CIPD Good Work Index 2024

Conflict in the workplace

The survey shows that 25% of people in work had experienced at least one form of conflict or abuse in the last 12 months, with 47% of those surveyed saying they resolved the conflict by ‘letting it go’.

Those with protected characteristics reported more conflict, including 33% of those who identified as non-heterosexual reporting conflict, comparing to only 24% of those who identified as heterosexual.

38% of those with atypical contracts experienced conflict in comparison to 26% of permanent employees. Private sector workers (31%) were also more likely to report conflict than those in private or voluntary sectors (24%).

It is twice as common for those who reported conflict to say they were likely to leave over the next 12 months (33%) than those who did not (16%).

Those experiencing conflict are also less likely to say they thought their pay was appropriate and much less satisfied. 38% who reported conflict thought their pay was appropriate, compared with 55% of those who did not. 54% of those who reported conflict were satisfied with their job, in comparison to 77% who did not.

Employees reporting conflict were also found to be more likely to be in high-pressure jobs and more likely to say that their workload is too high; they believed that they were under pressure most or all of the time, and felt exhausted most or all the time. Conflict is therefore likely to have a mental and physical impact.

However, over the last five years, the proportion of the workforce reporting any conflict has fallen from 30% to 25%. The biggest falls were for male, white, non-disabled, over-35s from the higher socio-economic groups. Homeworking has contributed largely to this fall. The more time people spend working at home, the less likely they are to report conflict.

Work centrality and discretionary effort

Although a large amount of this year’s report reflected little or no change in statistics, one of the big exceptions is with ‘work centrality’, where respondents were asked whether a job to them is just about the money. In 2024, 47% agreed with this, compared to 36% in 2019, suggesting the pandemic, and increasing costs of living to have been turning points.

Job satisfaction and pay

70% of those surveyed said they were satisfied with their job and only 13% were dissatisfied. Younger groups were shown to be more satisfied than older age groups (73% under the age of 35 and 69% for those over 35).

51% agreed they were paid appropriately for the responsibilities they had and 30% disagreed. This is noticeably up from 45% who agreed in 2019.

Impact of work on mental and physical health

39% said work had a positive impact on their mental health and 31% said it had a positive impact on physical health. 25% of the workforce reported negative physical and mental health impacts from work. The most likely to report positive impacts were at opposite ends of the age spectrum: under 25s at 56% and those over 55 at 45%.

Engagement and meaning

The survey looked in detail at some positive and negative aspects of the job. 50% of all respondents said that they were always or often enthusiastic, time flies or they are immersed in their work.

The negative aspects were mixed. Most people reported they are rarely or never lonely, miserable or bored. They are less positive when it came to being full energy, under pressure or feeling exhausted.

Between 20% and 25% reported they rarely or never feel full of energy and always or often suffer from excessive pressure, feel exhausted at work or have an excessive workload. None of these indicators have changed significantly since 2019.

The large majority feel they do valuable work at the organisational level, but much fewer feel inspired by the organisation’s purpose. Around 50% believe it serves a wider societal purpose and a quarter do not.

Task complexity and work-life balance

Just under 50% of respondents said their job always or often involves complex or interesting tasks or provides opportunities for learning new things. Just under 20% of respondents said that their job rarely or never involves such tasks with nearly 50% of respondents reporting their job involves monotonous tasks most or all of the time.

56% said that work did not affect outside commitments, although 24% disagreed. Few people felt outside commitments make it harder to do their jobs properly and 77% said they do not.

Job security

The proportion of those saying they are unlikely to lose their job has increased from 61% in 2019 to 65% in 2024, with the proportion saying it would be easy to get a similar job also increasing from 29% in 2019 to 34% in 2024.

Indicators suggest modest improvements in job security post-pandemic, reflecting increased availability of unfilled vacancies.

20% of respondents said they were likely to quit in the next 12 months, 61% unlikely to leave and 18% saying neither. Apart from a pandemic-related fall in 2021, there has been little change since 2019. The most common reason cited for leaving a job is unhappiness with senior management and leadership, given by 22% of respondents.

Autonomy and control

Respondents reported they had most control over how they did their work, less control over the pace at which they did their work, and much less control over the tasks they had to do and start and finish times.  Men consistently reported higher levels of autonomy than women, reflecting differences in the type of jobs they do.

Those who work at home also reported significantly higher levels of autonomy. However, the report suggests that this is likely to be due to the sort of jobs homeworkers do, rather than homeworking itself.

Skills and training in the workplace

35% of respondents thought they had the skills to do more than their job demands, compared with just 12% who thought they lacked the skills to do their job well. Similarly, 31% of respondents thought their qualifications exceeded those required by the job, whilst just 5% said they were underqualified. However, the report states that there still remains an underlying problem of skill and qualification mismatch, and that this has not significantly changed since 2019.

74% of people said they received some sort of training in the last 12 months with the vast majority saying that they found it useful (90%). However, there was less satisfaction with online learning with only 71% saying it was useful.

Comment

The 2024 survey shows that there has been little progress on raising job quality since the UK Government’s Good Work Plan was published in 2018. Despite most people having a good experience at work, for a large minority, there are significant shortcomings which are still to be addressed. In particular, with 25% of the workforce surveyed (extrapolated into over 8 million people) reporting conflict in the last year, reducing conflict must form part of the overall strategy to improve work quality. This is especially important for those with protected characteristics who appear to experience above-average incidents of conflict and have seen no improvement over the last five years.

The 2024 survey therefore suggests employers should focus on reducing conflict by investing in line management training to deal with conflict effectively, and address underlying causes, such as addressing poor team practices, excessive workloads, exhaustion and pressure.

This article has been written by Rajiv Joshi and Tiegan James.