Europe’s workers value safety, trust, and well-being above pay, according to the first findings of the flagship 2024 pan-European Working Conditions Survey. New findings reveal an overall upward trend in job quality but also expose a workforce grappling with new and persistent health challenges and divergent attitudes to the technological change.
Digitalisation, such as the automation of tasks, digitisation of processes, and coordination through platforms is transforming the way in which people in Europe work. Many workers and businesses stand to gain from these ongoing changes, but some will lose out – potentially heightening labour market inequalities.
New technologies such as the Internet of Things, 3D printing, and virtual and augmented reality can help put greater emphasis on managerial and analytical tasks, reduce physically demanding tasks, drive the upgrading of skills and increase job discretion. However, some aspects of these technologies, particularly the Internet of Things, raise concerns that employee performance could be excessively
The shift to telework during the pandemic, and increased demand for more hybrid working arrangements in the future, is putting the spotlight on whether existing labour legislation is fit for purpose in post-pandemic Europe, according to Eurofound’s new report Right to disconnect: Exploring company practices.
Platform work is still small in scale in Europe, but it is increasing – and this not only in terms of the number of platforms, workers and tasks, but also the diversity of business models, matching mechanisms and types of tasks that are mediated through an online platform or an app.
Apprenticeships are long established in manufacturing and are attractive for both employers and young people because of the balance between theoretical and practical education that they offer. However, in several countries in Europe and beyond, apprenticeships are lagging behind changes in manufacturing.
The importance of physical tasks in manufacturing is generally declining due to automation; with more intensive use of digitally controlled equipment, and the increasing importance of quality standards, resulting in a growing amount of intellectual tasks for manual industrial workers.
Smartphones and mobile technologies are increasingly important in our everyday lives; by expanding opportunities to telework, have they also transformed the world of work?
Companies are constantly competing for the next big thing in innovation – the next-generation 3D phone, the quantum computer, the virtual doctor. They fixate on technological breakthroughs and look for new business models. But innovation also needs systems, an organisational structure and people who work together.
Digital technologies are transforming work, but the implications have not yet been fully grasped. In a recent Eurofound report, we focus on three main vectors of change to discuss the effects of digital technologies on work and employment and the policy responses such change demands.
The onset of the digital revolution has resulted in technological advances that are constantly evolving. This report reviews the history of the digital revolution to date, placing it in the context of other periods of marked technological advances and examining how technological change interacts with changes in institutions.
The new report Game changing technologies: Exploring the impact on production processes and work summarises the findings of five case studies on the likely impact of game changing technologies on production and employment in the manufacturing sector in Europe up to 2025.
In the following blog piece, originally posted on Social Europe Journal, Martina Bisello and Enrique Fernández-Macías look at the impact of routine tasks on working life, and how routine fits into the larger debate on computerisation and automation.
In the digital age, there are fewer routine jobs because of a higher risk of automation. But a great paradox of this age is this: workers in most
Since the advent of the Industrial Revolution, technological change has brought both opportunities and risks. However, the widespread entry of computing technology into the workplace in the 1980s, and in particular the arrival of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, has profoundly affected society and the economy. This ‘digitalisation’ has already changed the nature of work: today’s offices look marke
