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A validation Study of House of Quality key performance indicators
5.3 Conclusions interviews with employees
General
In the year 2006 De Unie started the first online union in the Netherlands. The foundation of the
online union is based on the actuality of a decreasing number of “traditional” members of De Unie. In
fact the size of the member population is decreasing for almost ten years. It must be stated that De
Unie is not the only labor union with a decreasing number of members; all labor unions in the
Netherlands, and even abroad, are facing this tendency.
The different labor unions in the Netherlands are developing new concepts in order to reach a
younger population of members like students or starters. De Unie differentiates from this by not only
focusing on young members but also on the “New type of worker”. These new type of workers have
got a high affinity with digital environments and use IT as an enabler of work and are more
individualistic in terms of searching and gathering information and knowledge. De Unie is aware of
the fact that we live in a global society and that there is a change in the field of work and in the use
and usefulness of new media types. From this perspective the online labor union is used as a kind of
experience to determine how De Unie can become a useful “partner” for these new type of workers.
The objective for the online union is not only to stop the decrease of members but moreover to
create, as a labor union, added value for this new generation of workers. An important aspect for
achieving this goal is to get a well understanding on how to manage relationships within this virtual
environment. At this moment De Unie is trying to discover how they can combine different parties of
their network in order to facilitate an environment that provides knowledge and information which
fits with the needs of this new type of workers and therefore will become a valuable source.
At this moment the online labor union offers mainly three types of services:
- Shared promotion of members interests
- First line support to employer related subjects by union experts
- Different platforms like “conflicts with your employer”, “My core competences” and an
online internship database.
The online union is organized around a fully centralized structure. The IT-applications and the
management team are located in Unieplaza, Culemborg. Of course, the union experts who attend to
the questions of the members are also located in some of the eight region offices. Because questions
are answered by the same employees for the traditional union as for the online union, the quality of
the services provided by the online union is stated to be the same as for the traditional union.
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