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Spain has a tradition of a particularly competitive industrial relations climate. The country’s current financial crisis and economic recession have triggered a period of unprecedented reforms in the labor market, employment policies and the structure of the collective bargaining. The change towards a decentralized system of industrial relations have placed employee representatives as key parts at the organizational level, with an important role in social innovation and to promote the competitiveness of the organization. Drawing on the results from interviews and a survey among Spanish HR managers we observe that the economic recession has underpinned the large opposition in social relationships. Employee representatives and managers perceive and behave as two opposed groups, subject to high levels of conflict. However, building a constructive social dialogue ties up with the expressed will by Spanish managers to work with competent counterparts at the negotiation table, partners who have a strategic vision of the dynamics of the organization and with whom they can work vis-à-vis through transparency. They point out that empowering employee representatives so that they can achieve these competencies, together with the professionalization of their role, are further challenges for social agents.

This chapter presents findings on employee representation and participation in the UK. It shows a complex structure of heterogeneous forms of representation, with a clear distinction between more established union structures and more recent forms of rather informal and flexible participation as supported by management. Across these structures, the HR managers were predominantly positive about both the relationship with and the qualities of the employee representatives. Moreover, the participation structures were seen to shape decisions although the remit of councils is often limited with many key issues not on the agenda. To some extent the dominant position of management in several organizations was countered by the need for forums to look successful in order to legitimize decision making. However, the supposedly positive findings need to be contextualized as the underlying factors may differ given the diversity in structures. For example, high levels of trust seem to be supported by established structures in unionized organizations while they may also reflect the smaller remit of employee councils under the more managerial initiatives. There was also an awareness that the more flexible and informal approach to participation in many organizations hindered the development of a systematic and meaningful culture of representation because of a lack of continuity and independence in the structures and representatives of participation in the non-union cases.

This chapter offers a general picture of the experiences with and expectations towards employee representatives of more than 700 HR managers in 11 European countries. First, the most salient trends in the countries are presented based on the NEIRE model, describing outcomes and factors contributing to a constructive and innovative social dialogue. The conclusions of the 11 studies are summarized in ten ideas for achieving cooperative and innovative industrial relations. These ten ideas illustrate the wishes of employers towards improvement of social dialogue and bring us one step further in understanding the current European industrial relations systems and the expectations, concerns and objectives of employers. Overall, improving the quality of social dialogue is perceived as the healthiest and fairest way to make decisions in a democratic organizational context.