ILPC 2027

Senior management of HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) describe their re-engineered tax processing centres as ‘new model offices’.  Central to these changes to the social organisation of work is the introduction of lean ways of working. This paper considers the outcome of this re-engineering on the levels of reported work-related ill health by our survey respondents and particularly the result of research indicating that women were disproportionately affected. Part of the lean regime consisted of a more draconian interpretation of Sickness Absence Policy (SAP) and our research shows that women were more likely to come into work when ill citing fear of SAP and being put on a disciplinary. Of significance is the relation between work and home life with more women than men reporting feelings of exhaustion after work as well as work experience under lean affecting their leisure and home life.

In 2008, the largest civil service trade union – the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) – facilitated our access to 6 tax processing centres across the UK. Multi-site interviews with workers and supervisors led to a survey investigating pre-lean and post-lean experiences in a number of areas.  The study showed how lean methods in HMRC led to work intensification, vastly increased time spent at the work station, loss of autonomy and control over work, fragmentation of tasks, a reduction of skills and knowledge requirements, increasing repetition, and ‘in-your-face’ hourly monitoring and targets.  The study also investigated health and the use of SAP. Our research draws on the holistic model of understanding occupational health and safety in office work from Baldry et al (1997, 2007) and has revealed that lean resulted in few changes to the ambient environment (e.g. lighting and air quality), evident change in the proximate environment (e.g. work station design) and significant changes to the social environment (e.g. work organisation). It was changes to the social environment that revealed a significant detrimental effect on work-related ill-health, particularly amongst workers from administrative grades (Carter et al 2010).

In this paper we focus specifically on the experiences of women workers in tax processing centres and in particular data showing significant differences in reported incidences of ill-health between men and women, post lean implementation. Especially pronounced were reports of mental fatigue, physical tiredness, stiff shoulders and neck, stress, backache and headaches. We discuss the gendered dimensions of musculoskeletal disorders and stress, depression and anxiety. Our findings are significant given the paucity of sociological research into work-related ill-health generally and the tendency for ‘women’s’ clerical work to be deemed ‘clean and safe’ with gendered ill-health invisible, unrecognised or trivialised (e.g. see Messing et al 2003).  We explain these findings by paying due consideration to both work and family life for women workers. Women’s responsibilities for child and domestic care in the home (e.g. see Ellison et al 2009) coupled with disproportionate representation in lower grades at work, with a gender pay gap and fewer opportunities for advancement, are socially and co-constructed and partially explain the gendered ill-health experiences under the lean regime.

Our analysis of SAP suggests HMRC are increasingly disaggregating ill-health from the social organisation of work and abdicating responsibility, using SAP in a highly individualistic and draconian way to manage people with disabilities and work-related ill-health ‘out of the door’. This puts the most vulnerable workers under even more pressure to work when ill. Moreover, flexibility and freedom to respond to family demands outside of work (such as taking time off to look after sick children) were adversely affected by the re-engineering of work post-lean, and this disproportionately affected women. Our findings show that women within lower administrative grades in particular are putting their health at risk as a direct result of the mean, lean regime. 

Baldry, C., Bain, P. and Taylor, P. (1997) ‘Sick and tired? – Working in the modern office’, Work, Employment and Society, 11.3: 519-539

Baldry, C., Taylor, P. and Bain, P. (2007) ‘”Bear with me”: The problems of health and well-being in call centre work’, in G.Wood and P. James (eds.) Institutions, Production and Working Life, Oxford: Oxford University Press: 235-254

Carter, R., Danford, A., Howcroft, D., Richardson, H., Smith, A. and Taylor, P. (2010) ‘Occupational ill-health and absence management under a lean regime in the UK civil service’ Work, Employment and Society conference, Brighton 7-9^th September 2010

Ellison, G., Barker, A. and Kulasuriya, T. (2009) ‘Work and care: a study of modern parents’ Equality and Human Rights Commission, UK

Messing, K., Punnett, L., Bond, K., Alexanderson, K., Pyle, J., Zahm, S., Wegman, D., Stock, S., de Grosbois, S. (2003) ‘Be the fairest of them all: challenges and recommendations for the treatment of gender in Occupational Health research’, American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 43.6: 618-629