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 2019
Eurofound and Cedefop(opens in new tab)This link opens in a new tab joined forces to carry out the fourth European Company Survey (ECS) in 2019.
The ECS 2019 collected data in over 20,000 establishments on workplace practices with regard to work organisation, human resource management, skills use, skills strategies, digitalisation, direct employee participation and social dialogue. It allows for the identification of those bundles of workplace practices that work particularly well in creating win–win outcomes: situations where workers are facilitated and motivated to use their skills to the full, share their knowledge and insights with colleagues and management, and identify opportunities to improve both themselves and the work process as a whole, allowing establishments to thrive.
The ECS 2019 is the first large-scale, cross-national survey to use a push-to-web approach.
The survey was carried out from January to July 2019.
Over 24,000 interviews were conducted in 32 countries, including 27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom.
Interviews were done online using a ‘push to web’ approach, following telephone contact to identify management and, where present, employee representative respondents.
The questionnaire was adapted into 34 languages
To display this data, use the filters below to select a question. Refine the results by selecting a country (or group of countries), apply additional filters (which vary throughout the surveys) or change the visualisation by selecting a preferred chart type.
ECS 2019 (all questions)
Read the overview report for the ECS 2019.
12 October 2020
This report is based on the fourth edition of the European Company Survey (ECS), which was carried out jointly by Eurofound and Cedefop in 2019. It describes a wide range of practices and strategies implemented by European companies in terms of work organisation, human resource management, skills use and skills development, and employee voice. The report shows how these practices are combined and how the resulting ‘bundles of practices’ are associated with two outcomes beneficial to employees and employers: workplace well-being and establishment performance.
The analysis finds that the establishments that are most likely to generate this win–win outcome are those that combine a high degree of worker autonomy, a balanced motivational strategy, a comprehensive training and learning strategy, and high levels of direct employee involvement in decision-making, as well as offering managerial support for these practices. To boost the adoption of employee-oriented practices – particularly in relation to autonomy, skills and employee involvement – managers should be offered appropriate support, as they play a key role in the decision to initiate workplace change. They are also crucial to its success, as they must continuously support the workplace practices implemented.
This section provides further information targeted in particular at researchers.
The following publications were produced in relation to the ECS 2019.
Methodology
In its European Company Survey (ECS), Eurofound has developed a unified methodological approach and quality assurance system to provide comparable and reliable data in all European countries. Over the years, the survey methodology has been improved, new concerns have been integrated and the geographical scope has expanded with the enlargements of the European Union. Despite the innovative methodology that was used for the ECS 2019, many elements of the approach developed in previous surveys could be applied to this survey as well.
Contractor
Coverage
27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom
Fieldwork period
January to July 2019
Target population
Senior managers in charge of personnel and, where present, official employee representatives in establishments with 10 or more employees in all sectors involved in ‘market activities’ (NACE Rev. 2 categories of sectors of activity: mining and quarrying (B), manufacturing (C), electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply (D), water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities (E), construction (F), wholesale and retail trade, repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (G), accommodation and food service activities (I), information and communication (J), transportation and storage (H), financial and insurance activities (K), real estate activities (L), professional, scientific and technical activities (M), administrative and support service activities (N), arts, entertainment and recreation (R), and other service activities (S)).
Sample
Procedures differed between countries, using the best quality sampling frame that was available. Sampling was always stratified by establishment/company size and broad sector of activity (manufacturing, construction and services). In countries with an establishment-level sampling frame, stratified random probability sampling was applied. In countries with a company-level sampling frame, stratified random probability sampling was applied and subsequently a screening procedure was used to randomly select up to three establishments in multi-establishment companies.
Sample size
A total of 21,869 management interviews were completed, ranging from 122 in Cyprus to 1,498 in Italy. A total of 3,073 employee representative interviews were carried out, ranging from 3 in Cyprus to 467 in Finland. Finally, for 1,835 establishments both a management interview and an employee representative interview were completed, ranging from 2 in Ireland to 284 in France.
Type
The fourth edition of the European Company Survey (ECS 2019) is a survey of establishments in Europe. It is the first large-scale, cross-national establishment survey to use a push-to-web methodology. Establishments were contacted via telephone to identify a management respondent and, where present, an employee representative respondent who were subsequently asked to complete the questionnaire online (’push to web’).
Quality assurance
Strict quality assurance and control measures were applied. A quality assurance framework was established in advance which covered the survey design and implementation. A designated quality control report was compiled. In addition, an external data quality asessment was carried out.
More information:
Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Technical and fieldwork report
Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Sampling and weighting report
Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Coding report
Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Quality control report
Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Data editing report
Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Data quality assessment
Establishments across all EU Member States were contacted via telephone to identify management employee representative respondents. Respondents were then asked to fill out the survey questionnaire online. This approach reduces the burden on respondents and is expected to improve the quality of responses. Having the questionnaire administration fully online makes the ECS well and truly future-proof.
Questionnaire development
In developing the questionnaire for the European Company Survey (ECS) 2019, the questionnaires for the ECS 2013 were used as the starting point. Questions were added on skills use and skills strategy, digitalisation, innovation and business strategies.
To include items on skills use and skills strategies, Eurofound and Cedefop commissioned a background paper that examined the conceptualisation of these issues in the academic literature and looked at the questions used to assess this topic in other company surveys.
The questionnaire development process was supported by a group of experts and by a steering group composed of members of the governing boards of Eurofound and Cedefop. To ensure that the questions were phrased appropriately for web administration a final detailed review was carried out by a selection of experts in (online) survey methodology.
The quality assurance framework for the ECS 2019 monitored and documented the various phases of survey preparation and implementation, ensuring that the survey would meet the quality criteria of relevance, accuracy, coherence, comparability, timeliness and punctuality, and accessibility, as identified in the European Statistical System. Quality control measures covered sampling, translation, pretesting and piloting, interviewer selection and training, fieldwork implementation, data processing and storage.
A specific aspect of quality control are the data validity checks that were carried out during and after data collection. In collaboration with the contractor an approach for data validation was developed. The approach combined the programming of warning messages in the questionnaire scripts, that were shown to respondents when they entered contradictory information with a set of data validity checks that were run after the data collection. These checks identified around 1% of interviews that did not meet the quality standards required to be included in the final dataset.
An external quality assessment of the ECS 2019 concluded that the ECS 2019 is a unique, nationally representative survey on workplace practices across establishments in the EU28 (since January 2020, the EU27 and the UK) that adopts best practices in terms of survey methodology.
High levels of comparability of different language versions are essential for any cross-national survey. In the broadest sense, translation of questionnaires aims to ensure that measurements are equivalent in different linguistic, cultural and institutional settings.
The starting point for high-quality translation of a survey questionnaire is to ensure that the source questionnaire is free from any ambiguities that could create difficulties in the translation process. For this purpose, a translatability assessment was carried out involving advance translation of the questionnaire into French, German and Polish.
To ensure the source questionnaires were understood properly, cognitive pretesting of those items deemed to be particularly challenging was carried out in France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom. The findings from the advance translation and the cognitive pretest were discussed in a questionnaire finalisation meeting involving Eurofound, Cedefop, the survey contractor and the contractor for the translatability assessment.
To cover the 27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom, the ECS 2019 questionnaires were created in 34 languages, including the key minority languages of the surveyed countries.
For the ECS 2019, translation of the source questionnaire involved several steps.
Working paper: European Company Survey 2019: Translation report
Two independent translators with different skill sets translated the questionnaire into each target language.
After this, a team-based interactive online review meeting took place between the two translators and an adjudicator.
For languages that were used in multiple countries, multiple translations were created and cross-verified to produce final translations specific to each country.
Existing translations of the questions that had been used in the ECS 2013 were reviewed. The aim was to stay as close as possible to the existing translation, unless issues were detected.
Finally, the translated versions were copyedited to correct any small mistakes that had crept in.
A centralised, web-based translation system was used to closely document each of these steps.
Reader-friendly versions of the source questionnaires are available in the following languages.
| Country | Management questionnaire | Employee representative questionnaire |
|---|---|---|
| Austria | German | German |
| Belgium | Dutch, French | Dutch, French |
| Bulgaria | Bulgarian | Bulgarian |
| Croatia | Croatian | Croatian |
| Cyprus | Greek | Greek |
| Czechia | Czech | Czech |
| Denmark | Danish | Danish |
| Estonia | Estonian, Russian | Estonian, Russian |
| Finland | Finnish | Finnish |
| France | French | French |
| Germany | German | German |
| Greece | Greek | Greek |
| Hungary | Hungarian | Hungarian |
| Ireland | English | English |
| Italy | Italian | Italian |
| Latvia | Latvian, Russian | Latvian, Russian |
| Lithuania | Lithuanian | Lithuanian |
| Luxembourg | French, German | French, German |
| Malta | Maltese, English | Maltese, English |
| Netherlands | Dutch | Dutch |
| Poland | Polish | Polish |
| Portugal | Portuguese | Portuguese |
| Romania | Romanian | Romanian |
| Slovakia | Slovak | Slovak |
| Slovenia | Slovenian | Slovenian |
| Spain | Spanish (Castilian), Catalan | Spanish (Castilian), Catalan |
| Sweden | Swedish | Swedish |
| United Kingdom | English | English |
The language versions of the questionnaires can be downloaded:
Eurofound and Cedefop joined forces to carry out the European Company Survey (ECS) 2020, a follow-up survey to the ECS 2019 in light of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The ECS 2020 was an online survey that collected data on workplace practices in over 1,200 establishments in the EU27 and the United Kingdom (UK). These data pertained to work organisation, human resource management, skills use, skills strategies, digitalisation, direct employee participation and workplace social dialogue. Unlike the ECS 2019, only the management respondents were addressed. Of the respondents, 670 identified as female, 601 as male and 5 as other. Those managers who had agreed to be recontacted for research purposes following their participation in the ECS 2019 were invited to complete an online questionnaire focusing on the impact of COVID-19 on workplace practices, about six months after the health crisis struck.
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.
