Research and analysis
The 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey (WERS)
Fifth survey of employment relations in Britain. It collected data from a representative sample of 2,295 British workplaces in 2004.
Applies to England and Wales
Documents
Details
The 2004 WERS has information on:
- 2,295 managers responsible for employment relations and personnel issues
- 1,070 worker representatives
- more than 22,000 employees
Overall design of the 2004 WERS
- at each workplace, a interview was conducted with the most senior manager responsible for employment relations and personnel issues. A self-completion questionnaire was distributed before the interview to collect information on the basic characteristics of the workforce, and a second questionnaire was given to all trading sector workplaces at the end of the interview to collect data on financial performance
- at workplaces with worker representatives, the manager was asked for consent to interview one trade union representative and one non-trade union representative
- also with the manager’s consent, self-completion questionnaires were distributed to a randomly selected representative group of up to 25 employees
- a further 938 face-to-face interviews with senior managers were conducted in workplaces that participated in the 1998 survey
Outputs from the 2004 WERS
The sourcebook of detailed findings from the 2004 WERS, ‘Inside the workplace: findings from the 2004 Workplace Employment Relations Survey’ (ISBN 0-415-37813-3), was published by Routledge in July 2006.
Further information and outputs are available from the WERS webpage from October 2009