Public policy and regulation have a big impact on labour markets and employment, on businesses, and what we have to pay attention to. But by their nature, they are a somewhat blunt instrument of change and can have unintended consequences due to the complexity of the world they are trying to influence. Recent key policy changes today around pensions, apprenticeship levy, and the living wage may all be individually well intended, but collectively are adding up to significant additional workforce cost.
This is particularly challenging for smaller businesses, but these changes are also forcing more debate within organisations about their workforce strategies for the longer term. One of the consequences being talked about by many, is a reduction in jobs to accommodate the additional costs. The British Retail Consortium recently estimated as many as 1 in 3 jobs in the retail sector could go as retailers seek to use more automation to increase productivity and reduce the costs of labour.
With so many dimensions of the world of work, the workforce, and workplaces changing so fast, it’s very important that the voice of our profession is heard. We have good working relationships with a number of government departments and, since Britain’s last General Election in May 2015, we’ve submitted evidence to help inform more than 25 government consultations and Parliamentary Inquiries - on issues ranging from pension reform to the ongoing challenges with over-qualification amongst graduates and skills mismatches across the workforce.
No matter what the issue, we are always seeking to work from the evidence and actual experience from the workplace and from the evidence and expertise from within our community of 140,000 members. We have a long history of consulting with our members to inform the recommendations we give to policy makers, and this year we’ll be formalising that process further by establishing a forum of advisers made up of some of our most senior members representing a wide range of sectors and businesses.
Our role is not single-mindedly to fight for working people’s rights, nor is it short-sightedly to serve the interests of business. It is to help to optimise and shape the future to improve work and working lives, to try to understand and influence thinking on the bigger picture and the implications or potential consequences of policy makers’ ideas or decisions. Never has that been more important as we think about the future of work from where we are now, with the pace of change and uncertainties ahead. As many have said, the best way to predict the future is to help shape it.
Where we have clear evidence about the impact a new policy would have, we take a strong stance. In the current debate around Britain’s relationship with Europe, there are issues - like employment regulation and immigration - where we can provide evidence to inform the debate. But there are simply too many uncertainties and political overtones across a very broad range of issues for us to take an overall position, many of which won’t be known until after the referendum and are beyond our scope or purpose. We are proud of, and recognised for our independent voice, and we could only take a position on any election or referendum if there is significant evidence that a particular outcome would directly impact our purpose or the great majority of our membership one way or the other.
