What has the recession done to the British workplace?

As we climb out of one of the deepest recessions the country has seen, we’ve been looking at how the recession has changed the workplace: are our companies bouncing back to where they were before, or have they somehow been changed? Our first analysis looks at how the recession has affected how corporate Britain manages its people.

The analysis identifies some important challenges for leaders, people managers and HR: compared with pre-recession times, the emphasis has shifted more towards getting the job done, and less on investing in our people. In some ways this is perhaps understandable: when you’re just trying to get through the storm, it’s hard to keep focused on developing the crew to their full potential. But as the storm recedes, our data suggests managers and leaders now need to do more to invest in their people over the longer term.

This conclusion comes from our recent analysis of our RED database of organisation benchmarks in the UK, spanning between pre-recession 2006 and early recovery 2012. Perhaps unsurprisingly, between 2006 and 2009, as the recession started to bite, many of our benchmark measures took a big hit. But what is interesting is to compare the trajectories for two different aspects of organisational functioning as the recession played out.

One broad area might be described in terms of whether employees felt invested in. We looked at key measures like, how well the company motivated its employees, whether the company was interested in their wellbeing, and whether employees felt they were being developed to their full potential. In each case, between 2006 and 2009, these fell by nearly a fifth, more than almost any of the other areas of organisational functioning we measure. And between 2009 and 2012, having fallen hard, these measures by and large stayed low.

The other broad area we looked at was line management. We looked at employee perceptions of how well their line manager worked with them – setting a good example, delegating well, organising the work of the team, and so on. These scores also fell between 2006 and 2009, but not quite so sharply: the proportion of employees who felt their line manager was doing a good job fell by around a sixth. And these measures have tended to bounce back: by 2012, they were moving back up towards their pre-recession levels.

So what to make of all this? Well, the trends do suggest the work place is different from pre-recession times. Companies appear to have shifted their focus somewhat towards managing people as resources, and away from managing them as people. This may well have been a good adaptation for getting through the storm. But the question is: is it sustainable in the longer term? Can companies thrive if their people don’t feel invested in?

We believe leaders, managers and HR all have a role in building this sense of investment across their organisation. And we await the next wave of our benchmark data – due imminently – to see whether organisations are rising to this challenge. But if companies aren’t already looking at how to reinvest in their people post-recession, our analysis suggests that they should.

Ipsos is currently conducting joint research with Cirrus looking at how leaders can connect with their organisations to address some of these issues. The comprehensive report, ‘Leadership Connections: How HR deals with C-Suite Leadership’, will be published early next year.

• Find out the latest on our Connected Leadership research

The Ipsos RED database provides benchmark data for over 100 aspects of organisational functioning – we will be doing further analyses over the coming months to look at other ways the recession has affected the UK workplace. RED is refreshed regularly: the 2014/15 data is due imminently, and we will be examining this to see if the trends we have identified here have continued as the recovery from recession has picked up pace. Further analysis will be published at www.ipsos-mori.com/employeeresearch as it becomes available.