NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH. RESEARCHER: EMPLOYMENT AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS Qualitative or qualitative/quantitative researcher

Transcription

1 NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL RESEARCH RESEARCHER: EMPLOYMENT AND EMPLOYMENT RELATIONS Qualitative or qualitative/quantitative researcher The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) is one of Britain s most influential and prestigious independent research centres. It specialises in applied social and economic research, using both qualitative and quantitative methods. NIESR is looking for a researcher to work in employment and employment relations. The recruit would join a group of employment researchers whose interests include employment relations, unemployment and disadvantage in the labour market. The appointee will work half their time on a major threeyear research council-funded study within the Extending Working Lives programme. The study will investigate the management of employment change following the abolition of the mandatory retirement age and changes in the state and public sector pension provision. The research will comprise a large-scale study of the NHS, with case studies in several NHS Trusts, investigating employee and management responses in depth. The study is multi-disciplinary, conducted jointly with Leicester University (Professor Peter Nolan) and Bath University (Dr Andrew Weyman). The appointee will work the rest of their time on a range of studies. Candidates should be of high academic calibre, with a strong interest in applied employment relations and employment policy research. They should normally have a good relevant degree and a post-graduate qualification, together with evidence of employment-related study (e.g. courses/research in industrial relations, industrial sociology, labour economics, human resourcing). They should be capable of conducting semi-structured interviews with employers and employees. Quantitative skills would be an advantage. Starting salary in the range of 24,821 to 28,436 depending on qualifications and experience. In addition, NIESR contributes 16% to a pension scheme for all staff. Applications should be made using the application form downloadable from the Institute s website where further details are available. CVs alone will not be considered. Applications should be ed to m.ockenden@niesr.ac.uk with 'Researcher, Employment and Employment Relations' in the subject line by 11 September 2014.

2 Further details NIESR is seeking a researcher to join a small team of researchers specialising in employment and education. The research of the team is wideranging, according to researchers interests and funding opportunities. Research interests of the team focus on disadvantage in the labour market, education and careers, the role of employer s policies and practices and labour market policy. The majority of the research is sponsored by government departments and agencies, the ESRC and charitable foundations including the Nuffield and Joseph Rowntree Foundations. Studies vary in length and the team uses a wide range of research methods, including the design and analysis of large scale surveys, analysis of major data sets and qualitative approaches, including interviewing and case study research. The researcher will work half their time on a three-year research councilfunded study within the Extending Working Lives programme. The study will investigate the management of employment change in the National Health Service following the abolition of the mandatory retirement age and changes in the state and public sector pension provision. The project is being conducted jointly with Leicester University (Professor Peter Nolan) and Bath University (Dr Andrew Weyman). The researcher will work the rest of their time on a range of studies in employment and education and is likely to work on several studies at any time. Fieldwork for the team's research often takes place across the country, so the appointee must be flexible over working hours and may occasionally need to stay away overnight. The researcher will join a multi-disciplinary team of sociologists and economists. They will be expected to carry out research tasks within the scope of their experience to a high professional standard and to take responsibility for these tasks under the general guidance of a senior researcher. They will need to be willing to be flexible and to work in a team, and have versatility in skills and/or be willing to learn new skills. Training and support are given to individuals to develop their research skills and to assume greater responsibility in research projects and for dissemination of findings. In time, individuals are expected to take increasing responsibility for the development of research proposals and to acquire funding. Training and assistance will be given to researchers to develop these skills. Staff have the option of joining the USS pension scheme.

3 Extending Working Lives in the NHS: Opportunities, Challenges and Prospects University of Leicester University of Bath National Institute for Economic and Social Research Funder Medical Research Council Summary Demographic shifts, in the UK and the EU have prompted policymakers to call for new measures to promote the prolongation of paid working life. Policy changes are being introduced as a matter of urgency in many European countries to encourage longer working lives, yet there are significant gaps in our knowledge and understanding of the key social, economic and organisation specific factors that variously promote and inhibit the conditions necessary to secure more years and healthier working lives. This research will investigate the management of employment change in the National Health Service following the abolition of the mandatory retirement age and aligned changes in the state and public sector pension provision. The research will be undertaken during the critical years of transition ( ) and will thus provide a mapping and interpretation of the significance of management, trade union and employee responses to the pension regime shift. As such, it will deliver valuable new evidence and insights into how a complex, high profile public organisation is responding to the dual challenges of an ageing workforce and increased demands for high quality, cost-effective service provision. The research will investigate the foundations of deep-rooted assumptions and concerns about the practical possibilities of longer paid employment in stressful and physically demanding roles. Are workers less effective than their younger counterparts? What are the key considerations that shape the retirement decisions of older workers? Can the goals of increasing productivity and efficiency be reconciled with longer working lives in ways that are sustainable, fair and equitable? What combinations of management practices and employment policies might best promote the internal flexibilities that can reconcile these critical policy objectives? Concerns in the NHS about the implications of the rise in the occupational pension age are rooted in commonly held beliefs about extending working lives. The most salient are that: on average, employees will work longer in some jobs, work demands will be problematic for older staff, preventing continuation in that job, damaging health and, in safety-critical jobs, patient safety and staff may suffer

4 productivity may decline (i.e. there are widely held beliefs that workers performance declines above a certain age) and/or the marginal cost of employing or retaining an older worker will rise, thus potentially upwardly biasing the cost structure of service provision; management flexibility to select and deploy human resources may be constrained and/or distorted, for example, by the availability of alternative or flexible work. There are conflicting (and as yet ungrounded) assumptions about the likely impact on employees health and well-being. For some employees health and well-being may benefit from longer working, whilst others may decline (the tension between work is good for you and work damages health, particularly as applied to physically demanding or stressful work).as the revised pension entitlements are by definition new, the existing research base is unable to illuminate these issues. Novelty of the research The NHS is the world s largest publicly-funded health service and as such provides a critical reference point for the generation of new knowledge and understandings of how organisations are responding to the challenges of the ageing workforce. Can working lives be extended in ways that reconcile the possibly conflicting aims of supporting and promoting health and well-being on the one hand and the quality and efficiency of production and service provision on the other? Is it possible to identify the management practices and employment systems that best promote the internal organisational flexibilities that serve to reconcile these critical policy objectives? The raising of the NHS pension age to 66 (2020) and 68 years (2028), depending on occupation, is potentially a large-scale shock to the NHS employment system. This dynamic setting provides a unique opportunity to derive rich contextual insights into the implications of an ageing workforce for working-life longevity, healthy ageing and public service performance. Findings will be of high relevance to stakeholders within and beyond the health sector, but particularly to those in large complex organisations. We view the NHS, with its age-diverse workforce, complexity, breadth of activity and high dependence on cooperative teams, as a valuable case study for broader learning in this area. The research will comprise three distinctive but complementary stands of activity. (1) Exploration of processes underlying age-wage-productivity dynamics through a mixture of quantitative and qualitative research at Trust and occupational level. led by Leicester (2) Examination of the information of employee beliefs and knowledge (mental models) and impacts on decision making over later working life and retirement planning. A key focus is how aspects of the decision architecture rooted in employer practices impact on employee behaviour

5 at key points of transition in career pathways, retirement planning and pension choices. led by Bath (3) Exploration of the role of NHS work and employment structures and human resource policies in constructing and constraining present and future NHS age- employment profiles. Here the accent will be on the wider, macrostructures of management and employment organisation rather than individual choice variables.- led by NIESR Principal researchers: Peter Nolan, Professor of Work and Employment Futures, University of Leicester, has expertise in labour economics and employment relations, and is Chair of the `Work and Productivity Research Group' of the EU Joint Programme Initiative, More Years, Better Lives. He was formerly ( ) the Director of the ESRC Future of Work Programme and has researched on pay and productivity dynamics in production and service sectors. Dr Andrew Weyman, Organisational psychologist, University of Bath, has expertise in the psychology of risk, risk management, decision-making, behaviour and cultural change. His most recent work has been in the area of risk-based approaches to working longer. He was lead author on the DWP project Extending Working Life-Behaviour Change Interventions (2012) and is currently leading a review of good practice in managing an ageing workforce for the NHS Working Longer Review. Hilary Metcalf, Director of Employment and Social Policy Research, National Institute of Economic and Social Research, has expertise in employment relations and human resource policies and practices, including in relation to age. She has been researching the role of age in employment since the beginning of the 1990s. Most recently, she designed and analysed nationally representative surveys of employers policies, practices and preferences to assess the effect of the age equality legislation and to inform policy over the default retirement age (for the DWP).

6 Person Specification General Essential A post-graduate or undergraduate degree which included some employment or employment-related focus (for example, human resourcing, employment relations, industrial relations, industrial sociology, labour economics). Desirable Research interest in employment relations or employment policy or age and employment. Good communication skills. Good analytical skills. Good writing skills. The ability to conduct literature reviews. Flexibility over subject matter of research. Willingness to work under the constraints imposed by contract research (e.g. working to deadlines and focus on the aims of the research as set by the contract). Flexibility over hours and willingness to stay away overnight occasionally. Expertise in employment and ageing. Research experience in an employment-related subject. Research interest in disadvantage in employment or education. Qualitative research skills Essential Ability to conduct qualitative semi-structured interviews investigating human resource issues with employers Desirable Ability to conduct qualitative semi-structured interviews with employees. Good personal skills: to gain the participation of respondents, including employers. Experience of gaining participation of respondents in research and of setting up interviews Experience of conducting qualitative interviews and case studies. Competence in analysing qualitative material. Quantitative research skills Desirable A theoretical grounding in econometrics or statistics, including multi-variate analysis. Experience of conducting statistical analysis, including multi-variate analysis. Competence in the use of a statistical package for data analysis (including multi-variate analysis) Evidence of statistical/computing ability.