Policy Shifts, Job Insecurity and the Changing Employment Relationship

Macro-economic policy sits at the centre of this video, which addresses Assessment Criterion 1.4 of 7CO01 by examining how long-term shifts in economic governance have reshaped employment relationships. The video traces a historical arc from the post-war Keynesian consensus — characterised by government demand management, full employment objectives, and strong collective bargaining — through to the market liberalisation policies that gained dominance from the late 1970s onwards. Deregulation, privatisation, reduced union power, and the prioritisation of labour market flexibility are all covered as features of this transition, alongside the structural economic pressures, including stagflation and international competitiveness, that drove it.

A substantial portion of the video focuses on what has happened to the standard employment relationship as these policy shifts have taken hold. The erosion of permanent, full-time employment with a single employer as the assumed norm is examined in detail, with the video addressing the range of non-standard arrangements that have grown in its place: fixed-term contracts, zero-hours contracts, agency work, self-employment, and platform or gig work. The video analyses how each of these arrangements distributes economic risk differently between organisations and workers, and how the decline in collective bargaining coverage has altered the balance of bargaining power — particularly for workers without scarce or specialist skills.

The video then turns to the concrete implications of job and income insecurity for people professionals operating within these conditions. Workforce planning complexity, employee engagement where the employment relationship feels transactional, and employer brand considerations across both standard and non-standard workers are all addressed. The video also covers the policy frameworks — employment law, minimum wage regulation, pension auto-enrolment, and immigration policy — as expressions of broader political choices about labour market functioning, positioning economic and policy literacy as a practical requirement for advising senior leaders and designing employment practices that are responsive to this context.