The European Company Survey (ECS) has been carried out regularly since its inception in 2004–2005 as the European Establishment Survey on Working Time and Work–Life Balance (ESWT).
European Company Survey 2009
The second edition of the European Company Survey (ECS), carried out in the spring of 2009, focused on two topics in the field of company policies that are widely debated in the EU: flexibility practices and employee participation at the workplace.
The survey covered:
different forms of working time flexibility – flexitime and working time account systems, part-time work, overtime work and work at unusual hours
the application of non-permanent employment contracts – external flexibility
aspects of wage flexibility as well as modes of enhancing the employability of staff for different tasks – functional flexibility
The ECS 2009 investigated the general structures and practices of company-level employee representation in Europe, shedding light on the different channels of representation, on available resources and on the impact of social dialogue on company decisions in different areas.
The survey was carried out during from February to April 2009.
Over 33,000 interviews were conducted in 30 countries, including the EU27.
The survey was conducted by computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI).
The questionnaire was adapted into 38 languages.
A dashboard for this survey round is currently not available. Please refer to newer rounds of the survey to access data visualisations.
The findings provide a unique insight into the flexibility strategies of companies and into workplace social dialogue structures and practices. The first results were published in December 2009. The overview report was published on 1 March 2010.
Working time flexibility
More than half (56%) of companies in Europe offer some kind of flexitime arrangements.
About two-thirds of the establishments surveyed offer their employees employment on a part-time basis.
During the 12 months prior to the survey, workload peaks were handled by overtime work for its employees in just over two-thirds (68%) of establishments. Overtime work is relatively evenly spread across the different sectors of economic activity.
Work at non-standard hours remains at a stable level and is used by considerably fewer establishments than other forms of working time flexibility. In about 44% of the establishments within the EU, there are employees who regularly have to work at unusual hours, mostly on Saturdays (40%).
Human resources practices
Having staff with a fixed-term employment contract has become a common occurrence in more than half (54%) of all establishments covered by the ECS 2009.
Slightly more than every fifth establishment employed temporary agency workers in the 12 months preceding the survey interview.
In the EU, slightly more than four out of five establishments indicate that teamwork is an important characteristic of work organisation.
Three out of four establishments check the need for further training in a systematic way. However, this does not mean that further training takes place.
Variable pay
Across the EU, a third of establishments with 10 or more employees use elements of pay that depend on individual performance. Slightly more than half (53%) of all employees are involved. Over half of the employee representatives (54%) broadly support these schemes, with wide differences between countries.
14% of all private establishments with 10 or more employees within the EU currently practise some form of profit-sharing scheme. The highest incidence by far is reported in France, where more than a third (35%) of all private companies are operating a profit-sharing scheme.
Workplace social dialogue
Almost four out of ten companies (37%) in the survey reported an institutional form of employee representation, which covers more than 60% of the employees
More than two out of three workers in the EU are covered by a collective pay agreement: in the total economy, the figure is 69%, while it stands at 67% in the private sector alone.
Employee representatives in Europe seem to be generally satisfied that a rather good cooperative culture of interaction exists between them and the management of establishments.
European management is, in general, rather positive about the effect of social dialogue and employee representation at the workplace.
Some 80% of the interviewed representatives claim that the employees support their work.
Company performance
An increase in labour productivity was reported by more than 20% of establishments in the EU.
Just less than one-third of all establishments show an increase in their workforce over the previous three year period (2005-2008), while less than one quarter of all establishments report a decrease in workforce numbers.
Cyprus, Bulgaria, Luxembourg, Belgium and Malta all report an excess of 50% of establishments citing a shortage of skilled staff.
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This section provides further information targeted in particular at researchers.
The following publications were produced in relation to the ECS 2009.
Methodology
The ECS 2009 is the second large-scale organisational survey carried out by Eurofound, following the European Survey on Working-Time and Work-Life Balance (ESWT) conducted in 2004–2005.
Contractor
TNS Opinion in Brussels / TNS Infratest Sozialforschung in Munich
Coverage
27 EU Member States, plus Croatia, Turkey and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
Fieldwork period
During spring of 2009
Target population
The unit of enquiry for the survey was the establishment (in the case of multi-site enterprises the local unit). Only the establishments with 10 or more employees were included in the survey.
The establishments which were active in agriculture or fishing, private households and the extraterritorial organisations were excluded. The survey covers organisations from both the private and public sectors. The survey universe comprises some 3.2 million establishments, with about 145 million employees in the 30 countries under consideration.
Sample
The sampling for the ECS was done on the basis of a matrix, where the universe in each country was divided into 10 cells defined by five size classes and two main sectors of activity – the ‘industries’ sector and the ‘services’ sector. The targets for the sampling matrix were set in such a way so that each cell had a sufficiently high number of net interviews. Larger establishments were therefore deliberately overrepresented in the net sample. A weighting procedure was then applied to correct this disproportionate sample structure.
Sample size
A total of 27,160 management interviews were carried out, ranging from almost 350 in Malta, the smallest EU economy, to about 1,500 interviews in the larger economies. A total of 6,569 employee representative interviews were completed, ranging from 24 in Malta to 565 in Finland. Where an employee representative body existed within the establishment, the response rate was approximately 50%.
Type
The survey was conducted by computer-assisted telephone interviews (CATI). Average duration of the interviews was 20 minutes for management and 15 minutes for employee representatives.
Quality assurance
For many years, Eurofound has built up considerable expertise in conducting surveys and has developed best practices for quality assurance. The quality assurance framework for the ECS 2009 consists of four main pillars: Planning, Consultation, Transparency, Documentation.
A management representative and, where possible, an employee representative were interviewed in each company.
Questionnaire development
For each category of respondent a separate questionnaire was developed.
The employer questionnaire covers the following:
Background information
Challenges the establishment is faced with
Working time arrangements
Contractual flexibility and geographical mobility of employees
Variable elements of pay
HRM Practice and forms of work organisation
Social dialogue and employee participation
Social dialogue practice
Performance and productivity indicators
The employee questionnaire covers:
Composition of ER
Role and place of the ER inside the establishment; industrial relations climate
Competencies - information, consultation and negotiation rights and practices
Competencies and practices – industrial action
Resources
Collective agreements on pay and performance-related pay
Other topical questions
Background variables
See Annex 2 of the ECS 2009 overview report for the management and employee representative questionnaires.
Research report: European Company Survey 2009 - Overview
For many years Eurofound has built up considerable expertise in conducting surveys and has developed best practices for quality assurance. The quality assurance framework for the ECS 2009 consists of four main pillars:
Planning: systematic planning and mapping of the whole research process
Consultation: consultation with experts, stakeholders and users of the survey in the development of the questionnaire, key survey concepts and methodological strategy
Transparency: the entire research process will be transparent, both internally and externally
Documentation: documenting every single step, decisions or occurrences in the course of the project, ensuring that every step can be easily traced back
In order to ensure quality in the survey, and in accordance with Eurofound practices, it was deemed essential to involve from the outset experts and users of the survey, e.g. Eurofound stakeholders represented by members of the Management Board in the tripartite Advisory Committee on ECS 2009.
The report on quality assessment of the ECS 2009 assesses the quality of the survey in all its stages, starting from the sampling design to the final dissemination of data.
Research report: Quality Assessment of the 2nd European Company Survey
The questionnaire was translated into all official national languages of countries participating in the survey. In total 38 different country versions were produced. The translations were carried out by native speakers with experience of translating survey documents. For verification purposes, the national versions were back-translated into English by a different translator than the one who did the initial translation. These translations were than compared with the original English questionnaire in order to produce a final version. Translations of the questionnaires are available on request.
A limited extension of the survey to collect additional information on the financial performance of private sector companies was carried out in late 2009. Financial performance can be an interesting background variable to help evaluate the polices and practices that companies use in such areas as flexibility, human resources management and social dialogue. This module covered establishments in five countries – Finland, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK – that represent different ‘welfare regimes’.
The main ECS questionnaire included some questions on the company’s financial performance and labour productivity. As it was a telephone interview the answers were the subjective opinions of the managers (without referring to files or other data for validation). Therefore, in the second module on financial performance, a postal questionnaire was used, giving respondents the opportunity to research and check the facts before answering. The aim was to validate the original subjective measures and to extend the analytical potential of the gathered data.
The module is documented in a technical report, Collection of financial performance information for validation of the subjective indicators from the main European Company Survey questionnaire: Methodology, Fieldwork and Results by Miriam Gensicke, Kristin Hajek and Nikolai Tschersich of TNS Infratest Sozialforschung.
Eurofound experts
You can contact the following experts for questions on the survey.
Gijs van Houten
Senior research managerGijs van Houten is a senior research manager in the Employment unit at Eurofound. He has specific expertise in cross-national survey methodology and the analysis of workplace practices and organisational strategies. He currently leads the preparations for the European Company Survey 2028, is in charge of methodology for the European Quality of Life Survey 2026, and is analysing the online data collected as part of the European Working Conditions Survey 2024, which will inform decision making on the future of surveys in Eurofound. Before joining Eurofound in 2010, he worked at the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (SCP). Gijs spent a year away in 2016, working at the Pew Research Center in Washington, DC. He holds a Masters in Sociology from Radboud University Nijmegen and a PhD in Social Science from Utrecht University.
Sophia MacGoris
Surveys officerSophia MacGoris is surveys officer based in the Working Life unit at Eurofound. She works on all three of Eurofound's surveys. Having been involved in cross-national surveys for many years, she uses her experience and her transversal role to ensure a continuity of learning and quality assurance to the highest level during the entire survey process. Prior to joining Eurofound in 1996, she worked for several years in the European Commission in Brussels in the area of science, research and development. She holds a BSc (Hons) in Social Science specialising in Social Policy.
