Employers Squandering the Talents of Workers

LONDON - Too many employers are poorly equipped to weather the recession because
they use workers’ skills and talents poorly, tie them up in rules and
procedures, and give them little say over how they do their work, The Work
Foundation says today.

A major new survey of the work-lives of 2011 workers found that:

- 40 per cent of employees have more skills than their jobs
require

- 65 per cent of workers said the primary characteristic of the
organisations they worked for was ‘rule and policy bound’ - though
just five per cent said this was their preference

- 40 per cent said they had little or no flexibility over the hours
they worked

- 20 per cent of graduates are in ‘low knowledge content’ jobs

Ian Brinkley, co-author of the Knowledge Workers and Knowledge Work
report, and associate director at The Work Foundation, said: ‘So far in this
recession employers have been reluctant to lose the skills, talents and
experience of their workforces. Yet at the same time they seem to be failing
to make the most of them. Many people could be doing more, but are denied the
chance to do so.

‘To keep job losses to a minimum, organisations should be taking full
advantage of widespread opportunities to give people more responsibility,
move away from rules and procedure-based workplace cultures, and re-organise
work and use new technologies to give individuals more flexibility over
hours. More autonomy for people and less intensive management should be the
order of the day - in other words greater use of the principles of good work.
Trapping so many workers in roles in which their skills and abilities are
poorly matched with their jobs is a waste both of economic potential and
human possibility.’

Researchers analysed how often the representative sample of workers
undertook 186 different tasks in the course of their work with a view to
understanding the ‘knowledge content’ or ‘cognitive complexity’ of work
across the UK. The survey is novel in that it examines work through the tasks
it involves, rather than by occupation, skill level or industry.

Findings of the report include:

- The UK has a ‘30-30-40′ shaped workforce: 30 per cent of jobs
have a high knowledge content (requiring greater cognitive complexity),
30 per cent have some knowledge content, and 40 per cent have less
knowledge content.*

- Across the UK, the ten most common tasks that people do in their
work are, in order: people management, data and analysis, administrative
tasks, work with products, perception and precision tasks (such as
judging the speed of moving objects, judging location and visually
identifying objects), leadership, caring, repairing and moving, creative
tasks, and personal and domestic tasks.

- There is little evidence for the move to a more ‘knowledge
intensive’ work environment bringing with it a ‘transformation’ in work
relationships and practices. Knowledge workers were no more likely to be
in self-employed, part-time or ‘portfolio’-type jobs than others, and job
tenures were also similar. In total, three quarters of participants
worked regular nine-to five jobs with knowledge intensive jobs more
likely than others to conform to this pattern.

- Knowledge workers had greater flexibility than others: up to 60
per cent had some choice over hours. However, only 10 per cent of
knowledge workers had complete flexibility over their schedules. By
contrast, among those in the least knowledge intensive jobs, fewer than
40 per cent had any flexibility over setting their working arrangements.

Notes to Editors

1. The report, Knowledge Workers and Knowledge Work, is available from
The Work Foundation.

2. Ian Brinkley is available for interview.

3. The survey drew on responses from 2011 people, representative of the
demographic characteristics of the UK working population (according to the
Labour Force Survey). All participants worked a minimum of 20 hours per week
in one job for at least three months.

4. * The key test of cognitive complexity required for each task was the
use of high level ‘tacit’ knowledge - knowledge that resides in people’s
minds rather than being written down (or codified) in manuals, guides, lists
and procedures. Classifying UK workers by the tasks they do (rather than
occupation or qualification level) results in seven key groups of workers.
They are: ‘leaders and innovators’ (11 per cent); ‘experts and analysts’
(22.1 per cent); ‘information handlers’ (12.8 per cent); ‘care and welfare
workers’ (7.5 per cent); ’servers and sellers’ (7 per cent); ‘maintenance and
logistics operators’ (11.3 per cent); and ‘assistants and clerks’ (28.3 per
cent). We describe the two highest knowledge groups as our ‘core’ knowledge
workers. These high intensity knowledge jobs combined high level cognitive
activity with high level management tasks.

5. The Work Foundation is a research and consultancy organisation.

Source: The Work Foundation

Media inquiries to Stephen Overell on +44-(0)207-976-3507 or +44-(0)7970-765251.