Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Register
Log in
Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+

Personnel Today

Hard reality is that ‘soft’ issues matter

by Personnel Today 9 Apr 2002
by Personnel Today 9 Apr 2002

For more than 80 years, The Industrial Society campaigned to improve the
quality of working life, emphasising the high performance potential of any
organisation that had the capacity to enthuse its workforce by respecting its
humanity.

The Industrial Society’s renewal as The Work Foundation takes that vision
and places it at the heart of the productivity debate.

How to increase the productivity levels of our workforce has become the
Government’s core economic problem. The apparent health of the UK economy – low
unemployment and commendable job creation – masks a dangerous and growing
productivity deficit compared to the US and our principal European trading
partners.

The UK has more work, but the majority of our workplaces are not especially
productive. Nor are they especially happy. Yesterday, The Work Foundation
released research showing that the level of worker satisfaction with their
prospects, pay levels, hours worked, and workload have all roughly halved –
some from a very low base. The largest fall has been in satisfaction with
working hours. The next largest has been in satisfaction with workload. There
is not a single item defining the core of their economic and psychological
contract on which satisfaction levels have not deteriorated.

The accepted solution to the productivity challenge has been to focus on the
input base and supply side of the economy – investments in new technology and
people, and the growth of knowledge work, for example. That these have not
generated the step changes that we have been led to expect indicates that only
half the story is being told.

The Work Foundation’s contention is that poor productivity and workplace
organisation leading to disaffected workforces are different sides of the same
coin.

What is needed is a workplace that binds employees, shareholders and other
stakeholders to a common vision, with the resulting commitment to the
organisation’s performance becoming the fulcrum of the business rather than
immediate high returns to shareholders. Unfortunately, in too many
organisations, the toolbox of social capabilities to help to produce such an
outcome – time and place sovereignty for workers, recognising and rewarding
their creative potential, service-centred leadership, a coaching culture and
social responsibilities – are dismissed as ‘soft’ against the ‘hard’
proposition of maximising the bottom line.

The paradox is that companies that are built to last and generate sustained
profits all instinctively find ways to boost employee commitment by taking such
‘soft’ propositions seriously.

By Will Hutton, Chief executive, The Work Foundation

Avatar
Personnel Today

previous post
HSE gets to heart of stress problems at work
next post
Government acts to prop up faltering IIP

You may also like

Grants scheme set up to support women’s health...

16 May 2022

How music can help to ease anxiety at...

9 May 2022

OH will be key to navigating ‘second pandemic’...

14 Apr 2022

OH urged to be aware of abortion consultations...

8 Apr 2022

How coached eCBT is returning the workplace to...

8 Apr 2022

Why now is the time to plug the...

7 Apr 2022

Two-thirds of shift workers feel health affected by...

18 Mar 2022

TUC warns of April Covid risk assessment ‘confusion’

14 Mar 2022

Consultation on new NHS cancer standards, as waits...

11 Mar 2022

Pandemic pivot to home working fuelled mental ill...

11 Mar 2022
  • Apprenticeships are the solution to your recruitment problems PROMOTED | Apprenticeships have the pulling power...Read more
  • What it really means to be mentally fit PROMOTED | What is mental fitness...Read more
  • How music can help to ease anxiety at work PROMOTED | A lot has happened since March 2020, hasn’t it?...Read more
  • Why now is the time to plug the unhealthy gap PROMOTED | We’ve all heard the term ‘health is wealth’...Read more

Personnel Today Jobs
 

Search Jobs

PERSONNEL TODAY

About us
Contact us
Browse all HR topics
Email newsletters
Content feeds
Cookies policy
Privacy policy
Terms and conditions

JOBS

Personnel Today Jobs
Post a job
Why advertise with us?

EVENTS & PRODUCTS

The Personnel Today Awards
The RAD Awards
Employee Benefits
Forum for Expatriate Management
OHW+
Whatmedia

ADVERTISING & PR

Advertising opportunities
Features list 2022

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • Linkedin


© 2011 - 2022 DVV Media International Ltd

Personnel Today
  • Home
    • All PT content
    • Advertise
  • Email sign-up
  • Topics
    • HR Practice
    • Employee relations
    • Equality, diversity and inclusion
    • Learning & training
    • Pay & benefits
    • Wellbeing
    • Recruitment & retention
    • HR strategy
    • HR Tech
    • The HR profession
    • Global
    • All HR topics
  • Legal
    • Case law
    • Commentary
    • Flexible working
    • Legal timetable
    • Shared parental leave
    • Redundancy
    • Maternity & Paternity
    • TUPE
    • Disciplinary and grievances
    • Employer’s guides
  • AWARDS
    • Personnel Today Awards
    • The RAD Awards
    • OHW Awards
  • Jobs
    • Find a job
    • Jobs by email
    • Careers advice
    • Post a job
  • XpertHR
    • Learn more
    • Products
    • Pricing
    • Free trial
    • Subscribe
    • XpertHR USA
  • Webinars
  • OHW+