You are faster on your own, but get further together.

My mailbox is packed with HR newsletters that deal with the social elections. Companies prepare themselves to steer this four-yearly event in the right direction. Consultancy and HR organisations support them with legal advice and information. However, let us now forget about the practical organisation and focus instead on the essence of social elections: involvement, participation and dialogue. Highlighting and promoting social dialogue is at the core of our ACV Kader programme this year.

You are all too aware of the importance of dialogue. Some time ago, I helped Laura, a higher executive, over the phone. She then spontaneously started telling me how valuable the presence of the trade union had been to her during her medium-term career.

She had followed several of our coaching programmes for executives, enabling her to feel more comfortable in her job. She had also noticed time and again that staff members, including executives, could rely on ‘excellent legal advice’ (her own words) from trade union experts and employee representatives. She appreciates the work of these people at her current company as they address the challenges faced by executives in the field of work pressure and work life balance in a constructive and nuanced manner.
There are people like Laura (or Vladimir, Gerard, Fatima etc.) who take the bull by the horns, bring the group of executives together and translate their specific needs into dialogue between executives and the employer. Some of these people can be found in the enclosed candidate brochure, which we will distribute over the coming months in order to reach even more people like Laura.

In this issue we will focus on participation and dialogue among citizens as citizen initiatives can teach us a lot about these subjects. A roundtable discussion on the preconditions for constructive social dialogue and strong involvement of executives and knowledge workers is furthermore scheduled for next month. We warmly invite executives, employee representatives and employers to participate in this discussion.
No democracy without dialogue. We are eagerly looking for people like Laura who have an eye for the crucial position of executives in their company: sometimes a bit closer to the management, sometimes between hammer and anvil, often also in a key position to make a difference for colleagues. I dream of great radio and TV commercials, attractive advertisements with testimonies of people like Laura that encourage other people to step forward!