CIPD''s annual employee attitudes survey

Shows UK workers are still satisfied with work - but don''t trust bosses.

The latest survey into employee attitudes from people management experts the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) shows that most workers are satisfied with their work, with three out of four people saying they are satisfied rather than dissatisfied.

However, it also confirms a long-term trend of declining satisfaction and this is more marked in the public sector. While satisfaction among private sector workers declined between 2001 and 2002, it still remains slightly higher than in the public sector.

While the findings are generally positive when it comes to workplace satisfaction, they also show that UK workers do not believe that their organisations or senior executives necessarily have their best interests at heart. Trust in senior management is not particularly high: only one in three people trust senior management a lot to look after their best interests.

The proportion of younger workers aged between 25-29 who express significant levels of trust in senior management is lower still at only 1 in 5. Substantially more people in both the public and private sectors are willing to trust their immediate line manager than to trust the organisation as a whole. Over half of those surveyed say their performance is being measured all the time, and more than a quarter say they are under constant observation.

The survey, launched today at the institute''s Psychology at Work Conference, Pressure at Work and the Psychological Contract is the eighth annual survey of over 1000 employees in the UK private and public sector. The survey provides a consistent baseline against which UK organisations can benchmark their own employee relations and explores trends in employee attitudes to work and relationships with managers and colleagues.

Mike Emmott, CIPD Adviser on Employee Relations says: The general picture is that employee attitudes seem to be fairly stable. However, senior managers need to work much harder to win the confidence of the people they lead and manage. They must show that they care about the interests and well-being of their employees.

Many people feel that they are under constant scrutiny and these people are much more likely to feel dissatisfied and under stress than other workers.

These negative results arise from managers'' failure to create a climate of trust and an over-rigid style of management which discourages innovation.

Emmott adds: It''s not all bad news - there is encouraging evidence that senior managers across the public sector are beginning to address the key issues. The job of lifting morale is not an overnight task - but we know, from our work with a number of public sector organisations, that there are encouraging examples of outstanding leadership and effective work teams right across the sector.



Key findings

Satisfaction with life as a whole is higher than satisfaction with work: only 10 per cent of the sample as a whole registered negative responses to this question.

Stress levels are significantly higher in the public than in the private sector. The highest stress levels are in the NHS (38 percent) and local government (30 percent) compared with only 21 percent in the private sector. Those reporting a better state of their psychological contract are also more likely to report higher satisfaction and commitment and lower stress.

Satisfaction with work life balance has been increasing in the private sector over the last three years. There has also been a significant increase in satisfaction in the public sector over the last 12 months but no clear trend over the longer period. These findings reflect increased use of family-friendly policies and practices in both public and private sectors.

More employees now report that management is trying to make their jobs as interesting and varied as possible. But there has been a decline in the use of work teams, quality improvement teams and general involvement programmes.

The proportion of people who feel involved in workplace decision-making has gone down dramatically over the last 6 years, from about two out of three to two out of five. This may reflect the fact that managers are placing less reliance on collective machinery and making use of more informal methods to secure commitment.

The scope for direct participation by employees has increased over the years. Contrary to some suggestions, there is no indication from our research that workers feel that management control over their day-to-day work is getting tighter. Four out of five people say they have enough freedom and control in their job.

There is no evidence of any consistent change in levels of commitment since 1996 when CIPD began to monitor attitudes on this dimension. If there is a trend in the private sector, it has been upwards. The picture in the public sector is more mixed, with an increase in one period followed by a fall at another.

There is a consistent trend in both public and private sectors of organisations getting better at delivering on their promises and commitments to employees. This appears to be taking place across the range of issues addressed by the survey. This may imply that managers are paying more attention to establishing a positive psychological contract.

There has been a modest but consistent trend towards increased job security in the public sector since 1997. There has been no consistent change in the private sector in this period.

Once more the psychological contract turns out to be worse in the public than in the private sector. Levels of satisfaction, trust and commitment are all lower in the public sector. This negative picture of the state of morale in the public sector reinforces that in the recent Audit Commission report1.

The survey underlines the scale of the job to be done in modernising government. People working in central government departments and agencies consistently display more negative attitudes than those in other sectors. For example, only 7 per cent of people in central government believe strongly that the organisation cares about my opinions. 2 out of 5 feel fairly treated by their mangers and supervisors compared with more than half in other sectors. Nearly 50 per cent say that what happens at work isn''t really important, it''s just my job - 3 times the percentage in the NHS.

The good news is that public sector workers say they feel more fairly treated compared with last year. They are also more likely to feel that promises have been kept. This probably reflects the additional funding that has been put into the public sector, and more willing recognition of the job which public sector workers do.





* The research was carried out by Professor David Guest of The Management Centre, Kings College, University of London and Dr Neil Conway of the School of Management and Organisational Psychology, Birkbeck College, London. 1000 workers were surveyed. The survey explores workers'' perceptions of their current employment relationship, based on the concept of the psychological contract. It is the latest in an annual series of surveys on the employment relationship conducted by the CIPD. The responses were obtained through telephone interview.