Call me cynical, but does such a utopian workplace exist?

I know of such a place. It's on the Cloud Cuckoo Industrial Estate, Fantasy Village, Dreamshire

Hey, that's exactly where I work....

There are some very good employers out there and I can point you to some; that said its interesting to note that the study etc. as usual and comments made thereafter are all aimed at office type people who are not front line production workers

Safety Smurf - At #7 you mention living in Hope - For forum users not acquainted with Derbyshire, Hope is located between Castleton and Hathersage. However, I can't find Earnest in my road atlas! Should I get a new one?!!!!

Safety Smurf - Thanks. You've reminded me that one of the world's epic expeditions was started not in Earnest but by Ernest - namely Sir Ernest Shackleton! In 1914 before his British Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition he advertised "Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages. Bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success." In the light of what happened (after the expedition's ship became trapped and crushed by unusually thick sea ice), the advert could be considered as a fairly accurate risk assessment summary for the expedition. Due to Shackleton's notable leadership (including practical risk management) and the skills of his team, he and all the men with him eventually returned safely from the expedition.

m's comments about people sleeping at work on the night shift has a ring of truth judging from what I recall of some evening & night visits to various premises with night shifts during my HSE years. Also some premises seemed to have card schools. Some premises where I anticipated finding a reasonable level of security had surprisingly lax security, while other places were proverbially like Fort Knox and the night staff simply didn't believe that HSE inspectors or other officials would visit outside normal office hours. I can't speak for HSE nowadays, but in the 1970s and 1980s it was an unwritten expectation within HSE that each general inspector would have at least one or preferably two stints each year doing night visits. After finishing about 4am to get some sleep, it was fun to be in the office next day to deal with the flurry of calls put through from anxious managers and directors asking if an inspector had visited their premises last night and if I was allowed to visit at night, etc. The stock answer was that inspectors were entitled to visit at any reasonable time - this included evenings and at night if people were working during such hours. It was evident that senior managers for some premises very rarely or never paid any visits during evenings and nights, and assumed that everything operated as in the daytime.

To add to Nigel B's valid comments, I've got the impression from TV documentaries that most jobs at BL, i.e. on the continuously moving production lines, were so tedious and unstimulating that frequent strikes provided a welcome relief from the tedium. Even allowing for automation of many of tasks which used to be done manually at BL, I would be willing to bet (not sure what) that Nissan's jobs generally involve a reasonable degree of rotation and flexibility in order to try and minimise tedium. Combine this aspect with good liaison and consultation between employees and management, and it seems everyone's a winner! A few years ago, some of us from the Public Services Section (a great section in case anyone's forgotten my previous commendations) of IOSH's Manchester & North West Districts Branch visited General Motors' vehicle plant at Ellesmere Port in Cheshire. If my memory cells are working okay we were told that formerly rigid production tasks had been made flexible, etc., so that employees worked in teams and never spent too long on any particular task. I think they also had reasonable control over the time available for different tasks rather than having to keep up with a relentlessly moving production line. As a result, employees were reportedly much happier and content with their work, industrial disputes had become rare and production was better than ever - which probably explained why GM kept the plant going while cutting back on other car plants in Europe. Please can anyone better acquainted with the Ellesmere Port plant and/or other UK vehicle plants confirm or refute these impressions?

During my 10+ years with HSE until 1987 I developed a habit for using improvement notices to get organisations to redecorate their workrooms. For manufacturing firms, the notices required them to rectify a breach of Section 1 of the then Factories Act 1961. Such notices reaped more benefits than I, initially, or their recipients would have imagined. I can't recall how my habit developed - perhaps I simply copied some other inspectors with considerably more experience than myself. Anyhow, though the recipient firms weren't always keen on having to spend time and effort in complying with the notices (for which ample time was allowed, including extensions of time if sought, to accommodate slack periods and holidays, etc.), some of them subsequently said they were very grateful for the notices. Initially such gratitude came as a surprise to me until the firms explained that the redecoration work tended to prompt long overdue tidying up of the rooms involved. Also, having cleaner, brighter walls improved the efficiency of the existing lighting arrangements and generally made the rooms more pleasant places in which to work. Allied to these aspects in some cases were that the firms found that staff absenteeism tended to reduce while productivity increased. I guess that among the psychological factors involved was a barely conscious but positive reaction by employees to the fact that their employers had bothered to improve their workplaces - even if the improvements had been prompted by HSE. As I don't know of any particular technical/psychological term for the phenomenon involved, please can anyone help in this respect? The notices about redecoration were just one of many facets of my work with HSE at the time, so I didn't think to explore or publicise the phenomenon within HSE or elsewhere. Also, redecoration in workrooms seemed very basic and mundane when compared with various other aspects of OS&H dealt with by HSE inspectors. In retrospect, I wonder if any of the notice recipients firms subsequently continued with periodic redecorations without further prompting from HSE. Anyhow, in relation to this forum topic, the above experience suggests that providing clean, reasonably lit and decorated workplaces is one of the basic but important parts of OS&H in relation to motivating and getting the best from employees.

"As I don't know of any particular technical/psychological term for the phenomenon involved, please can anyone help in this respect? " Hawthorne Effect?

Redken and RayRapp - thanks for your responses. I had thought about the Hawthorne effect, but decided against it because, as Ray ably described it, the productivity improvement is caused by the fact that the people involved know they are being monitored. This prompts a related question as to whether people who know or think they are being filmed for a TV documentary tend to modify their language and behaviour. If so, is there any known term for this effect? Also, if people are being filmed continuously or repeatedly over a long period, do they become accustomed to the presence of camera and sound people and then tend to speak and behave as they normally do? Back to my original question. Hopefully, one or more people over time will be able to offer an established name or term for the phenomenon. If not, perhaps some forum users may wish to think and suggest possible names or terms. One possibility could be something like "enviro-productivity enhancement effect", but it's bit long-winded and clumsy.

It is as simple as CARE. Challenge. Assistance. Reward. Environment. When you work for an employer who you believe actually cares about you beyond your immediate productivity you will be happier in your work and therefore more committed to the cause. p48

Thanks Graham, yes we do need to be careful with these shorthand descriptions but as an indicator they are often very useful to focus discussion on complex matters. My four headings are indeed mutually supportive. It is all about the right balance across the four components. Reward is indeed a much bigger bag than money. Having said that and given that we are talking about employment here then money is always a part of the reward component. You also introduced the element of assistance from workmates or team members in your examples. This demonstrates that the more people care about the people they work with as well as feeling cared for by their employers is another part of the component. The interesting thing for H&S is that where this sort of culture exists then there is usually a very good H&S management programme with real management commitment and genuine employee involvement. All caring for each other is the slightly cheesy way to describe it, p48