We would be grateful if you could take a few minutes to reply before the close of business on 18 June 2015
Dear colleagues,
In November the new College started operating under a new structure allegedly aiming to fight silos and stimulate cooperation.
On 22/04/2015, the College adopted a first batch of new organisation charts of the Commission departments that is declared to aim on gaining efficiency and synergies.
DG GROW (the merge of DG ENTR, 3 directorates of DG MARKT and units from DG SANCO), is the first large scale reorganisation that entered into force since the new College stepped in, and one of the largest reshuffling ever affecting a DG in the Commission given the very significant staff cuts it implies: 15% off. Additionally, a small reorganisation had already taken place on 01/01/2015 and lead to the suppression of 2 units.
Comforting official communications was received by the DG GROW staff, such as “all officials will move with their files” or “each official will be duly informed in advance”. Now DG GROW staff is voicing substantial dissatisfaction of being left over and not being consulted or informed properly. Indeed, from face-to-face discussions of R&D representatives (list N°9 for the Staff Local Committee representation), you provided us with comments on inconsistency and shared an increased feeling of uncertainty across DG GROW. Even colleagues at management level shared with us that they have not been properly consulted and informed. And the proposed new structure was not taking into account their competences or skills at the right place, if ever taking these skills and competences at all in the new organisational structure. This, as you shared, leads to the demotivation and waste of efficiency, and contributes do the decrease of appreciation of the work place.
The operational impact of the reorganisation is clearly announced: 15% staff reduction to horizon 2018. R&D notes that this is well beyond the 5% negotiated along the Staff regulation of 2014.
As regarding the organisation chart, there is a net reduction of
- 2 directorates, going from 13 to 11 directorates
- 7 units / HoU equivalents are dropped, with 54 units/ HoU equivalents given the secondment to the Executive Agencies, instead of 61 linked to GROW budget;
- 200 posts – both statutory (F, TA) and non-statutory (including CA, END, EXT )- to be off set in the 4 years instead of 2 or 3 years – this being the only favour the DG got from SG, BUDG and HR.
This will have an unavoidable impact on the workload. R&D is a trade union that keeps track of the evolution of working conditions perception and staff satisfaction. Indeed, we observe that according to the Staff Survey 2014, 30% of the personnel already considered that their workload is not acceptable. And only 30% of staff declared that they feel a link between their performance and their career progression. 40% of the staff considers that the Commission does not care about their health and well-being. Though, the feed-back that R&D receives from you does not seem to indicate that hierarchy and political management has taken these figures seriously. Therefore we decided to propose you a questionnaire on the situation you live currently with this reorganisation – one of the largest that the departments have ever underwent, and that you are let out of the process.
Only if you give us your feed-back R&D will be able to address the bottle-necks and discuss solutions with the administration. We consider of renewing this questionnaire after few months, and the possible change in the top hierarchy as this has been announced by the College.
R&D will confront the administration with the results of this survey, and intends to perform a follow-up survey in a few months.
On 9-10-11 June, vote R&D , list n°9 for the Staff Local Committee representation,
to provide us with most representatively to defend your interests!