eSangathan Newsletter N°10

September 2008
Last minute • ICT-2008: “I”s to the future – November 25-27, 2008 in Lyon (France)
• e-Inclusion Ministerial Conference and Expo – From November 30 to December 2 in
Vienna (Austria)
• ICT related topics open consultations
• Commission consults on how to put Europe into the lead of the transition to Web 3.0

Editorial
The final conference of the eSangathan pro-
ject was simultaneously held on September
18th, 2008 in Brussels and online via webcast.
We got the return from the people who at-
tended the webcast version, that they were
really happy thanks to the quality provided
by the technical team from the EU-Com-
mission premises at Borschette Centre. For
those who unfortunately couldn’t make it in
Brussels or in front of a screen; there is still
an opportunity. The conference was recorded
and will be made available online before the
end of November on the specific dissemina-
tion wiki from eSangathan. By the way, the
content of the conference held in Mumbai
(India) on April 17, 2008 will also be available
on that same wiki.
The Brussels conference was the opportu-
nity for the team to gather for 5th time in 2
years and to make the results of the project
publicly available. Let’s recall to the reader
what the main objective of the project was.
eSangathan concentrated for two years on
aged workers and collaborative working envi-
ronments in order to find out, and eventually
show evidence, that ICT could be a useful and
well adapted tool to keep longer skilled aged
workers into the labour market while offe-
ring better work life balance conditions than
the traditional office. The project focused
only on knowledge workers. To do so, the
project has managed two pilots with a totally
different configuration. The results are pre-
sented in the eSangathan Final Report. Based
on the findings of the work done during the
Introducing the eSangathan Con-
ference to you
This eSangathan one-day conference was
organized in a way to listen at all the dif-
ferent stakeholders dealing with the issue
of active ageing workforce. The morning
was dedicated to the input coming from
the European, institutional and social
bodies dealing with this topic. The intro-
ductory presentation was made by Peter
WINTLEV-JENSEN from the e-Inclusion Unit
in DG Information Society and Media.
Peter recalled the ambition of the unit to
work towards a better inclusion of all the
A set of key success factors for age mana-
populations who are at risk of being mar-
gement in organisation have been identi-
ginalized in the information society and
fied:
developed further the actions towards the
res promote age diversity as a key element
to retain knowledge workers, indeed the
older workforce is more likely to stay (as
opposed to younger) in the same company
since it has no building career challenges.
On the top of that, keeping its elderly wor-
kers is a way for companies to develop a
culture of excellence and knowledge reco-
gnition which is not based on age.
Some examples of initiatives have been
taken in various countries to give concrete
examples of actions that have been imple-
mented.
The cases that were analysed have led to
conclude to benefits of age management
such as:
• Rise of the workforce’s overall skills
level and capacity for innovation.
• With older employees on the payroll,
younger staff sees greater potential
for career development: their moti-
vation increases as a result, as does
their respect for the performance of
their older colleagues.
• Improvements in the quality of an
organisation’s products and services.
• In many organisations, the involve-
ment of older employers ensures the
maintaining of skills levels and the po-
tential for professional development
and internal transfer.
© eSangathan Consortium All rights reserved

project, eSangathan has also issued a White • age awareness

Paper with a set of recommendations at se-
veral levels: European level, governmental
and public bodies’ level, corporate level and
worker’s level. Indeed, in order to face the
issue of the inclusion of the aged worker in
the labour market and the challenge to make
it happen, all the actors need to team up to
generate possible working conditions for all.
eSangathan tells the market that ICT is a fan-
tastic enabler to reach that goal!
Nicole TURBÉ-SUETENS
DISTANCE EXPERT
Project co-ordinator
aged workforce.
• supportive national policy framework
Another European presentation was made • management commitment and com-
by Gerlinde ZINIEL from the European petence (management commit to
Foundation for the Improvement of Li- the workforce even if the managers
ving and Working Conditions based in Du- change)
blin (Ireland). The interest of this presen- • careful planning and implementation
tation lies in the fact that Eurofound has (companies invest money)
led a research for several years to identify • cooperation of all parties concerned
good practices in age management and age awareness
has made a database available with prac- • evaluation, assessment of cost and
tical cases. They have issued a “guide to benefits
good practice in age management” and
proposed a set of measures. Those measu- As a conclusion, the Eurofound represen-

1/4
 eSangathan Newsletter N°10
tative proposes a rethinking of pensions but also disability and
rehabilitation schemes to be put in place.
The eSangathan White Paper was presented by Nicole TURBÉ-
SUETENS, co-ordinator of the project, in this first part of the
morning because it carries a set of recommendations for the
institutions and the public bodies as well as for the private
sector and the workers. The White Paper identifies two main
contextual factors; first, ageing workers represent talents,
skills and experience and second, they are precious economic
resources.
September 2008
were Bruno COSTANTINI from FERPA, the European Federation of
Retired and Older People; John BALL from TUC, Trade Union Con-
gress in the United Kingdom and Anne-Sophie PARENT representing
the Age Platform.
Bruno from FERPA insisted on the social dimensions to be conside-
red which are mainly:
• Convince workers to extend their working life, in particular
those who are close to retirement
• Convince companies to concentrate on elderly workers, either
by redesigning their own organisation, or by no longer opting
to deprive themselves of their experience for the sake of
labour costs alone
• Harmonise the systems of social protection, safety nets, and
welfare, as well as welfare policies, to bring them in line with
the required changes

….while John from TUC recalled the attendees that it’s important
to understand the age changes because it is a key driver to unders-
tand the workplace we have to build in the future which should
take into consideration:
• War of talent, shortage, replacement cost and impacts of
losing strategic knowledge
• Cost on individuals decreasing the economic and social stability
While we know that 68% of older workers expect to work part time
or on some sort of flexibility pattern. So, his question is: what if
job satisfaction would be the real challenge? He gave two concrete
examples at British Gas and at NHS.

Anne-Sophie promotes a holistic approach and insists on the im-

portance for aged workers to be continuously trained even if they
actually fear to fail or fear of being perceived to be not competent
anymore.

This very rich morning was concluded by Carlo PARIETTI, President

of Eurocadres.
The Active Ageing Workers approach concerns workers who want
to stay in the labour market as opposed to the Ageing Well ap-
proach, not to be mixed with, which is broader and not specific to
the active population. The active ageing workforce belong most of
the time to the Knowledge workers segment which can be defined
as professionals who work and apply their intellectual capacities
to create, process, distribute and connect information, ideas and
expertise. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are
key drivers in the knowledge co-creation process; this assessment
© eSangathan Consortium All rights reserved

led to several recommendations to:

• The public bodies: improvement of the ICT skills of the em-
ployment agents who are supposed to coach unemployed aged
workers;
• Corporates: about the management of “age pyramid”, orga-
nization of knowledge transfer and definition of an ageing
workforce policy;
• Individuals: insisting on the importance of assessing and deve-
loping their e-Skills on a regular basis.
The White Paper is part of the reports and documents made
publicly available by the eSangathan project.

The second part of the morning was dedicated to the social aspects
of the inclusion of the active aged workers. The three speakers

2/4
 eSangathan Newsletter N°10
September 2008
More about eSangathan graphical locations in India, China and Australia using CWE.
The adoption of CWE has proved business benefits: flexibility
in customization of CWE as per retired expert requirement are
important for adoption; positioning of CWE within organizatio-
nal information hierarchy intra-department, inter-department,
companies, and sectors is vital for adoption, as well as introdu-
cing features gradually and have physical meetings (to comple-
ment virtual work).

The eSangathan partners who were responsible for operational
actions leading to findings during the project duration did share
their experience with the audience in the first part of the after-
noon of the conference. In sequence, the attendees got fami-
liar with the methodological approaches, the two pilots and the
technological environment of the project. Some of the reports
are publicly available.
Leif BLOCH RASMUSSEN from Copenhagen Bu-
siness School
Leif showed the benefits of the social learning curve as a way
to learn collectively. The process demonstrates that gradually
people work more and more in a collaborative way and put trust
at the heart of the sharing knowledge process.
His recommendation is to go from “prejects” to “projects”,
trying first to formulate ideas before going into projects; in-
deed, as he says, the way solutions are found to problems today
is actually creating problems for other people which most of
the time are bigger than the one initially solved.
Social connectivity is, according to Leif, the final purpose chal-
lenge to traditional way of thinking and working.
Martina Sophia BACH from Folkuniversitetet
The process of recruiting Danish and Swedish aged workers was
the prerequisite. There were only few physical meetings for in-
troducing the methods and Collaborative Working Environment
(CWE). It appears that one monthly meeting was necessary to
share the methods.
On the findings side, members actively using CWE needed ad-
ditional face to face meetings; the introduction phase and the
A key motivator was certainly not only that and a single plat-
form for customers and suppliers considerably helped to reduce
the communication barriers but the possibilities to access from
home, offices or from customers and suppliers added a flexibi-
lity that convinced people the CWE was hassle free!
This pilot has introduced a flexible working culture and CWE
have been popularized and developed as they now integrate
with ERP and other business critical missions.
Miguel MEMBRADO from Netcipia-UK
Miguel mentioned that over the time and technological develop-
ment the CWE went from email and files attachments to collabo-
rative spaces including RSS and customizable home pages, social
bookmarking, wiki, IM, VOIP and video on blogs.
Miguel claims that the mix and many structured and unstructu-
red data contained in the knowledge base must evolve into an
organic structure of the corporation. The adoption cycle of an
efficient CWE is driven by key success factors such as a strong
management role and guidelines to promote collaboration and
a contagious dissemination and commitment.
Some examples of good practices
The second part of the afternoon was dedicated to a few cases
giving concrete and practical examples of what can be done
at different levels to favour the employment of aged workers.
The panel session was chaired by Leif Christian HANSEN from
the Danish Labour Market Authority and consisted of four pa-
nellists.
© eSangathan Consortium All rights reserved

kick-off were diagnosed not long enough compare to the needs

that weren’t satisfied when starting the second phase of the
pilot.
Eventually, the mind shifting from a hierarchical structural
thinking to self organizing complex “heterarchical” thinking is
a hard exercise. However, the winning are not only about the
project itself but also because two consulting firms and two
companies want to apply the eSangathan method in the very
near future.

Mandar VARTAK and Chitresh MARKANDA from

Mahindra & Mahindra and Tech Mahindra
The context is 10 “retiree experts” and their teams which re-
present about 140 employees. They operate from various geo-

3/4
 eSangathan Newsletter N°10
Paul MAILLOT from SNEDA (France)
Paul’s testimony about its company SNEDA, focused on how a
company whose revenue was collapsing and which was suppres-
sing agencies has managed to introduce and implement telework
and regain profitability.
The company gave to each teleworker an “ICT kit” (computer,
modem, internet connection, printer and fax) and introduced
flexible working time aiming at developing a culture of trust. He,
as the general manager, had to fight against his managers who
were afraid to lose control. To the contrary, the workers were
positive and motivated about this need to reorganize the work.
The additional benefits to the profitability concerns the fact that
seniors have said they can now envision to work longer in the
company. On the other hand, job seekers consider telework as a
strong competitive benefit and the distance transfer of knowled-
ge has become a key advantage in the customer relationship.
Lucia FORSBERG from KKiKK (Sweden)
The business company was established to build networks and
create learning environments for leaders, both in the private and
the governmental sector. The network model is used to support
the start and development of networks for participants in work.
An example of interest for eSangathan is the case of a pilot of
82 people revealing that seniors appreciated the opportunity to
connect, however a lack of self-esteem and self-confidence was
observed at the beginning and was quite a killer of the momen-
tum to create.
The pilot methodology started with registration by approval, a
sharing of principles, getting support in clarifying the use of tools
by a demo, working in small groups of 5 to 20 members maxi-
mum.
In the process of getting people ready, the finding is that age was
not creating differences but internet age was.
September 2008
Christiane ROBERT from SeniorFlex (Belgium)
Seniorflex’ role is to fight against age discrimination and repre-
sent seniors from 45 years old.
Christiane stands to say that seniors are motivated, efficient,
rapidly operational, eager to transmit knowledge and loyal to
their company as they are not concerned by building a career
any longer.
Seniorflex wants to open the discussion about senior workers
in organizations and is preparing 3 forums to be held in France
and Belgium.
The eSangathan Conference was a wonderful opportunity to
bring together a set of actors concerned with the situation of
the active ageing workforce in Europe and to recall some as-
pects of the European policy.
The European e-Inclusion initiative has raised its voice by
launching a set of initiatives: the policy (the ageing well ac-
tion plan), the research (eSangathan project) the innovation
(studies on ICT uses) and the dissemination process (through
workshops and events) in order to make sure ageing needs will
be included in main-stream products and process.
Katarzyna BALUCKA-DEBSKA, the eSangathan Project Officer
comments the event to the project co-ordinator

Katarzyna KROLAK-WYSZYNSKA from Innova-

tika (Poland)
According to Katarzyna, asking powerful questions is key to chan-
ge the world.
Documents are dead knowledge and people don’t tend to use
them when they are provided under the document format. What
people want is a focused, intelligent answer to their immediate
needs, which more and more means that experience is more im-
portant than content and that participation, is a key factor.
Innovatika helps organisations to get tangible results from mana-
ging intangible assets. By guiding an organisation (public or pri- And the networking that went on during the day showed that
© eSangathan Consortium All rights reserved

vate) through the process of measuring the intellectual capital, attendees were happy to have this opportunity to share views,
they can provide the decision-makers with valuable decision-ma- experience and projects.
king material.

eSangathan Newsletter is published by : eSangathan Consortium Useful links :

@ Website
Editorial Coordinator : NicoleTURBÉ-SUETENS (Distance-Expert)
assisted by Marie-France MÉDANA @ Conference
europe@distance-expert.com @ Dissemination
Editorial Board: Martina SOPHIA BACH, Leif Bloch RASMUSSEN, Chitresh MARKANDA , @ Eurofound
Miguel MEMBRADO, Mandar VARTAK and Marianne ZIEKEMEYER
@ Eurocadres
eSangathan is supported by : European Commission (DGINFSO)
Contract FP6-IST-035064, eSangathan Specific Support Action @ FERPA
For more information: info@esangathan.eu - http://www.esangathan.eu @ e-Inclusion

4/4