Why is it important to measure and understand organisational change?

Skill Change, Control at Work and Employee Well-Being

Duncan Gallie

Job Control and the Quality of Work

• ‘Job Control’ considered by diverse theoretical schools as a, sometimes ‘the’, critical variable in the quality of work

• A strong determinant of job satisfaction and work motivation

• A key factor affecting risks of work stress, high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease

Recent currents of managerial theory

Shift away from Taylorist paradigm of deskilling and close supervisory control

New paradigm of ‘high involvement/ high performance’ management.

Employee involvement as part of a broader human resource strategy involving informal skill development, training, appraisal etc

Skill Change and Job Control

• Key determinant is rising levels of skill

• Rising skill levels require employers to give employees more control of their work:- need to use employees’ own knowledge - need to draw on discretionary effort- greater difficulty of directly monitoring work

Factors driving skill increases

• increasing complexity and automation of production technologies

• rising product/service quality demands

• and need for production flexibility in more competitive and volatile markets.

Issues

• What have been the main trends in skills in recent decades?

• What have been the empirical trends in job control in Britain?

• Whether skills affect job control in the way the major theories postulate?

• Whether the level of job control affects employee motivation and well-being?

• Is Britain distinctive in its trends?

Data : The British Skills Surveys

• Hypotheses about trends in work have been usually studied on the basis of cross-sectional data (case-study or survey).

• Now a reasonable series over time:

1992 : Employment in Britain Survey (N=3469; R=72%)

1997: Skills Survey (N=2224; R=65%)

2001: Skills Survey (N=3990; R=66%)

2006 : Skills Survey (N=4800; R=62%)

Trends in Skills

Measures of Skill

Job skills vs individuals’ own skills

Job skill as job complexity (Spenner)

Measures based on learning time needed to be able to do the job, taking account of:

- General Skills : Time required in general education (measured through required qualifications)

- Occupational Specific Skills :Time in vocational training

- Firm Specific Skills : Time of initial learning on the job

Required Qualifications

• If you were applying today, what qualifications, if any, would someone need to get the type of job you have now?

Training and On-the-Job Learning Times

• Since completing full-time education, have you ever had, or are you currently undertaking, training for the type of work that you currently do? (If yes) How long in total did/will that training last?

• How long did it take you, after you first started doing this type of job, to learn to do it well?

Job Skill Trends 1992-2006

Has there also been a rise in job control?

• Overall picture is one of rising skill levels of jobs in last decade and a half. So would anticipate rising levels of job control.

• Types of job control:

- Individual Task Discretion - Collective Team Decision-Making

Task Discretion

Task Discretion Measures

• How much influence do you personally have on:

- how hard you work- deciding what tasks you are to do- deciding how you are to do the task- deciding the quality standards to which you work

(A great deal, a fair amount, not much, none at all)

The task discretion index is the average score of the four ‘task influence’ questions, with a highest score of 3 and a lowest score of 0

Trends in Task Discretion

• Decline in task discretion very general across the workforce, although low skilled and temporary workers saw sharpest reduction.

• Cannot be accounted for by compositional changes in workforce in terms of job skills, age, sex, class, industry, contractual status or establishment size. Including these tends to increase the ‘year effect’.

• Points to changes in relatively autonomous employer workforce strategies/management styles

Job Control, Work Motivation and Employee Well-Being

• Work Motivation

- Willingness to put in discretionary effort

- Organisational Commitment

• Employee Well-Being

- Job Satisfaction

- Work Stress

Task Discretion and Work Motivation

No Controls

With Controls

Survey Years

N (with controls)

Uses discretionary effort on the job

.27 *** .24 *** All 12802

Organizational Commitment

.23 *** .21 *** All 11067

Ordered logit regression for discretionary effort, otherwise OLS. Controls for: age, sex, education, occupational class, contract status, industry, establishment size

Task Discretion and Employee Well-Being

No Controls

With Controls

Survey Years

N (with controls)

Overall Job Satisfaction

.36 *** .38 *** 1992+2006

6400

Psychological Well-Being

.37 *** .42 *** 2001+2006

9931

Ordered logit regression for discretionary effort, otherwise OLS. Controls for: age, sex, education, occupational class, contract status, industry, establishment size

Teamwork

• Was decline in individual task discretion compensated by increase in collective team control?

Team Types

• ‘Semi-autonomous’ vs non-self directing.

• ‘Self-directing’ or ‘Semi-autonomous’ if team has significant influence (average equivalent to of a great deal/ a fair amount of influence on summary team influence score) re: work effort, task control, work methods and quality standards

Trends in Teamwork 1992-2006

1992 2001 2006

Works in team 47.1 55.2 58.9

In non-self directing team

25.7 41.3 44.7

In ‘semi-autonomous team’

21.3 13.9 14.2

N 3424 3973 6947

Implications of Teamwork for Self-Development and Well-Being

• Only ‘semi-autonomous’ teamwork has positive effects for:

- Use of discretionary effort

- Organisational commitment

- Job Satisfaction

- Work Stress

• Employees in ‘non-self directive teamwork’ no different from those not in teams

Is Britain distinctive or does it reflect more general developments in European countries?

Task Discretion

• European Surveys on Working Conditions 1995, 2000, 2005

Are you able to choose or change?

• Your order of tasks• Your methods of work• Your speed or rate of work

Task Discretion in Comparative Perspective ESWC 1995-2005

1995 2005 Change

Denmark 2.47 2.46 -0.01France 2.01 2.02 0.01Finland 2.19 2.24 0.05Germany 1.76 1.81 0.05Ireland 1.87 2.05 0.18

Sweden 2.29 2.39 0.10

Spain 1.71 1.59 -0.12

UK 2.23 1.90 -0.33

EU 15 2.02 2.03 0.01

Teamwork and Team Autonomy

% work in a Team

% in team deciding

task division

% in team deciding head of

team

Denmark 59.5 45.6 23.9

Finland 74.5 54.8 29.0

Germany 60.3 35.8 19.2

Sweden 70.5 54.8 29.8

UK 73.3 37.6 20.9

To Summarize

• Despite expectations of both economic sociology and managerial theory, in Britain rising skills in the workforce have not been accompanied by rising job control.

• This is the case for both individual task discretion and collective team control.

• Paradoxical as job control appears to be linked to higher levels of work motivation as well as employee well-being.

• Why do British employers adopt such policies?

Need for Comparative Research

• Britain appears to be relatively distinctive as there is no evidence of a similar decline in task discretion in the EU15 as a whole and in some countries it has risen.

• Points to the potential importance of different management cultures and, possibly, national policies with respect to work life reform.

• Needs comparative research that can take account of influence of meso and macro institutional structures on employer policies and employee experiences.

• Best achieved through development of comparative employer-employee surveys.

Some key questions

• Do employers have well-defined ‘work organisation policies’ and, if so, do they vary systematically between countries?

• Are different policies reflected in employee experiences of their influence?

• What affects the policies employers adopt – prevailing mgt paradigms, economic environment, regulative system?

• What are their implications for organisational performance, employee retention and work stress?