Publications

Job quality, or the promotion of good work, is a ‘hot topic’.  It has featured as a prominent element in three separate government reports published in the space of eight months.  This began with the publication of the Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices in July 2017.  One of its recommendations was that ‘more effort…

The aim of this Briefing is two-fold.  First, it provides data users with a concise and succinct outline of the fieldwork protocols and outcomes used to produce the Skills and Employment Survey 2017 (SES2017).  A fuller account can be found in the Technical Report provided by GfK which is available on the project web site.[1] …

The article examines the implications of direct participation for employees’ organisational commitment, job satisfaction and affective psychological well-being. It focuses on both task discretion and organisational participation. Applying fixed effect models to nationally representative longitudinal data, the study provides a more rigorous assessment of the conflicting claims for the effects of participation that have hitherto…

Employers, workers and governments all have a stake in improving intrinsic job quality since it can help to raise worker well-being and lower the social costs of ill-health. This article provides a unique insight into factors triggering changes to two key aspects of intrinsic job quality – the skills used and developed at work, and…

Drawing on nationally representative data for British employees, the article argues for a more comprehensive concept of job insecurity, including not only job tenure insecurity but also job status insecurity, relating to anxiety about changes to valued features of the job. It shows that job status insecurity is highly prevalent in the workforce and is…

The book provides the first systematic assessment of trends in inequality in job quality in Britain over recent decades. It assesses the pattern of change drawing on the nationally representative Skills and Employment Surveys (SES) carried out at regular intervals from 1986 to 2012. These surveys collect data from workers themselves, thereby providing a unique…

The conventional focus on the training participation rate, rather than training volume, in official statistics and research has obscured a radical transformation in workers’ training in Britain. To obtain a picture of the trend in training volume, we synthesize a narrative through a new analysis of multiple surveys. The duration of training fell sharply with…

The creation of a learning environment at work has been seen as an essential concomitant of the growth of an advanced economy. This article explores the implications of direct participation for different types of employee learning, drawing upon the British Skills and Employment Surveys of 2006 and 2012. It confirms that direct participation is strongly…

The resource-based view (RBV) of the firm has focused attention on the importance of aligning employees’ needs with the requirements of the jobs they do. This article focuses on how these needs and requirements interact in terms of learning. It does so in two ways. First, it develops new survey instruments to capture the learning…

We study how job-related well-being (measured by Warr’s ‘Enthusiasm’ and ‘Contentment’ scales) altered through the Great Recession, and how this is related to changing job quality. Using nationally representative data for Britain, we find that job-related well-being was stable between 2001 and 2006, but then declined between 2006 and 2012. We report relevant changes in…