Employment Relationship Problems: Costs, Benefits and Choices
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Appendix I: Methodology
There were three main aspects to the long term research: a series of case studies and surveys of private and public sector employers. Full details of the methodology are provided in the technical research report (available upon request from the Department of Labour).
Case Studies
For the case studies, we identified parties to 15 ERPs and interviewed them to learn about the process of their issues, why they took the approaches they did, and the ultimate costs and benefits of the ERP. In most cases we only interviewed one party to the ERP (either the employer or employee), but we found many of the comments from participants were convergent.
Surveys
The surveys of the private and public sectors were conducted online, and participants were recruited via e-mails sent to senior managers/owners of businesses, or HR managers of businesses with separate HR functions. The survey requested detailed information about the ERP most recently settled and general information about the numbers of ERPs faced over the past 12 months and their costs and benefits.
Limitations
The total response rate for the private sector survey (11.5%) and the incidence rate for employment relationship problems were lower than expected. As a result the total numbers of ERPs resolved by some methods (mediation by non-DOL mediators, Employment Relations Authority hearings and the courts) were not large enough to provide reliable representative measures of their specific costs, time taken to resolve and satisfaction levels. Therefore, in sections of the report discussing specific resolution methods, analysis was conducted only for those methods with sufficient numbers to provide meaningful results.
The very low response rate for the public sector (4%), and particularly for district health boards and core government departments, have limited our ability to comment on costs and benefits of ERPs in the public sector.