The Changing Employment project brings together 15 researchers at the beginning of their career (12 PhD and three postdoctoral students) who are training in a cross-European, interdisciplinary network of policy-focused scientists to understand, analyse and respond to employment changes.
The project is co-ordinated by Strathclyde with Professor Paul Stewart as lead academic and, commencing in December 2012, is scheduled to come to an end in November this year. Researchers from Strathclyde as well as participating universities in Sweden, Belgium, France, Spain, Poland and Hungary are all involved.
Under the guidance of renowned senior academics and with support from the European Trade Union Institute, a consultant group and other associate partners, the students involved in the project are exploring the question of how European labour markets and economies are evolving with a focus on three areas: management and employee relations, inclusion and exclusion at work, as well as employee well-being and work-life quality.
“The associates have been really engaged and excited by the work of our student researchers,” says project coordinator Paul Stewart of Strathclyde Business School’s Human Resource Management department.
“There are themes emerging in terms of how work regimes are changing on the European continent,” notes Professor Stewart. “It is not a complete rupture with the past. But there are changes taking place that are making it more difficult for people to work and live the way they did before, both in white-collar and blue-collar jobs, due to a lengthening of the working day and an intensification of the work that they do.”
In part, this is due to a weakening of work regulations that was not foreseeable 5 or 10 years ago. Global developments are making regulating work in a European context an ever-greater challenge, amplified by variation between EU countries.
Migrant experiences, in particular, reflect this variation: policy-makers often treat migration as if it is one phenomenon, whereas people's experiences depend on their own background as much as on where they end up.
Some of the Changing Employment students are looking at migrants in Britain, Spain, France and Belgium, for instance. Their findings so far underline the effect of wider societal issues and the way migrants are received in the community. Both can have a very profound impact on how they see their own life and employment prospects.
While the results of the individual studies will only be known towards the end of the project, which will run until November 2016, one outcome is already making itself felt: the participants are building an international academic network.
“Normally, you will be in academia for 10 or 15 years before you even make an international network, if at all,” Professor Stewart explains. “Our students now have this experience of working internationally with colleagues across disciplines in a way that can take people a long time to learn. And there are all kinds of synergies that have evolved between them that you could not have anticipated. It is extraordinary.”
The same is true of the senior academics in charge of the students: the collaboration on Changing Employment has had a noticeable impact on relationships between colleagues, said Professor Stewart.