The Employee Involvement in Personal and Household Services Industry
Personal and household services (PHS) cover a broad range of activities that contribute to wellbeing at home of families and individuals: child care, long term care for the elderly and for persons with disabilities, cleaning, remedial classes, home repairs, gardening, ICT support, etc. One can distinguish between “care” activities and “non-care” activities, depending on the state of being of the recipient of the service or his/her needs. One can say that care services are provided to (dependent) persons with special needs (long-term care for older people, care services to disabled persons, childcare services), while “non-care” services will rather be provided so as to improve the well-being of the recipients. However, it is important to note that the same service (e.g., cleaning the home) can be considered as part of the overall care provided to a dependent person, or just a convenience service helping non-dependent people to have more free time or better conciliate their work-life balance.
A central element of these services is that they all are underpinned by the process of externalising the work of households to external providers.
EIforPHS project aims at enhancing information, consultation and participation rights of employees working in Personal care and Household Services enterprises, through the analysis of the situation in the countries involved, but also through the identification of relevant practices, with the ultimate goal of providing suggestions in order to improve the sector and the Employee ICP rights. In this sense, the partnership focused on:
– the PHS evolution in EU and in the World
– the actors and their business models
– the employee involvement experiences with focus on ICP – Information Consutation and Parteciaption
– National Situations in Italy, Spain, France and Greece
– Relevant Practices.