Workplace Change...What's Going On?
Buzzwords abound - the high performance workplace, the just-in-time worker, the flexible firm. Is it all just talk or are there fundamental changes happening in Canadian workplaces? The Workplace and Employee Survey (WES) will answer that important question and many others.
The Applied Research Branch has contracted with Statistics Canada to develop and conduct the survey. Beginning in the Fall of 1995, a pilot survey will involve up to 1000 employers and 5000 employees.
Here's a quick sampling of the issues WES will examine:
- How are firms changing their organizations to respond to competitive pressures? How do these changes impact on employees?
- Do firms that introduce greater amounts of technology also fund more employee training? Or do they simply hire more highly-trained workers?
- Do labour relations practices affect a firm's performance?
- Do multinational firms provide different kinds of workplaces than domestic organizations?
- Do workplace policies vary among industries?
WES is an exciting survey innovation for three reasons:
- It will allow researchers to examine an important "missing link" in our labour market knowledge. Until now, most research examining labour market outcomes such as unemployment has been focused on what is going on with the supply of labour. Now researchers will be able to assess how the behaviour of employers contributes to these outcomes.
- The survey will link data on employers and employees. For the first time in Canada, researchers will have the ability to examine how the characteristics, decisions and behaviour of employers and employees affect one another.
- On successful completion of a pilot survey, consideration will be given to implementing the survey longitudinally. That is, the same employers and employees will be surveyed over time to see how their situations evolve. This longitudinal survey will be a vital tool for tracking the changing nature of work and workplaces in Canada.
The pilot survey will consist of personal interviews with employers at their workplaces and telephone interviews of employees. Each party will be asked questions pertaining to their respective functions. Questions will focus on job organization and characteristics, workplace training and development, compensation, collective bargaining, business strategy - to name a few.
WES - and the tools it uses - will form an important Canadian contribution to the OECD project on the Flexible Enterprise: Human Resource Implications under the auspices of the OECD's Technology, Productivity and Employment study. This study, currently in progress, will contribute to a report to OECD Ministers in 1996.
...Stay tuned!
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