Browsing by Author "Payne, Jonathan"

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    The changing meaning of skill: still contested, still important
    (Oxford University Press, 2017-02-02) Payne, Jonathan
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    Devolution and strategies for learning and skills: the Leitch report and its alternatives
    (Institute for Public Policy Research, 2010) Keep, E.; Payne, Jonathan; Rees, G.
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    Digital skills in context: Working with robots in lower-skilled jobs
    (Sage, 2022-07-19) Lloyd, Caroline; Payne, Jonathan
    Digital skills are increasingly presented as essential for work and labour market inclusion, with fears the low-skilled could be left behind. Lack of clarity about these new skill demands and limited evidence from the workplace have prompted calls to unpack skill requirements in specific sectors and occupations. This article analyses digital skills in relation to wider skills and knowledge required in a job, and examines the influence of the workplace, sector and national institutional context. The study focuses on robotic technologies in lower-skilled jobs, drawing on the experience of food and drink processing operatives, and logistic porters and service workers in public hospitals, in Norway and the UK. The article contributes to the conceptualisation of digital skills, probes country differences, and offers a grounded understanding of the challenges presented for workers in lower-skilled jobs.
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    Digitalisation, unions and ‘country-effect’: does union strength at the workplace matter?
    (Sage, 2025) Lloyd, Caroline; Payne, Jonathan
    Trade unions are potentially important actors in shaping digitalisation to benefit workers. Research suggests supportive national labour market institutions can help unions to influence digital change in the workplace. This article considers the reach of national institutions, or ‘country effect’, and its relationship with union strength at the workplace. It applies a multi-level analysis to explore union influence over digital technology in the food and drink processing sector in Norway and the UK, two countries with starkly contrasting institutions. Drawing on interviews with officers and shop stewards in two unions, it compares a sample of workplaces with relatively strong and weak union organisation. The findings indicate union strength at the workplace has a more significant impact on union’s role in digitalisation in Norway, where there are strong institutional supports, than in the UK where these are lacking. The article contributes to analysing the relationship between ‘country-effect’ and union strength at the workplace in the shaping of digitalisation.
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    Divergent skills policy trajectories in England and Scotland after Leitch
    (Taylor and Francis, 2009) Payne, Jonathan
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    Emotional Labour and Skill: A Reappraisal
    (Wiley, 2009) Payne, Jonathan
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    Employer engagement with third-sector activation programmes for vulnerable groups: interrogating logics and roles
    (Cambridge University Press, 2023-02) Butler, Peter; Payne, Jonathan
    Employer engagement with active labour market programmes (ALMPs) and related employability projects is seen as vital to their ‘success’. However, the role of employers remains under-researched – a gap which widens in relation to non-governmental programmes led by not-for-profit, third-sector organisations (TSOs). Recent studies suggest that engaging employers may depend on addressing both human resource (HR) and corporate social responsibility (CSR) ‘logics’ and linking the roles of ‘gatekeeper to jobs’ and ‘proactive strategic partner’. A key question is whether TSO-led programmes are better placed to combine these logics and roles in engaging employers to help vulnerable groups into decent sustainable employment. The article explores this through a case study of two projects in England. The findings highlight the challenges that TSOs face in having to appeal almost exclusively to a CSR logic and explores why this is the case.
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    Fewer jobs, better jobs? An international comparative study of robots and ‘routine’ work in the public sector
    (Wiley, 2021) Lloyd, Caroline; Payne, Jonathan
    Routine manual work is often considered particularly vulnerable to digitalisation. Alongside potential employment effects, jobs are expected to change in terms of task and skill requirements. This article contributes to debates on the pace of digitalisation and the impact on low-skilled manual work through a study of transport robots in public hospitals in Norway and Scotland. Drawing on qualitative research, the findings are used to analyse the role of unions, as part of ‘country’ and ‘sector’ effects, shaping digitalisation and its outcomes.
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    Flat whites – who gets progression in the UK café sector?
    (Wiley, 2011) Lloyd, C.; Payne, Jonathan
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    Food for thought: Robots, jobs and skills in food and drink processing in Norway and the UK
    (Wiley, 2021) Lloyd, Caroline; Payne, Jonathan
    There is intense debate surrounding digitalisation and its implications for work. However, empirical research within established workplaces, especially international comparative studies, remains limited. This article uses cross-country research to further analysis of the relative importance of different institutions, actors and power relations in shaping digitalisation and worker outcomes. Through a multi-level approach, it compares the use of industrial robots in the food and drink processing sector in Norway and the UK. Drawing on qualitative research, it explores the pace of digitalisation, the process of implementation, and job and skills outcomes. The study finds strong national differences in the pace of digitalisation, and the role of unions in the process of implementation. In Norway, union power at workplace and national level, embedded in institutional arrangements, underpins more advanced use of technology and improved outcomes for workers.
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    Hard times in latte land? Analysing pay and working time in the café industry in France, Norway and the UK
    (Sage, 2018-11-13) Payne, Jonathan; Lloyd, Caroline
    Industrial relations and employment regulation are central elements of the national institutional framework shaping country-level differences in job quality. However, researchers are also interested in within-country variation by sector. International sector comparisons can shed light on the role of national institutions, individual employer approaches and workplace unions in shaping outcomes within a sector. This article uses qualitative data on pay and working time in the café industry in France, Norway and the UK to weigh the effects of institutions and employer differentiation on worker outcomes in a sector particularly challenging for union organisation. The findings identify the importance of national institutions for worker outcomes, and for shaping the scope at organisational level for employers and unions to make a difference.
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    Hearing music in service interactions: A theoretical and empirical analysis
    (Sage, 2017-05-15) Payne, Jonathan; Korczynski, Marek; Cluley, Rob
    There is an extensive literature concerned with the impact of music on customers. However, no study has examined its effects on service workers and their interactions with customers. Drawing together literatures on service work and music in everyday life, the article develops a theoretical framework for exploring the role of music in service exchanges. Two central factors are identified – how workers hear, and respond, to the music soundscape, and their relations with customers, given these have the potential to be both alienating and positive to the point of meaningful social interaction. From these, a 2×2 matrix is constructed, comprising four potential scenarios. The authors argue for the likely importance of music’s role as a bridge for sociality between worker and customer. The article considers this theorising by drawing upon interviews with 60 retail and café workers in UK chains and independents, and free text comments collected through a survey of workers in a large service retailer. The findings show broad support for music acting as a bridge for sociality. Service workers appropriate music for their own purposes and many use this to provide texture and substance to social interactions with customers.
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    "It's just the nature of the job at the end of the day": pay and job quality in mass market call centres
    (Russell Sage Foundation, 2008) Lloyd, C.; Mason, G.; Osbourne, M.; Payne, Jonathan
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    LE(a)P in the dark? Devolution, local skills strategies and inclusive growth in England
    (Taylor and Francis, 2018-10-16) Payne, Jonathan
    A central challenge for local skills strategies is whether they can contribute to ‘inclusive growth’ including ‘more and better jobs’ across a local economy. Skills strategies, it has been argued, must go beyond simply boosting skills supply and be integrated with policies that shape employer demand for, and utilisation of, skills, including economic development and business improvement. Among developed countries, this is particularly challenging for neo-liberal economies, with weakly regulated labour markets where many firms compete through low wages and low-skill job design. How much progress can be made locally is unclear. The article focuses on England, a highly centralised neo-liberal economy, with high levels of low-wage work and over-qualification. Since 2010, UK governments have promised to empower local communities to drive growth, reforming the infrastructure for sub-national economic development and localising elements of skills policy, as part of a devolution agenda for England set in the context of austerity. There are important questions around how local actors understand the ‘skills problem’ and whether they can evolve integrative approaches that might contribute to inclusive growth. Drawing upon qualitative research with local actors in the Midlands, the article explores their assumptive worlds in order to shed light on opportunities and constraints.
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    Licensed to skill? The impact of occupational regulation on fitness instructors
    (Sage, 2017-03-29) Lloyd, Caroline; Payne, Jonathan