UK managers feel quality of working life diminish

Citation

(2001), "UK managers feel quality of working life diminish", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 20 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jmd.2001.02620cab.002

UK managers feel quality of working life diminish

UK managers feel quality of working life diminish

"The one thing we can be sure of is change" is a 1990s truism repeated often enough to now become a cliché. But in many cases, change has not been for the better.

The fourth Quality of Working Life report, a survey of over 1,500 UK managers, has found morale, loyalty, motivation and security to be in particularly short supply.

The report was produced by the Institute of Management and the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology. It found that 39 per cent of managers said morale was not good overall in their organizations, and 42 per cent felt their organizations had not become better places to work over the past 12 months.

Another consistent finding over the last four years has been the necessity of UK managers to work long hours. Three-quarters said this was the only way to deal with the workload; 64 per cent said long hours "were part of the organization's culture"; and 55 per cent said it was expected of them by their employer.

However, there are clear signs that managers are becoming increasingly resistant to working long hours to the detriment of their home lives. In 1997, 25 per cent saw home as more important than work and this has increased each year to 32 per cent in 2000. It is especially pronounced at lower levels of the hierarchy – 45 per cent of junior managers and 42 per cent of middle managers now think work is less important than home.

Half the respondents are concerned about their employability in the wider job market, with 79 per cent regarding their career development as "down to me"; 44 per cent are concerned about not having the right skills and a similar number are inclined to change jobs to pursue their career. The number of those inclined to work for themselves has risen to 45 per cent.

The authors of the report, Professors Les Worrall and Cary Cooper, of UMIST, believe the main problem to be poor management of change in organizations. Forms of change such as redundancy and downsizing, both of which seem likely to continue in the foreseeable future, are particularly damaging to victims, survivors and organizations alike. They argue that change could be managed more effectively if organizations take steps to:

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  avoid wholesale and uncritical adoption of the latest management fads;

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  encourage full participation in the process of change;

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  bear in mind the effects of change and have a strategy to manage the immediate post-change period.

Professor Worrall commented:

While change is necessary, the real trick is to implement change without undermining the quality of managers' working lives and destroying the values on which many organizations are built.