Inside the Workplace

Findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey

Barbara Kersley, Carmen Alpin, John Forth, Alex Bryson, Helen Bewley, Gill Dix, Sarah Oxenbridge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780415378123
• eBook ISBN: 9781136007743
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Based on the primary analysis of the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), this is the fifth book in the series which began in 1980, and which is considered to be one of the most authoritative sources of information on employment relations in Great Britain. Interviews were conducted with managers and employee representatives in over 3,000 workplaces, and over 20,000 employees returned a self-completion questionnaire. This survey links the views from these three parties, providing a truly integrated picture of employment relations.

This book provides a descriptive mapping of employment relations, examining the principal features of the structures, practices and outcomes of workplace employment relations. The reader can explore differences according to the characteristics of the workplace and organization, including workplace size, industrial sector and ownership. Current debates are examined in detail, including an assessment of the impact of the Labour Government's programme of employment relations reform.

A key reference from a respected and important institution, this book is a valuable 'sourcebook' for students, academics and practitioners in the fields of employee relations, human resource management, organizational behaviour and sociology.

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http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/0415378133/

1 Introduction

This book provides an up-to-date and nationally representative portrait of the state of employment relations and working life inside British workplaces. It is based on an in-depth exploration of the findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004). It also examines what has changed inside British workplaces since the 1998 WERS. The book will be of key interest to anyone concerned with the relationship between managers and employees, employment relations issues more generally, and how the world of work has changed in recent years.

There is perennial interest in the changing nature of work. This is evident not least from the extensive research conducted in recent years to identify patterns of change and interpret what these might mean for the future (for example, the Economic and Social Research Council's ‘Future of Work’ programme and the Leverhulme Trust-funded programme of work into the ‘Future of Unions’).¹ Today's global economy means that many employers are faced with an increasingly competitive market, and it is of growing interest how employers have responded to such an environment (White et al., 2004: 5–6). There have also been significant changes within the labour market, with an increased focus on the position of women, the nature of employer and employee flexibility and the impact of technical change (Kingsmill, 2001; Machin, 2001; HM Treasury, 2003). Change within the political arena has also had an impact on the employment relations landscape. With the election of the Labour Government in 1997, legislation has been introduced or reformed in a number of policy areas, including: working hours; rates of pay; union recognition; work and family life; workplace conflict; equal opportunities; and, most recently, information and consultation. There has been a growing interest in the impact of these legislative and policy changes on employers (see, for example, Dickens et al., 2005). The nature of research into the practice of employment relations has also altered in some respects, with an increasing focus on efficiency and the diffusion of what have been termed ‘high involvement’ or ‘high performance’ management practices. This ‘new paradigm’ stands in contrast to the traditional focus on institutions — principally trade unions — although a consensus has emerged which emphasizes the value of a holistic approach (Edwards, 1995, 2003; Godard and Delaney, 2000, 2002; Kochan, 2000; Budd, 2004).

It is the intention of the WERS Sponsors that this latest survey should continue in the footsteps of its predecessors by making a valuable contribution to on-going debate on these and other employment relations issues. The survey provides up-to-date empirical evidence on the changing nature of work as well as providing a unique opportunity to examine the potential determinants of change. It also provides an important source of data for those wishing to understand more about the detailed practice of employment relations and how it affects (or is affected by) each of the actors that take part. The dissemination of results began with the publication of the initial findings from the survey, shortly after the end of fieldwork (Kersley et al., 2005). This volume represents a second, more substantial, contribution in that vein.

About the survey

WERS 2004 is the fifth survey in the series of surveys conducted by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), and the Policy Studies Institute (PSI). Previous surveys were conducted in 1980, 1984, 1990 and 1998. The Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) series has mapped the contours of employment relations and informed the development of policy and practice in this area over the past quarter of a century.

Some of the survey questions have been asked consistently over the period, producing comparable data across the period 1980–2004. However, the series has also responded to changing interests in the employment relations arena by adding new areas of enquiry and reducing other areas in scope. In particular, the 1998 survey underwent substantial redesign, including a move away from detailed questioning on union organization and collective bargaining, a greater focus on employment relations practices and the adoption of the Survey of Employees. These changes were reflected in the change in the title of the survey: from ‘industrial relations’ to ‘employee relations’. While the Sponsors considered that major revisions to both the structure and content of the 2004 survey were not necessary, changes were made in a number of key areas and these are reflected in the final survey design and survey instruments. Three key innovations to the 2004 design were: (1) the extension of the Cross-Section sample to include workplaces with between five and nine employees; (2) the sampling of greater numbers of non-union employee representatives; and (3) the adoption of a Financial Performance Questionnaire. The title of the survey was changed again, from ‘employee relations’ to ‘employment relations’, in order to reflect the most commonly used title for this broad field of study (see Edwards, 1995, for example). The development and the design of the 2004 survey are considered in some detail in the next section.

Survey development

In order to inform the Sponsors' thinking about the overall design and scope of the fifth WERS, in the summer of 2002, the potential user community was consulted and views were sought on all aspects of WERS, including its broad design, the sampling population, the survey content and the survey outputs. The consultation exercise had two distinct elements: (1) a consultation with the academic community, led by the ESRC; and (2) a consultation with practitioners, think-tanks, and policy-makers and analysts across government, conducted by the DTI. The results of the ESRC-led and DTI-led exercises and other commissioned papers culminated in a paper setting out the Sponsors’ decisions on how the fifth WERS would proceed (DTI/Acas/ESRC/PSI, 2003).² Sponsors considered that continuity in the design of the survey was very important, particularly given the strong interest in assessing the nature and extent of change since the previous survey. Nonetheless, the consultation exercise with user groups suggested the need for change in a number of key areas and these changes are considered in the section on ‘questionnaire design’.

Survey design and sample coverage

For the purposes of the survey, a workplace was defined as comprising ‘the activities of a single employer at a single set of premises’. A branch of a high street bank, a head office or a factory were all considered to be workplaces in their own right. The terms ‘workplace’ and ‘organization’ were thus not interchangeable, except in the situation where an organization was located at a single site. The sample of workplaces was randomly drawn from the InterDepartmental Business Register (IDBR) maintained by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The Register is continuously updated from PAYE and VAT records and is considered to be the highest quality sampling frame of workplaces available in the United Kingdom. The sampling unit is the IDBR's ‘local unit’ which conforms to the definition of workplace used in the survey in most circumstances.³

Data were collected from three different perspectives: from workplace managers, employee representatives and employees. Managers and employee representatives were asked to act as informants of their workplace, and so the majority of the data collected in those interviews relates to the features of the workplace rather than to the particular characteristics of the individual respondent. The broad structure of the survey follows the design adopted in previous surveys, with both a Cross-Section and a Panel element (see Figure 1.1), albeit with some additional innovations and these are discussed below.

The 2004 Cross-Section

An important innovation in WERS 2004 was the greater coverage of small workplaces. Funding from the Small Business Service enabled workplaces that employed between five and nine employees to be included in the Cross-Section Survey for the first time. Their inclusion expanded the scope of the survey so that the population from which it was drawn covered 700,000 workplaces (33 per cent of all workplaces in Britain) and 22.5 million employees (89 per cent

Figure 1.1 Structure of the survey

of all employees in employment).⁴ The 1998 survey extended its scope to a lower workplace employment threshold of 10 or more employees, from 25 or more previously. Consultation with a team of academics specializing in research into small firms and subsequent piloting of the survey confirmed that a further extension would be possible. However, while the 2004 survey covered workplaces with five or more employees, the findings reported in this book focus on the subset of workplaces with 10 or more employees. The main reason for this approach was so that straightforward comparisons could be made with the 1998 survey. A separate publication examines employment relations in small workplaces and organizations (Forth et al., 2006). All figures reported in the book are weighted and are representative of this subset of the population, which accounts for 18 per cent of all workplaces and 80 per cent of all employees in Britain.

The sample for the Cross-Section was stratified by workplace size and industry. Workplaces were randomly selected from within a particular size band and industry. Larger workplaces were given a greater probability of being selected across the sample so that statistically reliable comparisons could be made with smaller workplaces. Certain industries (e.g. Utilities) were also given a higher probability of being selected so that comparisons could be made between industrial sectors. Weights were applied to ensure that the final achieved sample was representative of the survey population from which it was drawn (the IDBR) and to take account of any non-response bias by workplace size and by industrial sector.⁵ Further information about the design of the sample and the weighting strategy adopted for the Cross-Section is provided in the Technical Appendix to this book. A fuller account is provided in the Technical Report of the survey (Chaplin et al., 2005).⁶

The intention was to conduct interviews in 2,500 workplaces as part of the Cross-Section Survey, comprising approximately 250 workplaces with between five and nine employees and the remainder drawn from workplaces with at least 10 employees. The main element of this survey was an interview with the senior manager responsible for employment relations on a day-to-day basis at the workplace (the ‘Cross-Section Survey of Managers’). There were three further elements to the Cross-Section Survey, each being attempted in those workplaces that participated in the Survey of Managers. First, a short self-completion questionnaire was distributed to a random selection of (up to) 25 employees (the ‘Survey of Employees’). Second, interviews were conducted with both a union and a non-union representative at the workplace, where present (the ‘Survey of Employee Representatives’).⁷ This meant that, in some workplaces, two interviews were conducted with employee representatives. This constituted a departure from previous surveys where a single interview took place with an employee representative, and where preference was given to interviewing union representatives in workplaces where both types of representative were present. The main purpose of the revised selection rule was to increase the number of interviews with non-union representatives. This was considered to be desirable, given the decline in union representation and the increasing interest in nonunion representation, and to establish an effective baseline against which to monitor the impact of the forthcoming Information and Consultation of Employees (2004) regulations. Third, a new self-completion questionnaire was designed to collect quantitative data about the financial performance of the workplace (the ‘Financial Performance Questionnaire’). The questionnaire was completed either by the workplace manager or the financial manager. The questionnaire was adopted to supplement the existing subjective measures of performance collected in the management questionnaire and to provide additional information in areas not hitherto covered by WERS, such as data on research and development expenditure.

All of the elements of the Cross-Section are linked, thus providing an opportunity to examine the nature of employment relations from three different perspectives. This can assist in providing a balanced and rounded picture of the state of employment relati...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• Reporting conventions
• 1 Introduction
• 2 A profile of workplaces and employees
• 3 The management of employment relations
• 4 Recruiting, training and work organization
• 5 Representation, consultation and communication
• 6 Employee representatives
• 7 The determination of pay and other terms and conditions
• 8 Workplace conflict
• 9 Equality, diversity and work—life balance
• 10 Workplace climate and performance
• 11 Conclusion
• Technical appendix
• Further information
• Accessing the data
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index