This policy brief examines if and how the reformulated obligation in the Recast European Works Council Directive to report back found its way into EWC agreements by looking at survey data, results of large-scale agreement analysis and by providing examples of clauses in which this obligation is...

Belgium is one of the few EU-15 countries with no system of involving employee representatives in the strategic management of a company. The post-second World War social pact created extensive institutions for information, consultation and collective bargaining at the company, sector and country...

The European strategy for growth has a two-fold aim: to become an innovative union and to enhance labour flexibility. Yet, few have addressed the question of whether these two strategies are compatible or concurrent. Through a review of the literature, this article addresses this question by...

As innovative employees become imperative for an organizations’ success, research identified job design as a crucial variable in promoting innovative work behavior (IWB) (Hammond et al., 2011). Using the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model of Bakker & Demerouti (2007), this article contributes...

The EU is striving for an ‘Innovative Union’. Various case studies already hinted that the involvement of various types of employees is crucial for the organizational innovativeness. Using data from a large scale Belgian employee level survey in five industries, this article focuses on the...

Promoting the innovative potential of employees is a main challenge for HR professionals. Previous studies already stressed the role of job design for employee innovativeness. Building on the work of Karasek & Theorell (1990), we focus on the relation between job design, work engagement and...

The idea behind the establishment of European Works Councils (EWCs) is that these are bodies which should be informed and consulted on company decisions and actions. However, this flow of information is often disrupted by confidentiality constraints imposed by management. Three central research...

On 31 January 2020, at 23:00, the United Kingdom (UK) officially ceased to be a member of the European Union (EU). One of the many areas that will likely be directly affected with regard to workers’ rights is the organisation and functioning of European Works Councils (EWCs). EWCs are...

Although the ‘New world of Work’ (Nouveau Monde du Travail - Het Nieuw Werken) is a popular topic in current HR literature, empirical research on its effectiveness is lacking. This article studies the impact of this ‘New world of Work’ on the innovative work behaviour (IWB) of employees....

As employees’ behaviour is a crucial factor for organizational success, the question on how to promote the engagement of employees in their work and boost their implication in the innovation process is central for companies. In this article we study this question building on the Karasek model...