The sixth sweep of the Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS6) is planned to take place in 2011 and a consultation amongst academic users of WERS data on the content of the next survey is now taking place.
Your written comments on the proposals for changes to the content of the questionnaires are requested by Friday 5 March 2010.
Background
The Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS) is a national survey of people at work in Britain. The sixth WERS will be jointly sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), the UK Commission for Employment and Skills (UKCES), Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (BIS), the Advisory Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas), and the National Institute for Economic and Social Research (NIESR) through a grant from the Nuffield Foundation.
Sponsors will identify a fieldwork partner in March when work will begin on finalising questionnaire content.
There have been five sweeps of the survey dating back to 1980, with the most recent survey taking place in 2004. The survey aims are:
- To provide a mapping of employment relations practices in workplaces across Great Britain.
- To monitor changes in those practices over time.
- To bring about a greater understanding of employment relations and the labour market and make the results publicly available through the UK Data Archive.
- To both inform policy development and permit an informed assessment of the effects of public policy.
The survey collects information from: managers with responsibility for employment relations or personnel matters; trade union and other employee representatives where present; and employees. This provides a three-way linked dataset which can be used to look at consistency of response across the main actors as well as areas of perceived difference. In addition the survey incorporates a panel, so that all workplaces that were part of the previous survey will be traced to assess their survival in the intervening period. A sample of these continuing workplaces will be interviewed again as a way of assessing changes in employment relations practices within organisations.
Collecting feedback from WERS users
The structure and overall design of the survey is well established, so the focus of the consultation is primarily on questionnaire content. Background papers containing proposals have been prepared for each of the major data collection instruments (Management Questionnaire, Survey of Employees and Worker Representative Questionnaire) and are attached below. The sponsors would appreciate the views of users on these proposals.
This consultation will run from Friday 12 February until Friday 5 March and a feedback form (MS Word, 42.5kb) has been created to help users provide responses. This form can be returned by e-mail to Scott Court at the Economic and Social Research Council (scott.court@esrc.ac.uk; Tel. 01793 413158).
Feedback on changes to the data collection instruments
Members of the WERS Research Team have prepared a series of consultation papers which give an overview of plans for change to each of the instruments and which users should refer to. Each of the documents takes as a basis the instruments used in the 2004 WERS. Links to these can be found below. Users may wish to refer to the questionnaires used in the 2004 WERS survey which can be viewed online. This website also contains information about the parallel consultation of government users of WERS data.
In particular, respondents are asked to suggest several new questions or topics that could usefully be included in an employment relations survey, and where these would be best placed (management questionnaire, employee questionnaire, worker representative questionnaire). It would be useful if respondents could provide a short narrative outlining the rationale for these new question areas, and whether they see these questions as additional to or replacing existing content.
Respondents are also asked to highlight questions which, if deleted, would pose a 'fatal error' because of implications on key measures or time series, and to identify where changes to questions will pose a serious discontinuity with 2004 data.
Feedback on the sample population
Feedback is also requested on the design of the survey including sampling, sample size and the inclusion of smaller workplaces. In line with earlier WERS surveys, it is planned to draw the 2011 sample from the Inter-departmental Business Register (IDBR) which is maintained by the Office for National Statistics (ONS). This is the highest quality sample frame of organisations and establishments in Britain, with approximately 700,000 local units. ONS have confirmed access to the IDBR for the 2011 survey.
The sampling unit is the local unit which in most instances correspond with the definition of an establishment. The sample in 2004 was drawn from the population of local units with five or more employees, operating in Sections 'D' - 'O' of the Standard Industrial Classification (2003) and located within Great Britain. This represents 89% of all employees and 33% of all workplaces. The sample for WERS excluded workplaces in SIC92 Section 'A' (Agriculture, Hunting and Forestry), Section 'B' (Fishing), Division 10 (Coal mining), Section 'P' (Private Households with Employed Persons) and Section 'Q' (Extra-Territorial Organisations and Bodies) as well as workplaces with less than 5 employees. The main reason for excluding these sectors was primarily due to low sample numbers. Smaller workplaces were excluded because it was considered that these workplaces are less likely to have formal employment practices in place.
Consultation papers
Consultation on the Management Questionnaire (PDF, 119kb) - where the respondent is the senior human resource or personnel manager, or the person with overall responsibility for the workforce. In each workplace a short self completion paper questionnaire is distributed before the interview to collate information on the basic characteristics of the workforce, and a second questionnaire is left at the end of the interview to assess the financial performance of the establishment. Approximately 2,500 interviews are anticipated in 2011, 1,600 newly sampled workplaces and 900 interviewed again from the 2004 sample. An Annotated Manager Questionnaire (PDF, 1.08Mb) with changes highlighted is provided for information.
Consultation on the Survey of Employees (PDF, 137kb) - a confidential self completion survey with a representative group of up to 25 employees, randomly selected from complete employee lists in each establishment participating in the survey. Approximately 25,000 self completion forms are expected in 2011.
Consultation on the Worker Representative Questionnaire (PDF, 136kb) - where the respondent is the senior representative from the largest recognised trade union, or where no union is recognised from the union with the largest number of members at the workplace. Interviews are also undertaken with the most senior non-union employee representative where present. Approximately 1,000 interviews are anticipated in 2011.