ABSTRACT
How employers structure their workforces, how they attempt to attain flexibility and how they organise work are all issues of considerable academic and policy interest. These three issues are explored in this chapter. The distinct contribution this survey can make, unlike household surveys such as the Labour Force Survey, is to look at how the labour process is structured within workplaces. Of course, this is a partial analysis, as we capture only the employer dimension. For example, if the proportion of hospitals employing predominantly female nurses is high (as it is), we cannot say whether this arises from employer preferences or because of other social factors which lead more women than men to opt for nursing as a vocation. Nonetheless, employers face and exercise choices in how they compose and deploy their workforces, and these choices have ramifications for workers and the conduct of employment relations within, and across, workplaces.
