The Office for National Statistics will spend £8 million hiring temporary staff in a bid to fix problems with its Labour Force Survey (LFS).

The government office has agreed a deal with recruitment company Randstad to recruit interviewers to increase the reliability of its data.

The LFS has been hit by a slew of problems, including a significant drop-off in response rates.

In response, the ONS commissioned a Lessons Learnt review, which revealed that uncertainty around how it would turn around the survey had had a “profoundly negative impact on morale and wellbeing” at the organisation.

Office for National Statistics

Labour Force Survey: policymakers could be in the dark until 2027

ONS staff vote in favour of strike 

Last month, the ONS admitted that the LFS could take until 2027 to be fixed, causing economists and policymakers to complain they are “flying blind” on major decisions that rely on workforce data. The LFS is one of the key datasets used by the government and Bank of England when setting interest rates, for example.

Randstad will recruit 148 agency staff to add to the ONS’ existing workforce. These staff will act as field interviewers who knock on doors across Britain and ask people to complete online surveys.

This should improve response rates to the survey, which fell to 40% during the pandemic from 50% in 2010, and have dropped as low as 20% in recent years.

The ONS has been beset by challenges in the past year. Last April and October, staff voted in favour of industrial action in a dispute about how often they come into the office.

Unions representing staff said that hiring agency workers to carry out interviews would worsen staff morale further.

Fran Heathcote, general secretary of the PCS trade union, said: “Rather than giving huge sums of money to an agency to provide what would be a temporary fix, ONS management would be better investing in addressing long term recruitment and retention issues.”

An analysis by the Financial Times last year showed that a fifth of the workforce in the year to March 2024, more than twice the number who joined. Almost half of the exits were from mid-level roles, where staff have crucial technical and policy skills.

An ONS spokesperson told The Guardian that the organisation was striving to create a “transformed” survey.

“We strive for an honest and inclusive culture that encourages staff to feed back where challenges exist, so we can respond and move forward collectively. That is why we recently commissioned a lessons learned review to ensure the views of those involved in the Transformed Labour Force Survey project were heard,” they said.

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