Making Equal Opportunities Work: Equal Opportunities, Employee Attitudes and Workplace Performance: Findings from WERS 1998

Around three-quarters of all workplaces in Great Britain with 10 or more employees have a formal equal opportunities policy. The policies sometimes amount to no more than general statements on equality, but it is increasingly common for them to contain detailed provisions for monitoring, either through the keeping of statistical data on the composition of the workforce or through training or other initiatives designed to promote equality of opportunity. Previous research into the impact of equal opportunity policies suggests that the policies are not able to address structural discrimination in the workplace. This new study, commissioned by the Department for Business Enterprise & Regulatory Reform, similarly finds that equal opportunities policies may not be able to challenge structural discrimination. However, importantly, the research concludes that while having policies may be valuable in improving employee attitudes at work and may even improve productivity levels, the monitoring of such policies may actually worsen employee attitudes and lower productivity. The research concludes that policies are differently received by disabled and minority ethnic workers, who generally view them positively, than they are by women, who are generally negative in their assessments of the policies.