Guide on Post-Employment Roma Inclusion, realized within HOPE project
Experiences of previous employment projects showed a lack of post-employment inclusion measures for vulnerable employees, which lead to many workers leaving the company a short time after a successful job-mediation.
The Guide on post-employment Roma inclusion intends to address this gap by providing ideas and recommendations how satisfaction at the workplace and communication between employer and employees can be increased, leading to a better inclusion of Roma and other vulnerable employees at the workplace, respectively to an increased retention rate for the employers.
According to the study realized as a basis for this guide, the main reason people leave the company is not remuneration level, as wrongly considered by some of the managers. Roma employees, beside material benefits, would be happier with the following:
- a more flexible work programme so they can solve family and personal issues, while still respecting the rules and procedures of the company;
- respect and appreciation from management – they usually are engaged in manual labour in difficult working environments which is usually not highly appreciated in society. In this context it would mean very much for them that their superiors are considering their jobs as relevant and meaningful. This could bring a significant change also in the affective commitment to their employer.
- help from the company – Roma employees are not used to get very much help, neither from the authorities in their communities, neither from their peers. Internalizing that they are on their own has a negative influence on dealing with complex professional responsibilities. The collected data shows that their desire is to be helped in a meaningful way, and to be understood firstly.
An overview of the findings of the study can be found in chapter 3.
Because these critical aspects of Roma and other vulnerable employee’s needs are often neglected in the daily work environment, a range of organisational measures are presented in this guide, with the
motivational aim of raising the personnel retention rate mainly in the companies participating the study, and applicable in any entity having employees from vulnerable groups.