Tag Archives: Susan-Halford

Five years into Work Futures

We established the Work Futures Research Centre in December 2008 with four co-directors: Professor Susan Halford, Professor Pauline Leonard, Professor Alison Fuller, and Professor Catherine Pope.  Originally supported by the Research Strategy sub-committee of the School of Social Sciences, a year later WFRC became a University Strategic Research Group.

Our objectives are :

–        To build a collaborative, interdisciplinary network for academic research on changing forms of work organisation, workforce change, development and learning, and employment

–        To improve links with employers, policy makers, and other stakeholders outside  the University  to strengthen Work Futures research

–        To inform and influence the agenda for research on Work Futures and position the University of Southampton as a leading centre for this research

Since 2008 members of our WFRC network have raised in excess of £4.5m in funding across 21 research  projects linked to our priorities. Our research has led to over 30 research papers and contributed to different Units of Assessment in the University’s REF2014 submission.

Recent successes include a commissioned scoping study for ESRC, on the ‘New Dynamics of Working’ which will inform research strategy for this major funder. Pauline Leonard and Susan Halford were also  recipients of funding from the inaugural PublicPolicy@Southampton project which led to a symposium at the House of Commons on ‘Gender Equality at Work: How far have we come and how far have we got to go?’ in 2013.

WFRC members developed an innovative undergraduate curriculum module ‘Work and Employment Theory in Practice’ and delivered a multidisciplinary seminar series with the Digital Economy USRG focussed on the role of technology in school-to-work transition.

In September 2013, Alison Fuller left the University of Southampton to take up a new post at the Institute of Education at the University of London ESRC Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies. Alison remains a key collaborator in WFRC and Professor Peter Griffiths has joined us as a co-director. Peter is based in Faculty of Health Sciences and brings further expertise on workforce configuration and organisational policy in health sector to the Centre. Peter is currently working on a major review for NICE about staff-patient ratios in the NHS.

Work Futures for Older Workers

Susan Halford

This edition of the Work Thought Blog was contributed by WFRC chair Susan Halford.

As the 21st century unfolds, it is rapidly becoming clear that most of us – in the West at least – will have to stretch our working lives far further into old age than the recently retiring generations. The steps taken by governments, employers and financial institutions to deal with the ongoing pensions’ crisis means that most of us will simply not be able to afford to retire in our early or mid-60s. Meanwhile, and in any case, the ageing demography of Western nations will demand that older workers stay in the labour market longer to fuel the emergent recovery and beyond.

Nowhere are the demands for older workers going to be more keenly felt than in the healthcare sector, where the conditions described above are greatly exacerbated by the needs of an ageing population for services and care. In short there’s a double whammy: an ageing workforce must meet the demands of an ageing population. To make matters worse, the healthcare sector currently has one of the worst records for long-term sickness and highest rates of early retirement of any sector in the labour market. It’s a triple whammy.

More generally, one thing is clear: we cannot continue to provide healthcare services in the way we have been doing. Whilst the precise solutions vary, there is widespread recognition that the balance between primary and community care must shift, so that fewer people are treated in expensive hospital beds, and that the traditional boundaries between professions and organizations must be breached to enable more flexible, joined up services. And new technologies are being introduced to underpin these changes, promising improved information, that can be used to manage complex patient trajectories, across multiple boundaries and provide detailed management information from which further lessons can be learnt and efficiency improvements made. But here’s the paradox: research across a range of disciplines suggests that the prevalence of early retirements rises in those organizations with the highest levels of change, particularly change linked to technical innovation. To put it bluntly: we have a looming workforce crisis in public healthcare, that will lead to major social crisis if we can’t resolve it, and current changes designed to secure the future of the health care system may only make things worse!

So it is rather important that we begin to unpick the dynamics of this. What is the relationship between organizational change and early retirements? Is this inevitable? And are there ways that we might intervene? The answer depends on how we understand age and ageing. If, as some research has suggested, older workers are simply more conservative and resistant to learning or change then we have a problem and, in healthcare especially, one that may be exaggerated by the physical demands of clinical work. However, recent research by WFRC in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Tromsø suggests a rather different explanation. This three year project with doctors and nurses over 50 years old, including some in retirement, at two large University hospitals in Norway concluded that it is not age per se that leads to early retirement but rather the conditions of work and organization of the workplace that leads to staff feeling under-valued, out-of step and incapable. It is not age that makes these workers resistant to change; its change – and the way it is (mis)managed – that makes these workers feel old. Feeling old, often for the first time, leads to thoughts of retirement. In particular, changes to the organization of work may make certain skills redundant, whilst staff are sometimes expected to just pick up new skills with very little training (especially related to the use of digital systems). Furthermore, the continued organization of working hours around the standard shift pattern can make the work too much for those with physical limitations, as well as those with domestic responsibilities (ageing parents can be as much of a conflicting demand for time and energy as children, but few employers are willing to recognise this). These points are underscored by the many cases that were found in the research where older workers were happily staying in healthcare work. These were the niches where older workers skills were still valued, where training and support was given, and where line managers made special arrangements to enable appropriate working hours and responsibilities (albeit ‘below the radar’ of senior managers). Notably, the research found that working conditions for nurses were far more likely to produce age than those for doctors reflecting – perhaps – the greater autonomy and higher status of the medical profession and the associated capacity to achieve concessions e.g. reduced hours. Note too the gendering of these professions.

Overall then the challenges of an ageing workforce are not primarily about age, in and of itself, they are about how we design work, how we structure our workplaces and what we expect of our staff. Whilst these points may be very familiar in relation to previous debates about gender at work, to date we have barely scratched the surface in thinking about them in relation to age and ageing. Now is the time to so, to support those of us who must continue working into later years and to ensure that we retain a skilled and committed workforce to care for all of us into the future.

Digital technology, learner identities and school-to-work transitions

A new interdisciplinary project aims to help young people with the transition from school to work.

The project entitled Digital technology, learner identities and school-to-work transitions in England and Germany, will run from February to October 2013.

An interdisciplinary working group will explore the role of the digital technology in the formation of learner identities, learning cultures and in school-to-work transitions and a series of seminars with national and international speakers are planned. The ultimate aim remains to develop a research proposal to the Economic and Social Research Council.

Southampton Education School’s Dr Michaela Brockmann and Professor Alison Fuller, alongside Professor Susan Halford and Professor Pauline Leonard in Social Sciences, have received an award from the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences’ Strategic Interdisciplinary Research Development Fund.

Dr Michaela Brockmann is also the English partner in the large EU Leonardo-da-Vinci Project, ‘Retail Sector Competencies’ (ReSeCo): Developing self and social competencies in vocational training for the retail sector, co-ordinated by Professor Matthias Pilz at the University of Cologne and involving partners in Germany, England, Poland and Italy.

This project aims to develop the personal and social competencies of young people and to help facilitate transition from school to work. One of the key outcomes will be a module handbook for use in colleges across Europe.

 

Contact Details:

Further details can be found on the WFRC website: www.southampton.ac.uk/wfrc/

Please contact Dr Michaela Brockmann M.Brockmann@soton.ac.uk for full details of all events.

 

Useful DOWNLOADS:

Seminar 1: Introductory Session

Seminar 2: Practitioner Perspectives

Seminar 3: Perspectives of Employers in the Field of IT

Project details available here.