Did you miss QWL Week?

QWL Week is a must-attend event for companies. For this 2022 edition, QWL Week took place from June 20 to 24. Did you miss it? Want to catch up on the week’s highlights? Gerep offers you a catch-up session.

What is QWL week?

What are we talking about?

Before reliving the highlights of this 2022 edition of the QWL Week (SQVT), however, it’s worth recalling what this event is all about. This year, the name of the event remains QWL Week. However, we no longer speak of QWL, but rather of QWL, thus including working conditions.

QWL Week is an annual event organized by the ANACT-ARACT network (ANACT: Agence nationale pour l’amélioration des conditions de travail. ARACT: a network of 16 regional associations for the improvement of working conditions). The SQVT has been in existence since 2003.

The objectives of this week dedicated to QWL are firstly to inform employees about the potential risks associated with their activity. Secondly, to raise awareness of issues relating to life at work. The aim is to highlight health and safety at work, as well as professional, physical and psychosocial risks. The aim is to strengthen prevention and find solutions to the issues raised during this QWL week.

Who’s concerned?

Several players within companies are involved in QWL week.

First and foremost, employers and managers are concerned, in their capacity as company executives. As such, they need to be informed of, or report on, the risks to which employees may be exposed. The aim is to find solutions to reduce these risks and thus improve QWL. Indeed, it is their responsibility to ensure that working conditions present little or no risk to employees. On the other hand, they are concerned as individuals, since they themselves may be faced with these risks.

Employees are also involved, as the themes addressed during QWL week concern them. What’s more, they will be affected by the solutions that are subsequently implemented.

What themes are covered?

The quest for meaning at the heart of QWL Week 2022

The theme of this 19th edition of the QWL week was “in search of meaning at work”. The idea of this year’s event was to develop the relationship at work and the conditions for employee commitment.

Indeed, after two years of crisis linked to the pandemic, it was essential to tackle the question of the quest for meaning at work. More specifically, by improving corporate relations and employee commitment. The major challenge is to enable them to rediscover meaning at work.

To respond to this vision of the quest for meaning, several types of programs have been set up: webinars, podcasts, web-exchanges, face-to-face events and workshops.

Some activities organized during this QWL week

During QWL week, a number of themes related to the quest for meaning at work were addressed. Here is an extract from the activities organized during this QWL week:

• Improving scheduling in the personal services sector and giving meaning back to work. The aim was to find solutions to problems linked to the organization of schedules (managing absences, reducing breaks, reorganizing working hours, fairness between employees, etc.).
• Meaning at work, an individual or collective issue. This topic dealt with teamwork (the organization between distance and face-to-face work, feelings of usefulness and recognition within a team, etc.).
• Transformation in health and medico-social establishments: how to co-construct with professionals? During this webinar, speakers shared their experiences and solutions.
• Employee participation in QWL. A webinar in which speakers discussed the importance of employee participation in QWL.
• Social and medico-social work: professionals in search of meaning, establishments in search of direction. The aim of this program of 3 collaborative workshops was to give back meaning and the ability to act to professionals and establishments.

Why organize QWL week?

Organizing QWL week in your company means improving QWL for your employees and acting in the company’s best interests.

First and foremost, QWL week will enable you to engage in collective reflection. And thus identify all your employees’ needs. You’ll also be able to learn about and discuss working conditions, as well as the challenges they face (psychosocial risks, burnout, feelings of exclusion, absenteeism…). And what’s more, you’ll discover the trends in your company.

Thanks to the information gathered during QWL week, you can identify new solutions to improve the working environment for your employees. These solutions will help to develop team cohesion and reduceabsenteeism and psychosocial risks.

Improving the working environment and conditions will increase employee satisfaction and commitment. But also their loyalty, motivation, well-being and, de facto, the company’s productivity. Organizing a QWL week will also provide an opportunity to discover new challenges that employees may face. And thus help prevent future risks caused by these new challenges.