Abstract
Temporary workers in low-skilled roles often experience ‘hard’ HRM practices, for example the use of the Bradford Factor to monitor absence, rather than using incentives to reward attendance. However, this peripheral workforce has become increasingly diverse in the UK since the A8 European Union expansion, which has seen over a million migrants from central and eastern Europe register to work in the UK. Importantly, there is also heterogeneity within this group of workers, for example between those who intend to migrate for a short period of time then return, and those who are more settled and wish to develop a career. By considering the particular case of absence management, this paper examines how these different groups of migrants respond to HRM practices. The key contribution of the paper is to examine how different groups of migrants experience these practices, rather than simply comparing migrant and native workers as two homogeneous groups. The paper presents data from the food manufacturing sector in the UK. In total, 88 semi-structured interviews were conducted with operations managers, HR managers, union convenors and workers on permanent, temporary and agency contracts. In addition, data from informal interviews and observation at five companies are presented.
Highlights
In the changing corporate climate of the food manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom (Scott 2013), increasing consolidation of large supermarkets has seen cost pressures and the risk of variable demand passed onto suppliers (Edwards et al 2009; Newsome et al 2009)
Temporary workers in low-skilled roles often experience ‘hard’ HRM practices, for example the use of the Bradford Factor to monitor absence, rather than using incentives to reward attendance. This peripheral workforce has become increasingly diverse in the United Kingdom since the A8 European Union expansion, which has seen over a million migrants from central and eastern Europe register to work in the United Kingdom
This paper investigates to what extent these changes have led to a loss of control for organisations, even those that use harder control rather than softer commitment approaches, by examining the particular case of absence management of an increasingly diversified and internationalised agency workforce
Summary
In the changing corporate climate of the food manufacturing industry in the United Kingdom (Scott 2013), increasing consolidation of large supermarkets has seen cost pressures and the risk of variable demand passed onto suppliers (Edwards et al 2009; Newsome et al 2009). A traditional response to variable demand by these suppliers has been to engage workers on increasingly precarious contracts, including on a directly-employed temporary basis, or through an agency (Atkinson 1985; Forde and Slater 2005, 2006). Through this increased distance there is raised potential for organisations to lose control of these workers, even if they use hard HRM techniques. Comparisons are drawn between the experiences of transitory migrants, and those who are more settled
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