The changing nature of work in the UK since Hassard et al (2009): 3 perspectives of employees’ perceptions of the changing nature of work in 2014? A study of 3 companies

The conceptual foundations of this paper emerge from the prior research by Hassard et al (2009) in the publication, Managing in a Modern Corporation, which considers work practices. Hassard et al (2009) proposes that work can play an important role in addressing the contextual issues given the scarcity of longitudinal research on post-millennium work practices. They observed increasing work intensification and change within multinationals in differing countries (United Kingdom, United States of America and Japan). Middle Managers’ work hours, stress and responsibility were all found to have increased. Therefore it becomes critical to examine whether this has continued to worsen since the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and whether it has had an impact on the employee experience. The initial focus was upon the non-supervisory employees, with middle managers and senior management perceptions being explored as they are also considered employees. Whilst the focus of the study intended to consider the experiences of non-supervisory employees in the first instance, the reality that all levels of employees remain employees, meant that the determination of 'non-supervisory' would not limit the study by not including differing perspectives occupied at each level of employee, in terms of their subsequent responses to the changing nature of their work. Qualitative interview data was gathered from three companies within the EADT (2014) top one hundred companies in the UK’s East Anglian region. Since the benefit of template analysis lies with its potential plasticity, the study used a priori themes to develop an initial template to collect the data. Findings report that the data concurs with the observations of Hassard et al (2009). However further problems emerged stemming from control, time frames, quality and financialisation. The project looks to also extend Hassard et al’s (2009) previous work by incorporating employees as a focus, but including and middle managers and senior managers.