Mark Hall, [Sue Hutchinson], John Purcell, Mike Terry and [Jane Parker]
Employment Relations Research Series No. 106, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills  

This report presents findings from research in ten medium-sized organisations looking at employee consultation practice in the light of the Information and Consultation of Employees Regulations 2004. It draws on continued research in six case study organisations with 100-150 employees as well as initial case reports and employee surveys covering four organisations with 50-100 employees. There was little difference attributable to workforce size in the nature and experience of the information and consultation arrangements of the organisations in these two size bands. However, compared to the larger organisations that were the focus of an earlier phase of the research, information and consultation practice in the medium-sized organisations exhibited greater informality, involving less-detailed constitutional provisions, a lower incidence of contested elections for employee representatives, fewer ‘strategic’ issues being tabled for discussion by management and a greater reliance on employee-raised, largely housekeeping issues to make up the agenda. A minority of information and consultation bodies in the medium-sized organisations were the forum for ‘active consultation’; most were used largely for ‘communications’ and fielding employee concerns.

The full report can be downloaded here.