Revealing the attitudes and behaviours of British workers
The media tend to present a picture of today's workforce as worn
down, stressed out, dissatisfied, insecure and lacking in
commitment. Obviously this is no more than a caricature, and an
unhelpful one at that. To get a clearer idea about how people
actually feel about their work, the Chartered Institute of
Personnel and Development (CIPD) has been conducting annual surveys
of employee attitudes. And the results don't fit the stereotype in
most respects.
This bulletin summarises the findings of the eighth annual CIPD
survey of the state of the employment relationship. This year the
survey concentrated on how people experience pressure at work. It
shows how workers feel about their jobs, with the focus on the
state of the psychological contract, and offers a useful benchmark
for employers' own surveys of employee attitudes.
Key findings
The workplace:
- most workers are still satisfied in their work
- there is a long-term trend of declining satisfaction,
particularly amongst public sector workers
- employee commitment to the organisation remains fairly
high
- a quarter of the workforce believes that changes at work may
force them to change jobs over the next few years
- job security is not a concern for the majority of the
workforce
- the private sector has progressively adopted family-friendly
practices in recent years, resulting in increased satisfaction with
work-life balance
Pressure:
- 25% of the workforce report their jobs are very stressful
- 40% say they experience only mild stress
- stress is higher among people in the health and local
government sectors
- stress is higher among those in senior positions and those
working long hours
Health and welfare:
- over half the workforce believe that pressure at work and long
hours are damaging to health and well-being
- access to social support at work, and a reasonable amount of
control over work, are associated with positive health and
well-being.
Retirement and pensions:
- the ideal retirement age for men is a relatively young 54
years, but both men and women expect to retire at 60 years
- there is little sign of much anxiety or concern about pensions
provision
Methodology
Professor David Guest of King's College, London, and Dr Neil
Conway of Birkbeck College, London, researched and wrote the
report. Taylor Nelson Sofres undertook 1,000 telephone interviews
with a representative sample of the British workforce in June and
July 2002.
What is the psychological contract?
The psychological contract has been described as 'the perceptions
of both parties to the employment relationship, organisation and
individual, of the reciprocal promises and obligations implied in
that relationship'.
The causes and consequences of the psychological contract model
used by the researchers are shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1 - The psychological contract model
Research context
What the psychological contract means in practice is that both
workers and their employers believe that they have certain basic
obligations to the other and that these should be reciprocated. In
organisations today where relatively few workers belong to a trade
union and collective bargaining has gradually declined, analysis of
the relationship between the individual and the organisation has
assumed greater importance. The concept of the psychological
contract is one way of capturing that relationship and has become a
useful basis for explaining the way people feel about their
work.
Pressure at work
Although some 25 per cent of the sample report that they find
work very stressful, 40 per cent say they experience only mild
stress or none at all. Predictably the main factors scoring high on
negative impact are workload and hours worked. People are quite
positive about the amount of control they have over their work, the
amount of support and help available and their relationships with
colleagues. There is no doubt that stress is damaging to health and
well-being and people who feel lower levels of stress are likely to
report a more positive psychological contract.
The findings confirm that workers increasingly recognise the
negative impact of long hours, even if they carry on working them.
The basic issue is one of workplace culture. Job security is not a
major concern - only one in ten employees believes their job is
insecure.
Work-life balance
Satisfaction with work-life balance has been increasing in the
private sector during the past two years, reflecting the increased
adoption of family-friendly practices. This may be partly as a
result of legislation increasing employees' rights in relation to,
for example, maternity and paternity leave and flexible working,
despite the fact that this legislation has yet to be fully
implemented. We know from previous surveys that there is no direct
read-across from the existence of family-friendly practices to
people feeling that their work-life balance is right for them.
Life satisfaction
In the year following the 11 September 2001 attacks on America,
and a slowdown in the economy, there has been a decline in both
life satisfaction and job satisfaction.
Trust and control
It is no surprise that people who feel in control at work tend
to be more satisfied. Over half say their performance is being
measured all the time, and more than a quarter say they are under
constant observation. These people are much more likely to feel
dissatisfied and under stress than other workers. This underlines
the negative consequences of managers failing to create a climate
of trust, instead adopting an over-rigid style of management that
discourages creative thinking and innovation.
The psychological contract in the public sector
An enhanced sample focusing on local and national government and
the NHS was not repeated this year, but the findings can still be
used to monitor attitudes across the sectors. Once more, the state
of the psychological contract turns out to be worse in the public
sector than in the private. Levels of satisfaction, trust and
commitment are all lower in the public sector. And this negative
picture of morale in the public sector is borne out by the recent
Audit Commission report, which includes direct quotations that
reinforce the Institute's findings.
However, there is some modest good news in the present report in
that public sector workers say they feel more fairly treated
compared with last year. They are also more likely than last year
to feel that promises have been kept. This probably reflects
greater efforts by the Government to provide adequate funding and
more recognition of the jobs that those in the public sectors
do.
Conclusions
The model of the psychological contract is now firmly
established as a valued and useful way of addressing issues about
people management. The model focuses on relationships and on issues
about fairness, trust and delivery. Many HR practitioners do find
the idea helpful in bringing the 'soft stuff' into the forefront of
management thinking and debate. With the current interest in
companies adopting more socially responsible practices, the model
of the psychological contract could usefully be applied to the
relationships between organisations and a broader range of
stakeholders, including customers and the wider community.
The annual CIPD surveys confirm that attitudes show few dramatic
changes in the short-term and relatively few consistent trends can
be identified. For example, although work satisfaction in the
private sector increased between 1998 and 2001, it has declined
sharply in the past 12 months. However, though most workers are
still satisfied with their work, there has been a long-term trend
of declining satisfaction.
Employers in both public and private sectors are increasingly
using employee attitude surveys as a management tool. Monitoring
employee attitudes is recognised as a key input to managing
organisational performance. The efforts to measure human capital,
for example, and encourage reporting of companies' performance on
non-financial issues, can only serve to put more emphasis on
monitoring attitudes.
If you would like to discuss the research on which these
findings are based, please email the research
team.