Inside the Workplace

Soft skills and employability: Evidence from UK retail

“…As with other research focusing on service industries (see, for example, Kersley et al, 2006;Lockyer and Scholarios, 2004), there was a reliance on informal recruitment methods, the most popular being referrals from current staff (64%) and window adverts (60%). Two formal methods were the next most frequently reported categories; 48% used recruitment agencies and job centres while 42% used company websites.…”

“…Such organizations may be expected to have centralized practices in place regarding skills policies (Kersley et al, 2006) and also more formalized branding strategies (Lury, 2004). Establishments were also small with an average of 22 employees.…”

Variable Pay and Collective Bargaining in British Retail Banking

“…Half of all British private‐sector workplaces with five or more employees now have collective forms of variable pay (including share schemes, profit‐related pay and group‐based payment schemes), covering 62 per cent of employees; just over a third have individual payments by results, extending to 43 per cent of employees; and 16 per cent use appraisal‐based merit‐pay schemes which cover 26 per cent of workers (Bryson and Freeman 2008: 3, 24). The 1998–2004 panel dataset recorded an increase from 20 per cent to 32 per cent in the use of such schemes in continuing workplaces (with 10 or more employees), ‘suggesting that there has been a substantial increase in the use of performance‐related pay schemes since 1998’ (Kersley et al. 2006: 191).…”

“…This growth has occurred in the context of a long‐term decline in collective bargaining, which now embraces only 14 per cent of private‐sector workplaces with 10 or more employees (Kersley et al. 2006: 182).…”

“…Profit‐related schemes and employee share‐ownership programmes (ESOPs), which entitle employees to a share of an organization's financial success, are commonly referred to as ‘financial participation’ (Poutsma 2006). Payments vary from year to year, but they are less immediately related to the performance of individual employees and work groups, especially in larger organizations where they are more common (Kersley et al. 2006: 191–92).…”