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EMPLOYMENT
MARKET ANALYSIS AND RESEARCH (EMAR)
THE 1998
WORKPLACE EMPLOYEE RELATIONS SURVEY
WERS 98 is
a national survey of people at work. It follows in the acclaimed
footsteps of earlier surveys conducted in 1980, 1984 and 1990.
The survey is jointly sponsored by the Department
of Trade and Industry, ACAS,
the Economic and Social Research
Council, and the Policy Studies
Institute. Its purpose is to provide an account, for all to
use, of management - employee relations. For this reason, the
survey is supported by leading organisations like the Confederation
of British Industry, the Trades Union Congress, and the Institute
of Personnel and Development. For those who are familiar with
the WERS series, it will be apparent that there have been several
major changes made to the survey. This has come about because
the sponsors felt that there had been so much irrevocable change
since the late 1970s that a recasting of the questionnaire design
and the structure of the survey was called for. A full account
of the changes that have been made and the reasons behind these
changes, can be found in the paper, which can be downloaded by
clicking on the title. A Survey in Transition:
The Design of WERS 98 [MS-Word] (165Kb)
Release
of first findings
In September
1999 Routledge published Britain at Work, a full, interpretative
account of the survey findings, together with an additional volume
on change in employment relations, All Change at Work (published
2000). A booklet was produced before September 1999 containing
the first findings from the survey. A copy of the first
findings can be downloaded by clicking on the title. The
1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey: first findings 
(260Kb)
A brief summary
of the survey can be obtained by clicking on any of the following
topics:
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Who
has been surveyed?
All workplaces
in Britain with 10 or more employees were eligible for the survey,
be they schools, shops, offices or factories. In the main survey,
2191 workplaces participated, a response rate of 80 per cent.
Interviews were conducted with a manager in each workplace, and
950 worker representatives were also interviewed, representing
82 per cent of cases where an eligible representative was identified.
Completed questionnaires were obtained from 28,323 employees,
around two-thirds of those distributed. In the panel survey, 882
surviving workplaces from the 1990 survey took part, a response
rate of 86 per cent.
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Areas
covered in the survey
The focus
of the questions are about what goes on at the workplace, not
head office, so interviews were conducted with people at their
workplace. There were questions on:
- Consultation
& Communication
- Worker
Representation
- Payment
Systems
- Recruitment
& Training
- Equal Opportunities
- Health
& Safety
- Flexibility
& Performance
- Workplace
Change
- Employee
Attitudes to Work
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Survey
data
Survey data
has been made publicly available from the ESRC
Data Archive in anonymised form for academic, employer association,
business and trade union researchers. There were six separate
survey questionnaires used in WERS 98, each of which can be downloaded
by clicking on the relevant line.
1998 Main
Survey
1990-98 Panel
Survey
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Research
emanating from the WERS series
A bibliography
of all publicly available papers that have made original use of
the data from the 1980, 1984 and 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations
Surveys (WERS/WIRS) is available from this site. The bibliography
contains details of the following:
- "sourcebooks"
reporting the primary analysis
- other books
wholly based on WERS technical reports and methodological papers
- journal
articles and contributions to books, discussion papers, working
papers and mimeos
- doctoral
theses
- dissertations
- reviews
of WERS results
A copy of
the bibliography can be downloaded by clicking on the title.
The British Workplace Industrial Relations
Survey Series: A Bibliography of Research Based in WERS
(201Kb).
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Further information
on the 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey is available from
the ESRC funded WERS
98 Data Dissemination Service, which has been set up to provide
expert advice about the survey and its analysis to both current
and prospective users. The WERS98 Data Dissemination Service is
located at the National Institute
of Economic and Social Research; it is staffed by Neil Millward,
John Forth, and Simon Kirby.
All of the
above publications are available from Routledge publishers. The
ISBN numbers for ordering are as follows:
All Change
at Work - ISBN 0-415-20635-9
The 1998 Workplace Employee Relations Survey: first findings
- ISBN 0-85605-382-1
Britain at Work - ISBN 0-415-20637-5
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