Companies must put in place now task forces to prepare themselves for Economic and Monetary Union if they are to survive into the next century, the president of the Jefferson Smurfit Group has said.
Mr Paddy Wright was speaking yesterday at a Labour Relations Commission/IPC conference on the impact of EMU on the workplace. Labour costs and labour flexibility were a key element in any survival strategy, he said.
He also expressed concern at the serious mismatch in many companies between management objectives and personnel practices. "Management theory encourages employees to become more entrepreneurial, to break away from conventional thinking, to make heroic efforts to respond to customers' needs and to reinvent processes to provide products and services that are better, quicker and cheaper.
"These challenged and empowered workers too often collide against a human resource wall, running into a system that remains fixed on rules and procedures.
"With absolute authority and excruciating detail, rules govern every significant aspect of employees' organisational lives - working hours, leave, duties, pay increases and performance measurement, to name but a few. There are even rules which dictate how employees complain about the rules."
Labour market flexibility was a two-edged sword, Mr Wright said. To maximise benefits, total employer flexibility - flexibility in hours, pay terms, profit-sharing and conditions - was required.
The chief executive of the Lab our Relations Commission, Mr Kieran Mulvey, said the introduction of EMU and the euro "will probably represent the most fundamental change in the European business environment this century". It was vital to consider the pressures which would arise in the industrial relations environment.
"We must accept that competitiveness will become even more vital than it is today. In effect there will be no place for inefficient organisations to hide."
The chief executive of the Irish Productivity Centre, Mr Tom McGuinness, said emphasis in the EMU debate had been on issues such as interest and exchange rates. The emphasis now must be on building the internal capacity of companies to compete.