Work intensity in Britain: First findings from the Skills and Employment Survey 2017

Green, Francis, Felstead, Alan ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8851-4289, Gallie, Duncan and Henseke, Golo 2018. Work intensity in Britain: First findings from the Skills and Employment Survey 2017. [Project Report]. London: Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies, UCL Institute of Education.

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Abstract

This report shows how the intensity with which people work while doing their jobs has changed in recent years.  The work intensity required in British workplaces continued to increase slowly between 2012 and 2017. Most notably, the proportion of workers in jobs where it was required to work at ‘very high speed’ for most or all of the time rose by 4 percentage points to 31 percent in 2017.  Discretionary work effort has declined since 2012. Among private sector workers, though not among public sector workers, the proportion who report that they put in a lot of effort beyond what the job required underwent a distinct fall – by 7 percentage points – to 63 percent in 2017.  Teachers and nurses are two professional groups that have experienced especially high levels of required work intensification. By 2017, a remarkable 92 percent of teachers strongly agreed that their job requires them to work very hard, up from 82 percent in 2012. Nine out of ten teachers, and nearly three quarters of nurses report that they often or always come home from work exhausted. Both groups are required to devote a much higher work effort than either other professional groups or the rest of the workforce.  The proportion of women working in ‘high strain’ jobs, combining very high work effort with low task discretion and therefore creating an elevated risk of workplace stress, rose by 5 percentage points between 2012 and 2017, to 20 percent.

Item Type:	Monograph (Project Report)
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Publisher:	Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies, UCL Institute of Education
Funders:	ESRC, Cardiff University and Department for Education wtih boost funding from Welsh Government
Last Modified:	24 Oct 2022 07:37
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/115439

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