Good Work Index | Survey reports

The CIPD Good Work Index draws together valuable insight into jobs and people’s experience of work, informing the actions of workers, employers and policy makers to help make work a force for good for everyone.

Since 2018, the CIPD has been measuring job quality through our comprehensive UK Working Lives Survey of more than 5,000 workers across different sectors and occupations. Each year, we’ve asked them about key aspects of their work and employment. Among other things, the data reveals a worrying drop in health and wellbeing over the last three years and highlights that some jobs are clearly better than others. The COVID-19 pandemic is a catalyst for us to re-evaluate how we work and this benchmark of working lives shows how we can protect not just the quantity but also the quality of jobs.

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Download the 2020 report and appendices below.

Summary report - CIPD Good Work Index

(287 KB)

Full report - CIPD Good Work Index

(2 MB)

Appendix 1: Tables, CIPD Good Work Index

(715 KB)

Appendix 2: Methodology, CIPD Good Work Index

(494 KB)

7 dimensions of job quality

Pay and benefits

Pay, employer pension contributions and other employee benefits.

47% of UK workers think they are paid appropriately for what they do, but 34% don’t.
Some of the highest paid occupations report trade-offs in other dimensions of job quality.

Employment contracts

Contract type, under-employment and job security

Most workers in our survey are on permanent contracts (78%) or self-employed (15%).
Less common are temporary (3%) and zero-hours contracts (2%).

Work–life balance

Long hours, commuting and options to work flexibly

More than half of UK workers (54%) work flexibly in some way, but there is still a lot of unmet demand and long hours remain a problem for many.

Job design and nature of work

Skills, workload, empowerment and meaning

Half of workers say their skills are not well matched to their job, while one in three workers (32%) feeling like they have too much work.
Most workers have at least some autonomy over what tasks they do (60%) but this varies considerably across occupations.

Relationships at work

Social cohesion, psychological safety and management support

Most workers have good relationships with their managers and colleagues.
30% of UK workers report at least one form of bullying, harassment or discrimination in the last year.

Employee voice

Opportunities to have a voice at work

We see very mixed views of both managers’ openness to engaging with employees’ views and the effectiveness of employee representatives.
Compared to other OECD countries, the UK has above average union density.

Health and wellbeing

Physical and mental health

Work can and should be healthy but in the UK, it is actually becoming less healthy.
More than one in four workers say work has a negative impact on both physical and mental health.
One in five say work often or always makes them feel exhausted.

CIPD view on good work

Work is a huge portion of our lives. It can and should be a force for good for all, benefitting individuals, organisations and society as a whole. Measures of GDP and employment rates are important, but we also need to understand whether the jobs we have are good or poor and how they can be improved.

But what does a quality job look like? At the CIPD, we believe that good work:

is fairly rewarded  gives people the means to securely make a living
allows for work–life balance  gives opportunities to develop and ideally a sense of fulfilment 
provides a supportive environment with constructive relationships 
gives employees the voice and choice they need to shape their working lives
is physically and mentally healthy.

Good work should be accessible to all, regardless of personal characteristics or occupation. It is affected by a range of factors, including employment legislation, labour market conditions, HR practices, the quality of people management and by workers themselves. The people profession has a leading role to play in ensuring that work is both productive for the organisation and good for employees. The CIPD Good Work Index gives insights that help individuals, employers and policy makers improve and protect job quality at every level.