EUROPEAN FOUNDATION FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF LIVING AND WORKING CONDITIONS (EUROFOUND)

The European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound) focuses on managing research, gathering information, and communicating its findings. It is headquartered in Loughlinstontown, County Dublin, Ireland.

The role of EUROFOUND is to provide information, advice and expertise – on living and working conditions, industrial relations and managing change in Europe – for key actors in the field of EU social policy on the basis of comparative information, research and analysis.

It maintains a number of specialized operations monitoring and measuring conditions in Europe, including:

• the European Industrial Relations Observatory (EIRO)
• the European Working Conditions Observatory (EWCO)

Regular surveys on European working conditions, quality of life, and company policies on working time issues

• the European Monitoring Centre on Change (EMCC)
• the European Restructuring Monitor (ERM)

The Foundation is overseen by a Governing Board, Director, and Deputy Director. The Governing Board meets once a year to set budgets and policy, and to decide on one-year and four-year work programmes.

Eurofound's strategic objective for 2013–2016 is to provide high-quality, timely and policy-relevant knowledge as input to better informed policies in four priority areas:

1. Increasing labour market participation and combating unemployment by creating jobs, improving labour market functioning and promoting integration
2. Improving working conditions and making work sustainable throughout the life course
3. Developing industrial relations to ensure equitable and productive solutions in a changing policy context
4. Improving standards of living and promoting social cohesion in the face of economic disparities and social inequalities

Eurofound will provide facts and figures, show trends and analyse policies and practices as the basis of evidence-based advice for the development of policy responses in these four policy priority areas.

Since the beginning of 2007, Eurofound offers a customised reports service. This involves the delivery on request of occasional papers on selected themes to core stakeholders. Key objectives of the new service are to ensure rapidity, flexibility and quality in delivering customised input to meet specific needs.

Four-year programme 2013 - 2016

Entitled From crisis to recovery: Better informed policies for a competitive and fair Europe, the programme sets out the strategic framework for Eurofound's work over the next four years. For each of the four policy priority areas above, a number of cluster themes have been identified that will help prioritise activities and group their outputs, providing a focus for Eurofound’s communication strategy:

• Youth in Europe – improving prospects for all
• Public services in Europe – ensuring access, quality, sustainability
• Sustainable work – the future of working life in Europe
• Win–win practices – good working conditions for high performance workplaces
• Social dialogue in Europe – developing its role in a changing context
• Employment – preserving, creating and sharing jobs in Europe
• Trends in quality of life – the impact of the crisis and Europe’s middle class
• Social cohesion – fighting poverty and social exclusion
• Older people – addressing the challenges of work, care and inclusion
• Mobility and migration – addressing employment and social consequences

Three main activities:

• Monitoring trends and developments in the quality of work and life, industrial relations and structural change
• Exploring and assessing policies and practices
• Communicating knowledge and organising debate and exchange with target groups

Eurofound's monitoring tools:

• European Company Survey-ECS
• European Working Conditions Survey-EWCS
• European Quality of Life Survey- EQLS
• European Observatory of Working Life- EurWORK
• European Monitoring Centre on Change-EMCC