Global Compact International Yearbook Ausgabe 2010

Best Practice
Labour Standards
“Thanks to
the TRIPARTITE
dialogue which
has been initiated
by the ILO and
PREJAL, we are
INTEGRATING YOUTH
EMPLOYMENT
POLICIES INTO
SOCIAL DIALOGUE.”
Dr. Carlos Tomada,
Minister of Labour, Employment
and Social Security, Argentina
by participating in a multi-company
audit of senior workforce strategies that
was undertaken by social ratings agency
VIGEO in mid-2009. The audit helped
benchmark and identify best practice for
re-application and improvement within
Adecco. By October 2009, all 25 Adecco
Group companies operating in France
had developed their own diversity action
plans, which include an anti-age discrimination
component. Each company
now has compulsory training modules
– delivered online or face-to-face – to
prevent all forms of discrimination. One
aspect is how to handle requests from
clients who ask for employees below a
certain age. The training shows colleagues
how to reorientate clients to focus upon
candidates’ skills and motivations rather
than age profiles.
As companies begin to recognize
the value of an age-diverse workforce,
Adecco is ideally placed to help them
achieve that goal. For example, in 2009,
Adecco completed the challenge of hiring
50 workers aged over 50 years for a
call center in Poitiers and Tours. This
created an age-balanced workforce for
the client and even enhanced the staff
retention rate.
Young people attending an Adecco-run
workshop in Peru.
“Candidate Caring” –
Italy invests in its future
Since January 2009, there have been
30,000 unemployed people in Italy who
have participated in the Adecco “Candidate
Caring” training course, which is
aimed at improving unemployed workers’
prospects for returning to work. By January
2010, there were 14,000 contracts
obtained for these candidates, all of who
had previously worked for Adecco before
the economic crisis hit.
The “Candidate Caring” initiative is
a public-private partnership developed
with key national and local unions. The
first stage of training consists of an intensive
course led by Adecco personnel.
This provides a package of services to
improve employment prospects such
as local labor market information, CV
preparation, competency testing and
career evaluation and planning. For the
second part, candidates receive job-specific
training – ranging from mechanical
design to IT courses – delivered by
third-party training specialists. To forge
even stronger connections between candidates
and clients, Adecco has set up
a series of “exchange” events, where
major clients seeking specific skills can
meet and interview up to 100 suitable
candidates.
Adecco Italy has already invested
€ 10 million in the project as a whole.
We acknowledge that this investment
fosters our relationship with a valuable
talent pool in preparation for the
economic upswing. However, there are
also clear benefits to the individuals
concerned, the companies looking to
recruit, as well as for the quality of human
capital in Italy.
The pattern of shared stakeholder
benefits is evident in the featured
projects in Latin America, France and
Italy. Improving the working lives of
people is at the heart of Adecco’s corporate
responsibility strategy and of its
core business. The focus on society in
the long term fuels our commitment
to invest in projects that go above and
beyond our day-to-day work.
Global Compact International Yearbook 2010 77