Welcome to Working Nation

Working Nation is an ongoing series of research projects that over the past five years has provided many insights into different aspects of the world of work and specifically into the working lives of employees and employers in the UK.

The Nature of Work is the sixth report in this series. On this site you will not only find the report itself, available to read online and to download, but a range of related opinion contained within articles, 'blog-posts' and videos. Please feel free to reference and link to these resources and to submit your own comments and views. Above all Working Nation is designed to help employees and employers to make sense of their working world - so please use this data in whatever ways help you and your organisations.

The Nature of Work

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Why do we work? What do we expect to get out of it? What motivates us to keep going back; to get out; or to strive for the next level? These are questions that many people ask themselves every week, even every day as they return to the fray. This edition of Working Nation - The Nature of Work - seeks to explore these themes in depth and looks at how the various answers change with our age and experience.

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August 14th, 2008

Posted by | steverobinson
Posted in | The community of work

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‘Career Compression’

Spotted an interesting article on the BBC News website today with some similar views on the working nation.

David Lammy, the skills minster, has said some interesting things about the idea of ‘career compression’ - i.e. the shortened timespan within young people expect to have ‘made it’ and the potential disappointment and disenchantment that they may feel early in the careers when they haven’t. He talks about the wider social impact of this culture and its tendency to drive young people out of the workplace and into crime. He talks about a ‘get rich or die trying’ lifestyle and the ‘fetishisation of money and the growth of consumerism’ that add new pressures.

To endender greater perspective in young people, Mr Lammy’s solution involves national civic service and universal entitlement to apprenticeships. An old solution to new problems….

Editors choice

Ben Maynard is the editor of this edition

At Vodafone we have been producing Working Nation for quite a few years now. Occasionally colleagues and customers ask me why.
Welcome from Mark Bond

For this year’s Working Nation, we held discussion groups with people across the different generations of working life, ranging from teenagers who have only just started thinking about their future careers through to people in their sixties who have recently retired.
Running the intergenerational focus groups

This year’s Working Nation is the first to look at changing attitudes by generation – starting with those just beginning to look at joining the world of work.
Working Nation - how we did it

Previous reports in this edition