There has been growing evidence in recent decades of the importance of participation in decisions at work both for employees’ well-being and for their work motivation. But have British employers been increasing opportunities for such participation? The Skills and Employment Survey Series has been tracking the changing quality of jobs in Britain since 1986, with representative samples of the workforce. The trends in, and effects of, employee participation have been among its core themes. There have been 8 successive surveys, with consistent key variables. The results of the most recent survey, carried out in 2024, have just been released. Given the increasing recognition of the benefits of participation, what does the evidence tell us about the trends in participation?
The surveys distinguish between participation in the form of direct employee control over their job tasks and wider employee voice over organisational decisions that affect their work. Task level participation can take two forms: decisions may lie in the hands of individual employees or they may be taken jointly by employees in semi-autonomous teams. Research on the effects of participation on well-being and health has largely focused on individual control of job decisions, or task discretion, while the decentralisation of decisions to teams has been strongly advocated in some of the managerial literature.
The most striking feature to emerge from the data is the sharp fall in individual task discretion since the early 1990s. Whereas, in 1992, 62% of British employees reported that they had a high level of influence over how they did their jobs, by 2024 the proportion had declined to 34%. There were two main periods during which this decline took place. The first was in the 1990s, between 1992 and 2001, but the second was in the period 2012 to 2024. It is notable that the change between our last two surveys 2017 and 2024 was a nearly linear continuation of the downward trend evident since 2012.
Did the decline in the discretion given to individuals at work reflect a preference by management instead to vest decision-making responsibilities in work teams? There was certainly a notable increase from 2001 in the proportion of employees working in teams – rising from 43% to 62% in 2024. But teams may still be primarily directed by supervisors rather than by joint decision making by team members. In practice, throughout the period from 1992 to 2024, only about a third of employees in teams reported significant team influence over decisions about how the work was done. Moreover, the most recent period between 2017 and 2024 saw a marked decline in the proportion of employees in such teams (from 22% to 15%). In short, employees have been losing influence about how they do their jobs whether as individuals or as team members.
Has the loss of control over immediate decisions about jobs been compensated by increased influence at a higher organisational level about decisions affecting work? A feature of the last two decades has certainly been a marked increase in the use by management of meetings with employees through consultative committees. But are such committees primarily used to convey information downwards from management to employees or do they provide an effective means for employees to influence decisions? Taking the overall period between 1992 and 2024, it is clear that approximately half of employees regarded such committees as primarily a channel of downward communication. Moreover, the long-term trend was towards a decline in proportion of employees reporting that they could exercise either a great deal or quite a lot of influence on organisational decisions – from a peak of 37% in 2001 to 30% in 2017 and 27.6% in 2024.
What types of employees were most affected by the overall decline in participation? Throughout the period there was a strong skill gradient with respect to opportunities to participate, with the higher skilled having higher participation in terms of both immediate task decisions and wider organisational influence. But between 2017 and 2024 those with higher skills – managers, professionals and associate professionals – experienced a percentage point decline in task discretion that was comparable to that of the least skilled and an even sharper reduction in organisational participation than either those with intermediate or lower skills. There was also a notable difference in the experience of male and female employees. The decline in task discretion was much sharper among female than male employees, in part reflecting the fact that caring and sales occupations had a more negative pattern of change. In contrast, it was male employees that were more likely to have a reduction in organisational participation.
Does the decline of employee participation in Britain reflect the fact that it has become less relevant over time as a source of well-being and work motivation? Our evidence shows that employees with greater opportunities to participate in decisions at work – whether at the level of the task or with respect to wider organisational decisions – were less likely to have symptoms of depression or anxiety, more satisfied with their jobs and more likely to feel that their values were similar to those of the organisation. At the same time, they reported higher motivation with respect to their willingness to work harder to help their organisation succeed, their view that their organisation encouraged their very best job performance, the advantage they took of opportunities to learn new things on the job and to personally make suggestions to improve efficiency.
Our evidence points to a paradox. The benefits of employee participation in terms of well-being and motivation remain high, but British employers have been reducing opportunities to participate in a period when they have confronted major difficulties in reducing stress levels at work and productivity growth has declined and fallen behind major comparator countries such as Germany and France. Why have British employers failed to enhance the prevalence and quality of participation to help meet these challenges? There is clearly an urgent need for an investigation of the determinants of organisational policies in this respect and the adequacy of management training to implement effective forms of participation.
Prof Duncan Gallie is an Emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford
April 2025For further information, see : Gallie, D., Davies, R., Felstead, A., Green, F., Henseke, G., and Zhou, Y. (2025) What is Happening to Participation at Work? Findings from the Skills and Employment Survey 2024, Cardiff: Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research and Data, Cardiff University.