In December 2006, the Department of Trade and Industry examined the nature of job quality in the UK using nationally representative survey data from 1998 and 2004. In doing so, it focused partially on issues relating to employee stress and effort. Significantly, there appears to be little change in work intensity levels between the two survey dates, but stress levels are reported to be on the increase.
A recent report from the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), entitled Changing job quality in Great Britain: 1998–2004 (592Kb PDF), revealed some evidence of improvements in job quality between 1998 and 2004, compared with the general deterioration in job quality in the 1990s. Key areas of the workplace under investigation included:
Despite improvements in many areas, effort levels remained high relative to the 1990s while stress levels increased between 1998 and 2004.
The report was based on secondary analysis of the 1998 and 2004 Work Employment Relations Survey (WERS) which has three key components: employee, management and panel (2004) surveys. The report’s authors used statistical significance tests to assess whether observed differences in the 1998 and 2004 results were the result of real changes in the working population, as opposed to changes resulting from differences in the two years’ samples.
The WERS employee survey requests participants to respond to three questions related to stress and effort (see Table, column one).
| Strongly agree | Agree | Neither agree nor disagree | Disagree | Strongly disagree | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| My job requires that I work hard1 | 1998 | 26.2 | 49.8 | 19.2 | 4.9 | 0.4 |
| 2004 | 27.5 | 48.8 | 18.2 | 5.0 | 0.5 | |
| I never seem to have enough time to get work done2 | 1998 | 14.0 | 26.0 | 31.6 | 25.5 | 2.9 |
| 2004 | 14.2 | 26.1 | 30.3 | 26.1 | 3.3 | |
| I worry a lot about work outside of work hours3 | 1998 | 5.7 | 17.8 | 22.2 | 35.2 | 18.3 |
| 2004 | 6.7 | 19.9 | 23.1 | 24.2 | 16.1 |
Notes: 1 = Base (workplaces with 10 or more employees): 27,735 employees (1998) and 21,317 employees (2004); 2 = Base (workplaces with 10 or more employees): 27,449 employees (1998) and 21,114 employees (2004); 3 = Base (workplaces with 10 or more employees): 27,402 employees (1998) and 21,001 employees (2004).
Source: Adapted from WERS 1998 and 2004
The questions provide only broad indications of levels of employee stress and effort. An investigation by the report’s authors of the relationship between the three variables found it to be unreliable. However, separate analyses of each variable revealed only a statistical significant change in employees’ responses to the third question – ‘I worry a lot about work outside of work hours’. The percentage of ‘strongly agree’ responses rose one percentage point to 6.7% and the number of those who ‘agreed’ with the statement increased by 2.1 percentage points to 19.9%, with similar decreases in the percentages of employees who ‘disagreed’ or ‘strongly disagreed’ with the statement. Change in the responses to questions one and two were statistically insignificant. The responses of both men and women to each statement were predominantly in line with the overall findings.
The reports findings indicate that work intensity levels have remained largely unchanged between 1998 and 2004 while stress levels increased over the same period. Despite the report’s overall view that there has been an improvement in job quality since the 1990s, the continuing rise in workplace stress remains a general cause for concern.
Michael Frize, University of Warwick