Hollowing out national agreements in the NHS? The case of “Improving Working Lives” under a “Turnaround” plan
| Date | 13 February 2017 |
| Pages | 145-159 |
| Published date | 13 February 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-05-2015-0092 |
| Author | Ian Roper,David Etherington,Suzan Lewis |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Hollowing out national
agreements in the NHS? The case
of “Improving Working Lives”
under a “Turnaround”plan
Ian Roper
Business School, Middlesex University, London, UK, and
David Etherington and Suzan Lewis
Middlesex University, London, UK
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paper is to consider the resilience of a national-level initiative (Improving
Working Lives (IWL)) in the face of local-level initiative (Turnaround) in an NHS hospital and compare to
Bach and Kessler’s (2012) model of public service employment relations.
Design/methodology/approach –Case study research consisting of 23 in-depth semi-structured
interviews from a range of participants.
Findings –The principles behind IWL were almost entirely sacrificed in order to meet the financial
objectives of Turnaround. This indicates the primacy of localised upstream performance management
initiatives over the national-level downstream employee relations initiatives that form the basis of the NHS’
claim to model employer aspiration.
Research limitations/implications –The case study was conducted between 2007 and 2009. While the
case study falls under previous government regime, the dualised system of national-level agreements
combined with localised performance management –and the continued existence of both Turnaround and
IWL –makes the results relevant at the time of writing.
Originality/value –Some studies (e.g. Skinner et al., 2004) indicated a perception that IWL was not trusted
by NHS staff. The present study offers reasons as to why this may be the case.
Keywords Work-life balance, NHS, Collective bargaining
Paper type Case study
Introduction
This paper evaluates the employment relations impact of implementing two distinct –and
separate –policies, with seemingly conflicting agendas, in an NHS hospital. The NHS has
long claimed to aspire to be a “model employer”(Bach, 2005, 2010; Corby and Symon, 2012;
Morgan and Allington, 2002) and this has been manifested at the level of the individual
employment relationship between employer and the public service professional (Lethbridge,
2011; Needham, 2007), at workplace level (Stuart and Martinez Lucio, 2000) and national
levels, where Whitley structures have largely remained as the basis for establishing pay
grading levels (Bach and Kessler, 2012). However, there has been little recognition of the
tensions that can exist when agendas at each level are seemingly incompatible:
incompatibilities between local and national priorities, for example.
This paper reports on a case study exploring the resilience of mutual-gains initiatives
aimed at employee welfare in an NHS hospital under financial pressure. In particular
it considers the tensions created in the implementation of the national-level
Improving Working Lives (IWL) initiative in the hospital following the localised
introduction of another initiative: “Turnaround”. The paper considers the extent to which
these separate agendas were compatible and, where not compatible, with what
consequences –in particular, at the individual level of the professional autonomy of the
public service professional.
Employee Relations
Vol. 39 No. 2, 2017
pp. 145-159
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-05-2015-0092
Received 22 May 2015
Revised 29 April 2016
21 September 2016
Accepted 29 September 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
145
Improving
Working Lives
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