WERS98 Data Dissemination Service

THE 1998 CROSS-SECTION SURVEY:
MAIN MANAGEMENT INTERVIEW

The Main Management Interview in the WERS98 Cross-Section consisted of a face-to-face interview with the senior person at the workplace with day-to-day responsibility for industrial relations, employee relations or personnel matters. In some cases this would be a personnel specialist. In others, it would be a general manager or a person with a different functional specialism, such as finance.

Interviews were conducted with managers in a total of 2,191 workplaces from an in-scope sample of 2,727 addresses, representing a response rate of 80 per cent.

Data from the Main Management Interview may be matched to that from the Worker Representative Interview and the Survey of Employees by means of a unique workplace identifier.

The conduct of the interview:

A self-completion Employee Profile Questionnaire (EPQ) was sent to the workplace in advance of each interview, to be used for the recording of workforce data that may require the respondent to consult workplace records (e.g. the detailed occupational breakdown of the workforce). The Main Management Interview itself was conducted on-site by a trained interviewer, using Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) technology. Data from the EPQ was entered at the beginning of the interview. The average interview lasted 108 minutes.

The EPQ and Main Management Questionnaire are available from the table of documentation at the bottom of this page, along with documentation that outlines the coding and editing of the resultant data.

Core topics:

A number of the topics that are covered in the Main Management Interview have appeared in earlier cross-section surveys in the WIRS series. These include:

-> Management of the personnel function
-> Trade union representation
-> Pay determination
-> Pay levels and payment systems
-> Consultation and communication
-> Dispute and grievance procedures
-> Industrial action
-> Economic and organizational context

New topics:

The WERS98 Main Management Interview also includes the following new topics:

-> Attitudes towards a variety of employment relations issues
-> Team working, multi-skilling and the roles of supervisors
-> Performance appraisals
-> Employment contracts
-> Recruitment and training
-> Equal opportunities and family-friendly employment
-> Flexibility: numerical and working time
-> Workplace monitoring and performance measurement

Further details:

The WERS98 User Guide contains a number of documents giving further information on the  conduct of WERS98. Those User Guide documents which relate specifically to the Main Management Interview are listed in the table below. Follow this link to access more general documentation about WERS98.

Each file in the table below can be viewed using the Adobe Acrobat® Reader. Users without this software can download it free of charge from the Adobe web-site by following the pictorial link below the table.

To view a document below, follow its hyperlink. To download the document, right-click on the hyperlink and this will give you the Save As option.

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WERS98 Data Dissemination Service
National Institute of Economic and Social Research, 2 Dean Trench St, London SW1P 3HE
URL: http://www.niesr.ac.uk/niesr/wers98     E-mail: wers98@niesr.ac.uk

This site is maintained by Simon Kirby
Page last updated: 16 November 2001