A MODERN RESPONSE TO EMPLOYMENT NEEDS

31 January 2008

It never fails to amaze me how much one can find out about Britain by talking to people in West Dorset.Last Friday, I visited a firm in Dorchester that specialises in an unusual form of recruitment; temporary staff.

If you read the economic literature or listen to pundits talking about employment on TV programmes, you could be forgiven for gaining the impression that people in Britain are either employed in permanent jobs, self-employed, unemployed or outside the labour force.

But you only have to visit this recruitment agency to discover the usual list of alternatives leaves out a large part of the picture.

In today's West Dorset, a considerable proportion of the population is gainfully occupied through employment agencies doing every kind of temporary work you can imagine. This is reflected in today's Britain, with an enormous number of people, millions rather than hundreds of thousands, engaged in temporary employment.

The stereotyped image of the office temp has become outdated.

In manufacturing, food processing, construction and dozens of other parts of the economy, both locally and nationally, firms are relying more and more on being able to respond flexibly to increases and decreases in demand by adjusting the numbers of temporary staff. Correspondingly, an increasing number of people are opting for temporary work as a way of life, at least for periods during which they prize flexibility above security.

As I talked to the management team of this Dorset agency, it was like watching a kaleidoscope settle into a new pattern. A hidden part of the explanation for the responsiveness of the British economy since the early 1990s came steadily into view.

When asked what, if anything, was getting in the way of the agency's admirable effort to match the changing needs of employers with the changing desires of people seeking jobs, I was immediately told that, guess what, a European Directive was coming down the road like a large juggernaut.

So there we have it; the British economy in microcosm. An impressive, modern response to market conditions and lifestyles, brought about by flexible and imaginative businesses in our rural areas as much as in our cities.

And then the threat that this flexible and forward-looking home-grown response may be put at risk by some well-intentioned but cack-handed new regulation dreamed up by officials in Brussels, who are focusing more on the way things work on the mainland than the way they operate in our little offshore island.