Only 4 per cent of business organisations in the EU use the most advanced forms of team working, although in most cases managements recognises it can have significant economic benefits. This is the main finding of a new report from the European Foundation entitled Useful but Unused - Group Work in Europe.

The report helps explain discrepancies in the findings of a recent IBEC survey on employee participation in the workplace, and that of a more scientific study by Prof Bill Roche and Mr John Geary of the Michael Smurfit Centre for Graduate Business Studies at UCD.

The IBEC study claims that more than 75 per cent of companies have some form of employee participation, while the UCD study suggests that figure is less than 50 per cent. The UCD study estimates that companies that have adopted advanced employee participation models may be as low as 0.3 per cent.

The EU Foundation study, covering 10 member-states, suggests the UCD analysis is closer to the reality on the ground, although it adopts less rigorous criteria for defining the employee participation model than the UCD team.

According to the EU report, 82 per cent of Irish enterprises use some form of direct participation of employees in the workplace. However, 42 per cent have some form of group delegation of responsibility for tasks, compared with an EU average of 36 per cent. Only Sweden, at 56 per cent, and the Netherlands at 48 per cent, score higher.

Ireland also scores higher than the EU average for the number of enterprises using the most developed forms of team-based work, 5 per cent compared with the EU average of 4 per cent. Group working was most developed in white-collar workplaces with highly qualified staff and advanced systems of internal training.

The research team, chaired by Mr Kevin O'Kelly of the EU Foundation, was concerned at the low take-up of advanced team working methods. It states that "quality of working life", productivity and the search for economic efficiency were the main driving forces behind the introduction of advanced team working, and experience indicated "that the more intensely team working is in practised, the greater the economic benefits.

"Reported economic effects included reduction of production costs and throughput time, quality improvement and increase of output. Associated to these economic effects was a reported improvement in attendance and a decrease in sickness levels of up to 50 per cent in some European organisations with highly developed group work."

The report's conclusions are clear: "Group work is useful, but it remains unused or under utilised, despite the gains it promises in the fiercely competitive global market."