The SWOPS project team says goodbye with this newsletter

After two productive years of project work with our partners from Sweden, France, Austria and Germany we say goodbye with this newsletter and thank you for your support and followup of the EU project StucturalChangeOrientedPersonelStrategy – SWOPS.

The goal of SWOPS was to develop concrete recommendations for senior management and HR managers of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to improve equality of opportunity in career development. We have shown that a sound technical advice from the outside can already make a big difference in order to achieve greater satisfaction among employees.

A key result of SWOPS is: More women in management positions, both in terms of equal opportunities in our society as well as to timely respond to demographic change. SMEs that aim to successfully operate in the medium- and long-term will have to rise to this challenge. The SWOPS products provides executives and personnel managers with practical recommendations for a positive effect of its implementation on the company’s success and the working atmosphere and to create a competitive advantage.

Our most important conclusion from the project experience is that a sustainable change in mentality at senior level is essential to mitigate the consequences of demographic change and to explicitly benefit from it. We could sensitize the parties to frequently unconsciously existing role models and identify new practical solutions. For example, health management (BGM) is an important, in society and in SMEs often neglected instrument in employee retention, as working women in their double burden of work and family often have no time for their own health care.

The evaluation by classic male scales hardly meets the specific requirements and qualities of women in leadership positions such as communication skills, empathy and other social skills. Here inclusion of female leadership in the ratings is necessary. Whether we need separate competency models we leave for discussion to the expert world.

In addition to the evaluation and counseling of executives and HR managers during the project period, SWOPS produced three key publications:

• a Good Practices catalog in four languages (de, en, fr, se) with recommendations for the implementation of Structural Change-oriented HR strategy;
• an open consultation model for companies and consultants (HR Consultancy tool);
• a comparative country analysis on equal opportunities

The publications can be downloaded for free in PDF format: swops.eu/en/downloads/project-results/

If you want to pursue the issue of gender diversity from a scientific perspective we like to refer to the EU project GEDII – Gender Diversity Impact – Improving research and innovation through gender diversity (https://www.gedii.eu). The GEDII coordinator Dr. Jörg Müller was present as a panel guest at our final event on 18 May 2016 and gave a fascinating insight into his work. Under GEDII, policies and measures are being developed to improve communication and the flow of information in gender diverse teams.

Equally relevant information on gender diversity – not only in the academic world – can be found on GenPORT – genderportal.eu.

The contents and results of swops be another three years are available online at www.swops.eu until mid-July 2019; and we stay with you until then as contact persons.

With best wishes

The SWOPS project team