The Office for National Statistics (ONS) will spend PS8million on temporary staff to try and fix the problems in its Labour Force Survey.
The government office signed a contract with the recruitment company Randstad for interviewers in order to improve the accuracy of its data.
LFS is facing a number of issues, including a dramatic drop in response rates.
The ONS responded by commissioning a Lessons Learnt Review. This revealed that the uncertainty about how to turn the survey around had a “profoundly adverse impact” on morale at the organisation.
Last month, ONS acknowledged that it could take up to 2027 for the LFS to be corrected. This led to economists and policymakers complaining that they were “flying blind”, when making major decisions that depend on workforce data. LFS is a key dataset used by both the Bank of England and the Government when setting interest rate, for instance.
Randstad will add 148 new agency employees to the ONS workforce. These staff members will be field interviewers, knocking on doors in Britain to ask people to fill out online surveys.
The response rate to the survey should increase. It dropped to 40% from 50% during the pandemic in 2010 and has fallen as low as 20% over the past few years.
In the last year, ONS has faced many challenges. In October and April of last year, the staff voted for industrial actions to resolve a dispute over how often they came into work.
The unions that represent staff have said that hiring workers from agencies to conduct interviews will further erode staff morale.
Fran Heathcote said that ONS management should invest in long-term recruitment and retention problems rather than give huge sums of cash to an agency for what would only be a temporary solution.
A Financial Times analysis from last year revealed that more than double the number of people who had joined the workforce would be leaving by March 2024. Nearly half of those leaving mid-level positions had crucial technical and policy expertise.
A spokesperson for the ONS told The Guardian that they were working to develop a “transformed survey”.
We strive to create a culture of honesty and inclusion that encourages employees to provide feedback on challenges so we can collectively respond and move forward. We recently commissioned an lessons learned review in order to make sure that the voices of all those involved with the Transformed Labour Force Survey were heard.
