The impact of teamwork on skills: Employee perceptions of who gains and who loses

The move to teamworking and the accompanying changes in job boundaries and responsibilities have been viewed as exerting a postitive impact on levels of employee knowledge and skills, particularly where there is also increased training and regular job rotation. However, given the diverse positions of different occupational groups prior to teamworking, in practice a more differentiated relationship between teamworking and skills may be anticipated, with some groups experiencing a much more favourable outcome in terms of the knowledge and skills than others. The study reported here considers the impact of a move to teamworking across an entire manufacturing workforce, incorporating former craft and production grades and different levels in the former job classification hierarchy. Longitudinal findings are reported, with entire workforce surveys undertaken prior to and following the introduction of teamworking. The result is a more finely grained account of the impact of teamworking on skills that also hightlights the need to differentiate the effects of workplace change on different groups of employees