be agreed, analysed and changed in the context of doing them. A shared understanding requires reflection on practice at organisational, divisional, plant, office and team level.
2.5 Successful partnership contains a series of projects, in which management and employees/unions work together and jointly assess their achievements and failures. Projects are the heart of partnership because they create shared activity within a discipline which has the potential to blur traditional distinctions: between operational matters and strategy; between expertise and authority; between labour and management; between bargaining and co-operation; between process and outcomes; between job security and employability; and between direct and indirect participation. There is little benefit in defining categories of partnership, ranking them, and assigning organisations to them.
2.6 The description of partnership as 'process' is incomplete and can be misleading. Partnership is 'product' as well as 'process'. The interest of managers, unions and employees can only be maintained if a balance is struck between joint discussion and joint action, between improved procedure and better outcomes.
2.7 Partnership does not ignore or deny the existence of conflicting interests in enterprises or society. It is not accurate to make partnership depend on pre-existing or unconditional trust between the parties in the enterprise.
2.8 There is a complex and dynamic relation between partnership and conventional industrial relations or collective bargaining. Partnership is advantageous because traditional industrial relations are no longer sufficient to meet the needs of competitiveness, job security and meaningful work life. Experience suggests that in building partnership, there is wisdom in deliberately separating emerging partnership activity from conventional bargaining procedures. The deepening of partnership will frequently see a gradual extension of joint deliberation, reflection, problem solving and action, and should modify the approach which all sides take to industrial relations.
2.9 The elements and requirements of successful partnership are similar in both the public and private sectors. Successful partnership in either sector requires: meaningful dialogue which establishes shared understanding of organisational objectives among managers and employees/unions; partnership sub-groups or teams undertaking projects; a focus on both internal and external issues; direct involvement of employees in the design and evaluation of their work; effective systems of human resource management; a positive relationship between problem-solving joint deliberation and action (or 'partnership') and industrial relations.
2.10 The development of enterprise partnership can be encouraged by a supportive national framework. A supportive national framework is one which encourages active, on going, comparison between types of partnership and involvement, practices in the workplace and strategies for improving performance and partnership.
3 KEY STRATEGIC ISSUES
3.1 In the private sector, the core objective is further strengthening of Ireland's competitive advantage through partnership, enhancement of organisational capability and enrichment of the quality of working life. This requires action of five types.
- Further dissemination and deepening of union-management partnership through training and facilitation. In this, the diagnostics and training modules developed by ICTU and IBEC in the PACT programme should be a key vehicle. In addition, government and the social partners should promote organizational performance through various forms of employee-management partnership.
- New approaches to monitoring partnership and organisational change, including a framework for managers, unions and employees to compare experiences in different organisations.
- More focused research and analysis, which explores Irish conditions and examines the various dimensions of organisational capability together.
- Deliberation and consensus building on the basis of new systems of monitoring.
- Mainstreaming organisational performance and partnership in national policy, such that all arms of policy are attentive to what companies need to achieve quality, productivity and co-operation.
3.2 In the public service, the key strategic requirement is to enhance the contribution of public services to national competitiveness and citizens' welfare.To achieve this it is necessary to deepen the partnership process, increase the capacity of the partnership committees and link their work to the change process, particularly to re-definition and improvement of programmes, services and delivery. This requires action of five types.
- Intensified deliberation, to produce a new consensus for organisational flexibility secured through partnership.
- Greater monitoring of the work of partnership committees, which enjoins unions, employees and managers to compare experience across organisations.
- Enhanced training and facilitation, including identification of diagnostic instruments to assess public service organisations.
- More research on organizational capability and change in the public service, including analysis of changes in public policy, delivery and monitoring in other countries.
- Deepening public service modernisation, as agreed in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness, through the design and implementation of performance management systems, new human resource management strategies, improved organisational flexibility, better targeted training and strengthening organisational capability.
4 ENHANCING THE NATIONAL FRAMEWORK:THE NATIONAL CENTRE FOR PARTNERSHIP AND PERFORMANCE (NCPP)
4.1 The goals set out above can be promoted through creation of the National Centre for Partnership and Performance (NCPP), as agreed in the Programme for Prosperity and Fairness. It should have a role in each of the functions outlined in Section 3: deliberation, consensus building and dissemination; monitoring; research and analysis; and training and facilitation.
4.2 The NCPP should have responsibility for promotion of partnership and performance and in both the public and the private sectors. The Centre should be the over-arching body which ensures that all agencies promote partnership, but should do much of its work with and through existing public and private organisations. The Centre should be the conduit through which public financial support for partnership is delivered.
4.3 The Labour Relations Commission (LRC) will continue to have a critical role in dealing with organisations experiencing industrial relations problems and is one of the organisations through which partnership can be encouraged. The work of the NCPP and the LRC should be complementary.
4.4 In the development of enterprise partnership, the social partners have been, and will continue to be, the key actors. The NCPP should act to support and enhance partnership initiatives by IBEC, ICTU, the IPC, individual enterprises, public employers and unions. In delivery of training and facilitation, the NCPP should rely on the expertise in these and other organisations. The NCPP should have an active role in monitoring, deliberation, consensus building, dissemination and research.
4.5 The NCPP should have a single high-calibre Director with credibility in the area of performance and partnership. Its Council should be capable of creating a shared understanding of the strategic significance of partnership. It should include representatives from ICTU, IBEC, government and independents.
4.6 In formulating its research agenda, the NCPP may wish to create an advisory committee of researchers drawn from various Irish universities and other organisations. Such a committee should contain researchers from disciplines relevant to all of the dimensions of organizational capability. These include strategic capacity, employee commitment and involvement, managerial effectiveness and administrative efficiency.
4.7 The deepening of the modernisation process will define the context in which the NCPP undertakes its work on partnership in the public sector. The Centre can provide a structure in which key public sector actors engage in a sustained, high-quality, shared process of analysis of policy roles, organisational change, performance measurement, HR management and partnership. An effective system of performance management and quality assurance requires identification of what constitutes good performance in each public service area and role.
Consequently, the move to performance management requires discussion of the content, delivery, monitoring and evaluation of policy. This, in turn, requires consideration of the roles of central departments, agencies, professionals, branch offices and citizens in setting goals, delivering services and monitoring performance. Given these links between partnership, performance and policy, the work of the NCPP should be co-ordinated with that of NESC and NESF. The NCPP may be able to assist the modernisation process through research and analysis, assistance to sectoral partnership forums and performance teams and public-privatecross-fertilisation.