Initiative

Women-in project

Summary of the initiative

Hellenic Management Association (HMA) was established in 1962. HMA is a not-for-profit organisation with a mission to contribute to the promotion, dissemination and promulgation of modern management principles, methods and practices. HMA has members, both corporate - enterprises and organisations of the private and public sector - and individuals - middle and top-level executives, entrepreneurs, professors and students

HMA participated in The WOMEN-IN project (Telework for life-work reconciliation in EU: promoting women participation and mobility) which has been funded by the European Commission, Leonardo da Vinci Programme. Others actors, such as the Spanish union UGT Euskadi, the Austrian VET institute Best as well as ICT research institutes ET Infoart (Bulgaria) took part in this project.

The project aims at encouraging the participation of the women in the labour market by promoting the teleworking option, providing essential general skills and key competences on teleworking. At the same time, the project aims to promote the teleworking option at institutional level, as workplace flexibility programme and its potential benefits to the company.

The project is designed to approach two direct target groups: women on the on hand, and managers, human resources directors of the companies, on the other.

Specific objectives to be reached can be summarised as follows:

• To extend the concept of teleworking at European level, by carrying out a comparative analysis on flexible workplace and teleworking policies in partner countries and drawing conclusions and recommendations for the actions to be taken, in order to promote female participation in teleworking;
• To develop an auto-diagnostic tool for key competences, necessary for teleworking, as well as, to design a training paths of general skills for teleworking and contributing to women inclusion into knowledge society;
• To raise awareness on flexible workplace policies and benefits at the institutional/company level;
• To provide the managers and human resources directors with the basic management skills, to prepare them to design and implement the flexible workplace management policies;
• To develop an interactive online environment to be addressed to both target groups. The online environment will stand as a resource centre and meeting point, as well as will provide a direct access to the auto-diagnostic tool and designed training paths and best practices.

Conclusions and recommendations for actions to be taken to promote teleworking and women’s participation and “mobility”, have been drawn after a careful and precise analysis of the Austrian, Bulgarian, UK, Greek, Romanian and Spanish national reports. The complete final report (Women in teleworking: comparative EU Experience), including all of the national experiences and case studies, can be read at and downloaded from the website of The WOMEN-IN project