Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480-487)
THE WORK
FOUNDATION
18 JANUARY 2005
Q480 Judy Mallaber: How much evidence
do you have on what response there is from employers if they ask
to change their working hours in either of those directions?
Ms Jones: We do not have a great
deal of evidence specifically on what happens if you try to increase
your hours. When we ask people why they are working the hours
they are—and we did a survey recently on this issue—there
tends to be an emphasis on "My employers would not want me
to work differently" or "My workload will not allow
me to work differently" for those working longer hours. There
seem to be many people who feel that they cannot ask their employer
essentially to change those hours. Certainly with the right to
request flexible working, if you do move to a different way of
working, it is a permanent change in terms and conditions and
that may make it more difficult for somebody, once they have changed
the way they are working, to move back to a different way of working.
Certainly the evidence around careers, when women may move to
part-time working when they have young children—and it does
still tend to be mainly women—the difficulty of actually
getting back into, call it a career track, call it access to training
and to pay rises and promotion, seems to be quite considerable.
Once you move off that full-time track it is quite difficult to
rejoin it. We did a survey and found that two-thirds of people
feel that you should be much more able to take time out during
a career or work differently and be able to return so that you
can progress as far as you are able and still have access to opportunities.
People are starting to feel that things should change.
Q481 Judy Mallaber: Are there any sectors
where it has actually proved possible to do that, to make that
kind of change in working patterns, either to go part time or
to job share or whatever and not lose your career profession,
be able to move back?. Are there any positive examples of that?
Ms Jones: The public sector is
actually fairly good at this; for example, job shares within the
senior civil service. There are not that many, but there are some
and it seems to have worked effectively. Another example, in the
private sector, is a job share store manager role in Boots which
has worked quite effectively. The problem tends to be that the
examples are few and far between and many of the challenges people
cite on job sharing are around finding a partner; on part-time
working, around finding a role where the workload will suit or
the workload can be reorganised to suit. Another example, unfortunately
also from an investment bank, was where somebody was told they
were too senior to take paternity leave; so seniority issues.
Certainly we found barriers, but the public sector is in many
ways leading the way on this and there are some good examples
there. Understanding what some of the barriers are goes back to
these things we have been going on about: work organisation and
job design. These are key skills which managers need and which
many managers just do not have. In a way that goes to the core
of this debate around flexibility, whether it is functional, whether
it is employment, if you are looking at the productivity side,
and we would argue those are the key ones. Understanding how to
reorganise work, how to workforce plan, how to job design are
key and that may be one of the key barriers to people who are
working in a particular way, either full time or part time, shifting
into a different way of working.
Mr Isles: Some of the retailers,
I am thinking of ASDA in particular, have been quite good in offering
a range of flexible benefit, or flexible ways of working to suit
different life stages. I do not know whether there is any data
on people shifting around between them. It is much more to the
idea being that if you have someone coming in at a particular
life stage, they can have an employment contract that suits that
life stage, say term-time working or, for older workers, being
able to take more time off in the winter, that sort of thing.
I have not seen data on movement within an organisation like that.
Ms Jones: What is encouraging
is that we run the employers' work/life balance website and we
have a steering group of employers and they have expressed a real
interest in understanding how they can start providing ways for
people to work differently, take time out, work part time, then
move back into the career track, or into working full time for
the organisation. They are realising that with an ageing workforce,
with more and more women in the workforce—one in five workers
will be mothers by 2010 for example and most of the workforce
growth is going to be women—they are starting to realise
that you cannot write somebody off because they perhaps do not
work in a way that people have always worked. They are losing
some of the people they need and certainly in retail, offering
flexible ways of working is key to them. They have found that
people like B&Q, who offer good flexibility to older workers
and all sorts of different ones are finding there is a link between
that and profit which always gets people's attention.
Q482 Judy Mallaber: B&Q are very
pleased to publicise that as well and say how well they are doing.
Talking about work organisation leads on quite neatly to looking
at agency work. We interviewed Manpower this morning and had an
interesting set of views about the values of agency working. Would
you regard the high use of agency work in the UK as a sign of
a flexible labour market or of poor work organisation and an inability
to invest in the workforce and to organise their work in a way
that does not need agency working?
Mr Isles: I am not sure that I
would agree with the last point you made, that it is necessarily
the labour market not working effectively. I think it is an output
of our particular labour market cultures, because a lot of people
choose to work in temporary work and agency work. The surveys
of satisfaction show quite high rates of job satisfaction for
those people who are doing temporary and agency work where compared,
certainly with full-time workers and even with part-time workers,
who usually have higher levels of job satisfaction being recorded.
It may well be part of the fact that we have a slightly easier,
or the second most flexible, labour market in terms of nominal
flexibility of developed economies, that one of the side problems
of that is that we have a thriving temporary and agency work sector.
It is not necessarily a bad thing. Where it can become a bad thing
is where employers are using it as substitute for posts which
should probably be full-time or permanent posts, where it is inefficient,
either because you need to build up skills and experience and
knowledge and develop staff properly and what you are really doing
is having a series of temporary engagements which do not really
add a huge amount of value. That is where one could arguably say
flexibility has a down side. I think I will leave it at that.
Q483 Judy Mallaber: Would you have any
thoughts about whether what you have just described applies to
certain sectors but not others? Are some using agency workers
in a positive way and others in a way which is really just hiding
the way in which they should be organising themselves?
Ms Jones: I am sure there are
examples of sectors doing both of these things. It is not something
I would know in terms of sectors, but certainly where you could
perhaps see some disadvantages of relying too much on agency workers
is in places like the NHS where many people may move into agency
work because they can get higher wages as agency nurses, which
has an impact on the budget of the NHS. That is an example perhaps
of where agency work can distort the market for employment in
that particular area and actually drive up costs. Nurses should
be able to get higher wages within the NHS arguably rather than
resorting to agency work. Not in terms of a sector, but just in
terms of some of the recent developments in agency work or people
working for themselves, one of the interesting things, in terms
of growth in self-employment, seems to be that many people may
have been given early retirement or may have been made redundant
slightly early and are not wanting to give up. Some people are
suggesting that some of the growth in self-employment is around
people who have decided they want to work for themselves, you
could define them as temporary or agency workers—temporary
workers anyway—doing short-term contracts, going and deciding
to help out with some things and working for themselves rather
than getting back into the labour market. Now that might be because
they cannot get into the labour market, but for some, it seems
to work rather well. In terms of your question on sectors, we
could certainly see whether we could find some more information
for you.
Q484 Mr Berry: One of our witnesses made
the point that in his view labour market flexibility in the UK
was superior to that in Germany and the evidence was that we have
much lower unemployment than there is in Germany. May I ask the
hoary old question? It is true that the UK's employment performance
has been far better than most of Europe, certainly Germany in
recent years. Is it all about labour market flexibility? Is it
all about the macro-economic approach? Is it both of the above
or, fourthly, none of those at all?
Mr Isles: I think a lot of the
stories about the way we have managed macro-economic demand and
those types of institutions, the independent Monetary Policy Committee
and the Bank of England and the setting there compared with what
has happened in Europe. Certainly the German labour market does
suffer from some rigidities which need a forensic approach to
loosening them up and a good dose of applied active labour market
policies in particular ways would probably help. If you look at
want-work rates across Europe and compare France, Germany and
UK, and there are some very good numbers from the TUC, they are
pretty similar. Our unemployed moved onto incapacity benefit on
the whole. According to the labour force survey there were 2.7
million people who would like a job if they thought they could
get one, so I think we have to be quite careful about saying that
we are doing fantastically well. What we have done well is that
we have created lots of jobs and that goes back to the point I
was making about the way we have managed demand in the economy
as a whole. I would put flexibilities lower down the order of
priorities in terms of why that story is so.
Q485 Mr Berry: I cannot resist what I
think is a correction. I think the 2.7 million figure relates
to those who claim incapacity benefit, which is far more than
those who actually receive it, which politicians on all sides
appear to make no distinction between. The survey suggests about
a million of those would seek work. Is that correct?
Mr Isles: Yes; quite right. I
stand corrected.
Mr Berry: Excellent. I have never been
able to do that before from this position.
Judy Mallaber: I am very impressed that
you correct the witness's statistics.
Mr Berry: Good; you are meant to be.
Q486 Judy Mallaber: While on that, if
you had any information at all on any surveys which are being
done about how employers have or have not been able to change
their work practices to assist people with disabilities or incapacity
to go back into work on flexible working patterns, that would
be helpful. I think we are all looking for ways of doing that.
I do not know if you have done any studies on it at all.
Ms Jones: We have done an evaluation
of the Marks and Spencer programme which is not quite the same
as that. It was a programme which provided work experience for
a whole range of groups of people including homeless people and
people with disabilities, so we have done some work on some of
the key barriers to getting people with disabilities working,
some of the enablers. We could certainly send that across. We
are also talking to another big retailer about some of the ways
in which they might be able to make use of their ability to employ
people with disabilities and actually reach out to some of those
who would like work but who may be on incapacity benefit at the
moment. I should be happy to do that.
Q487 Sir Robert Smith: One of the big
challenges a lot of the sectors we looked at say they face is
a skill shortage or recruitment crisis. What, from your experience,
is the view though of them recognising that at the other end of
the scale they have people who they make retire who perhaps still
have plenty to offer the company? What is the view nowadays of
a retirement age? Is it a fictional age, or should people be judged
on their merits whatever their age?
Ms Jones: We would argue that
people should be judged on their merit and their ability to do
the job and age is not necessarily an indication. For example,
I have to resort to an anecdote here, but a debate on Newsnight
argued that older people were unable to use ICT, so would be unable
to lead organisations. It is a gross generalisation, when you
see that one of the key growths in internet usage is so-called
silver surfers. I think some of the assumptions made are absolutely
ridiculous. I think they are still made by employers, but this
is actually where regulation can have a role. The 2006 age discrimination
legislation has got many people very worried about their current
practices and they are looking at their graduate recruitment programmes
right through to pensions and retirement. One of the key challenges
around that is thinking about different ways to use different
people at different stages of their career. For example, if somebody
is aged 50 and is very able to continue working for another 20
years and is one of the most senior people in the organisation,
what about everybody else who is trying to progress, who wants
that role? Many companies may actually encourage people to move
on because of that perhaps, because they have not really thought
about different ways of using people's skills. Again, that goes
back to functional flexibility, task flexibility, thinking about
different ways of using people. For example, they could lead projects,
they could be mentors, there are all sorts of ways. Certainly
I would say that the employers we talked to are a mixed bag in
terms of when people recognise it is an issue in terms of a changing
labour market, when they realise it is an issue because they are
losing good people and whether they really want to tackle it,
because it is quite a big issue.
Mr Isles: I think this is where
the market is going to come into play. If you look at demographic
trends, and we are comparatively better off than some of our European
country partners in this regard, employers are going to have to
rethink their approach to early retirement and discarding people
at 50-55. Where are they going to get their workers from? They
are going to have to look at so-called atypical groups of workers
to get their workforce.
Ms Jones: One of the things to
mention as well, is that it is usually assumed that it is men
over 55 who are the group who are going to suffer particularly
from being made redundant or being forced to retire, when
actually many women over 55 are unemployed. It tends not to be
a group that is focused on quite as much because more women may
stay at home because of caring responsibilities. Certainly the
statistics I have seen suggest that it is a big issue and given
the poverty of many women in retirement, because they have taken
time out to care for dependants, that is an issue which we think
should rise up the agenda much more as well.
Mr Berry: Okay; thank you very much indeed.
That has been very helpful and extremely interesting, so thank
you again.
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