THE
2004 WORKPLACE EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS SURVEY
The
2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004) is a national survey of
people at work.
The
survey is jointly sponsored by the Department
of Trade and Industry, the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service, the Economic and Social Research Council and the Policy
Studies Institute. It follows in the acclaimed footsteps of earlier
surveys conducted in 1980, 1984, 1990 and 1998.
The
purpose of each survey in the series has been to provide large-scale,
statistically reliable evidence about a broad range of industrial relations and
employment practices across almost every sector of the economy in Great Britain.
This evidence is collected with the following objectives in mind:
- to
provide a mapping of employment relations practices in workplaces across
Great Britain;
- to
monitor changes in those practices over time;
- to
both inform policy development and permit an informed assessment of the
effects of public policy, and,
- to
bring about a greater understanding of employment relations as well as the
labour market.
To
that end, the survey collects information from: managers with responsibility for
employment relations or personnel matters; trade union or employee
representatives; and employees themselves.
The
information that is provided by respondents to the survey will be used to
publish a report that will inform policy-makers and practitioners who work in
the field of employment relations. The report will also aid public debate about
the nature of work and workplace relations in Britain.
The
survey is supported and endorsed by the Chartered
Institute of Personnel and Development and the Trades
Union Congress.
Please
follow the links below to obtain further information on WERS 2004:
Development
work for WERS 2004
Before the design of the survey was agreed a
considerable amount of development work was conducted. It began in the Summer of
2002 when the sponsors conducted a consultation
exercise
to inform their thinking about the broad design and scope of the survey. There
were two distinct elements to the consultation: i) consultation with academics
(60Kb) led by the ESRC and ii) consultation with policy-makers, practitioners
and think-tanks led by the DTI. IRS Research were commissioned by the DTI to run
a series of workshops with practitioners and think-tanks
(74Kb). Key findings from the consultation exercise with policy-makers are
contained in WERS 2004:
Findings from the DTI-led consultation exercise.
As part of the development work for the fifth WERS, the DTI also commissioned
John Forth at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research to conduct
a systematic review
(113Kb) of
the use made of the WERS 98 datasets in secondary analysis. Susan Purdon of the
National Centre for Social Research was also commissioned to produce a report on
Sampling issues for a
fifth WERS
(58Kb).
The
results from this work culminated in the sponsors publishing a paper examining
the design
issues for a fifth WERS
(59Kb). Following on from this the sponsors consulted the academic community
regarding a specific number of questions/question areas to help inform the
design of the questionnaires which the WERS 2004 Research Team were preparing.
Summary
of the research design for WERS 2004
Units
and methods:
The principal
unit of analysis is the establishment or workplace. A workplace is
defined as comprising the activities of a single employer at a single set of
premises. Examples include a single branch of a bank, a car factory or a school.
In
keeping with its predecessors, WERS 2004 contains both a cross-section and
a panel element.
The
Cross-section survey contains the following components:
- A
face-to-face interview with the senior manager that has responsibility for
employment relations or personnel issues (Average duration: 110 minutes);
- A
four-page, self-completion questionnaire on the financial performance of the
establishment over the past 12 months (New in WERS 2004);
- A
face-to-face interview with a trade union representative and a non-union
employee representative, where present (Average duration: 45 minutes); and,
- An eight-page, self-completion questionnaire
distributed to a random selection of up to 25 employees at each workplace.
All
workplaces in Britain with five or more employees, and whose activities are
located within Sections D – O of the Standard Industrial Classification
1992, are eligible for the Cross-Section Survey. The Cross-section
survey data comprise responses from approximately 2,300 managers, 1,000 employee
representatives and 22,000 employees.
The 1998-2004
Panel Survey returns to a random selection of workplaces that
participated in the 1998 Cross-Section Survey. A face-to-face interview is
conducted with a main management respondent, with the specific intention of
identifying change since 1998. Around 1,000 establishments have taken part in
the Panel survey. The remaining 1,200 establishments that took
part in the 1998 Cross-Section will be traced in order to establish whether they
are still in existence or have closed down.
Areas
covered in the survey:
The
focus of the survey is the practice of employment relations at the workplace.
Questions therefore focus more on practices and attitudes than on written
policies. In addition, interviews are conducted at the workplace, rather than at
head office.
The
survey instruments have seen some redesign since the 1998 survey, although this
is far less extensive than the redesign that took place between the 1990 and
1998 surveys. Indeed, the structure and broad content of the survey instruments
remain largely unchanged from 1998.
Most
of the redesign has taken place at the level of individual questions and been
prompted by comments from users of the data within the policy-making and
research communities. In particular, the WERS Research Team has received
valuable contributions from Specialist Teams of academics in six areas:
Corporate Governance; Partnership; Skills, Job Satisfaction and Stress;
Performance and Technology; Small Establishments; and Worker Representation. The
work of these teams has been co-ordinated by Professor Keith Whitfield (Cardiff
University).
The Cross-Section
management interview in WERS 2004 contains questions on:
-
Recruitment
and training
- Consultation and communication
- Employee
representation
- Payment
systems
- Grievance
and discipline
- Equal
opportunities
- Work-life
balance
- Health
and safety
- Flexibility
and performance
The
principal changes from the 1998 management questionnaire are as follows:
- New
questions on trust, business strategy and computer use
- Expanded
questioning on consultation, dispute resolution, work-life balance and equal
opportunities
- Revised
questions on organisational status, employee representation and payment
systems
The
Cross-Section interview with employee representatives contains questions
on:
- Structure
of representation at the workplace
- Time
spent on representative duties
- Means
of communication with employees
- Incidence
of negotiation and consultation over pay and other matters
- Involvement
in redundancies, discipline and grievance matters
- Incidence
of collective disputes and industrial action
- Relations
with managers
- Union
recruitment
The principal changes from the 1998 worker
representative interview are as follows:
- A
revised selection criteria that aims to increase the number of interviews
conducted with non-union representatives;
- A
reduction in the number of questions which are also asked of managers but
are more reliably collected from managers; and,
- More
questions that are relevant to non-union representatives.
The Cross-Section questionnaire for employees
contains questions on:
- Working
hours
- Job
influence
- Job
satisfaction
- Working
arrangements
- Training
and skills
- Information
and consultation
- Employee
representation
- Pay
The
principal changes from the 1998 employee questionnaire are as follows:
- New
questions on well-being, trust and computer use
- Revised
questions on job satisfaction, work-life balance and consultation.
The Panel Survey questionnaire is based on
the 1998 Cross-Section management questionnaire, but is much shorter and
collects much less detail about particular practices. It contains around one
third of the questions that were present in the 1998 Cross-Section management
questionnaire.
Research Instruments
Cross-Section
survey:
Panel survey:
Dissemination of results
Inside the Workplace
(3.7Mb)
– this booklet reports the first findings from
the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS 2004), and provides
information on what has changed inside British workplaces since 1998. Hard
copies of this publication are available via the DTI’s publication order line on
0870 1502 500 (+44 870 1502 500) or email them at:
publications@dti.gsi.gov.uk. The booklet was launched on 5 July 2005
at the Royal Society of Arts in London. The presentation made at the RSA is
available to download from this website.
Click here
An in-depth exploration of
the survey findings (‘the sourcebook’) will be published by Routledge in July
2006.
Data dissemination
The data from WERS 2004 is now available to users
through the UK Data Archive (study number: 5294)
http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/
. In order to maintain the anonymity of respondents, region identifiers and a
detailed industry classification are being withheld from general release until
April 2007 and, prior to that date, data from the Financial Performance
Questionnaire will be available only via the Micro-Data Laboratory operated by
the Business Data Linking section at the Office for National Statistics
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/about/bdl.
The ESRC has funded the establishment of an
information and advice service for users of data from WERS 2004. The service is
hosted at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research
http://www.wers2004.info
| Timetable
for fieldwork and the dissemination of results |
January 2004 - May 2005 - Fieldwork
December 2004 - Questionnaires published
July 2005 - First Findings booklet published
End November 2005 - Initial version of data deposited at UK Data Archive
July 2006 - Sourcebook published
July 2006 - Final version of data deposited at UK Data Archive |
|
WERS 2004 Grants Fund
The Department of Trade and Industry has made
funds available to develop the evidence base in areas of policy interest, raise
awareness of the WERS 2004 datasets, and encourage advanced data analysis based
on the WERS 2004 datasets. Applications should reach DTI by the end of January
2006. Full details of the Grants Fund can be found in
http://www.dti.gov.uk/er/emar/smallgrants.htm .
Further information
Should you require further information about WERS 2004, please send your request by e-mail
to: WERS2004@dti.gov.uk
Alternatively,
you may contact:
Carmen Alpin
Acting
WERS 2004 Project Leader
Employment Relations Directorate
Department of Trade and Industry
1 Victoria Street
London
SW1H 0ET
Tel: 020 7215 3847
Fax:
020 7215 2641
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, 1990 and 1998 surveys is available: The
British Workplace Industrial Relations Survey Series: A Bibliography of Research
Based in WERS
(201Kb).
The
bibliography was last updated in March 2004. It 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.
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