The Digital Futures at Work Research Centre provides comprehensive analysis of the extent of technology adoption by employers, including the reasons for adopting digital technologies, employers’ experiences of digital adoption and the impact of such technologies on the organisation of work, job design, recruitment practices and employee relations.
Digital technologies are seen as essential for future business success, albeit with the potential to destroy a large number of jobs as human workers are replaced by automation and work processes undertaken by artificial intelligence. However, the consequences for the future workforce will be complex. This is the first nationally representative survey in the UK to provide systematic evidence of how employers perceive these changes.
The survey was conducted against a backdrop of increased interest in the potential impact of new digital technologies on the future of work. Such technologies are often portrayed as transformative, both in terms of their impact on business strategy and the future of work and employment. This report presents the first findings of the Employers’ Digital Practices at Work (DPaW) survey. DPaW was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the core research programme of the Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Digit). The findings draw from a representative sample of 2001 UK employers.
Existing data are often drawn from leading consultancy firms, based on surveys of their own members, and as a consequence are not representative. Nationally representative survey data in the UK is largely absent, and where it does exist it tends to rely on online consumer panels that do not precisely target key employer respondents.
The DPaW survey fills this evidence gap. Based on careful sampling, the survey offers the most original and authoritative portrait to date of employers’ adoption and use of new digital technologies. The survey was designed to explore the different types of new technology utilised by employers. This included traditional information and communication technologies (ICT), data analytics and more advanced forms of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning-enabled technologies. Investment in new technology was then set against the context of employers’ human resource management practices, with consideration given to patterns of employment, skills and training, work organisation and employee involvement and representation.
The report has seven sections. We begin with methodology, briefly detailing the sample design of the DPaW. The following three sections present the headline findings of employers’ use of ICT, advanced digital technologies and data analytics. The report then explores employers’ workforce staffing and human resource management practices. The final section presents some key conclusions.
Key findings suggest that levels of investment in advanced digital technologies have been relatively low, but that there is potentially a growing divide between the digital adopters and digital nonadopters. The evidence suggests that digital adopters were more likely to have been associated with employment growth. Digital adopters also reported higher levels of investment in training and skills and employee involvement practices. That said, reported levels of investment in training and skills were generally low even for digital adopters.
The data presented in this first findings report are descriptive and are designed to offer headline insights. A more in-depth treatment of the data will be forthcoming as part of the Digit book series. The dataset will be made available for the wider academic community following this.
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